Book Description

Current Army and Marine Corps guidance has generally improved the quantity and objectivity of readiness information available to decision makers. As in the past, Army Regulation 220-1 and Marine Corps Order 3000.13 direct units to report on two types of missions-the core missions for which units were designed as well as any other missions they may be assigned, but recent changes to the guidance also added new requirements. Units must now provide objective, personnel and equipment data to supplement commanders'assessments of their units' assigned mission capabilities. The updated service guidance also provides additional criteria, which are intended to help unit commanders consistently assess their units' mission capabilities. The newdata and additional mission assessment criteria improve the objectivity and consistency of readiness information provided to decision makers. However, to clearly identify units that recently returned from deployment, the Armyregulation now requires units to uniformly report a specific service directed readiness level rather than assess and report the unit's actual readiness level.As a result, decision makers lack a complete picture of the readiness of some units that could be called upon to respond to contingencies.While the Army and Marine Corps have taken steps to implement the revised readiness reporting guidance, units are inconsistently reporting readiness in some areas. GAO site visits to 33 Army and 20 Marine Corps units revealedthat units were using inconsistent reporting time frames, and GAO data analysis showed that 49 percent of Marine Corps reports submitted between May 2010 and January 2011 were late. Furthermore, units are reporting equipment and personnel numbers differently, and some units are not linking their two types of mission assessments, in accordance with current guidance.The federal standards for internal control state management must continually assess and evaluate its internal controls to assure that the control activities being used are effective and updated when necessary. However, Marine Corpsand Army quality assurance reviews have not identified all the inconsistencies and system mechanisms are not preventing the submission of inconsistent data. Until internal controls improve, decision makers will continue to rely onreadiness information that is based on inconsistent reporting.