The Department of Defense is required to report to Congress on an array of national security topics each year. The number of new reporting requirements increased from 513 in FY 2000 to 1,429 in FY 2020, according to DOD. Recent legislation has sought to reform this process.
We identified challenges in DOD’s reporting process and instances of delays, duplication, and fragmentation. Reforms are underway that should address most of these challenges, but DOD’s efforts would be improved with greater outreach to stakeholders within DOD and better data gathering. Our recommendations address these issues.
That was from the recent GAO report, DOD Should Collect More Stakeholder Input and Performance Data on Its Congressional Reporting Process. In other words: DoD should collect more data about its reporting process because there are so many reporting requirements.
ASD Legislative Affairs is in charge of compiling and assigning reporting tasks to the components. It has a 20-year old system called CHARRTS which requires manual data entry, email notifications, and manual submissions. Five of 11 components also have their own internal tracking process separate from CHARRTS. ASD(LA) is talking about customizing Salesforce software to modernize the process.
One aspect of that is that while the cost of each report is tallied, the cost of coordination is not. It’s not quite clear what even more detailed bean counting achieves in terms of accountability. More layers of controls, new IT investment, and added personnel will only give stakeholders in congress and elsewhere a greater ability to require even more reports — despite the fact that there are more requirements now than at any time in the past.
In reality, even if Congress required millions of reports, it simply cannot comprehend the minutiae of detail in DoD programs unless its staff outnumbers DoD staff. But the fact that the budget is tied to military programs means Congress, if it wants to make any change in budget, must do so on a program-by-program basis. Before PPBE, oversight was robust but of a very different form. Program status reports happened in depth at appropriations hearings and more of congressional oversight was fixated inputs rather than outputs, as reported by professor Thomas Murphy in 1969, Congress, PPBS, and Reality:
The Congressman could maintain his image as guardian of the public purse and did not have to go on record as opposing any particular program dear to the hearts of at least some of his constituents. PPBS maneuvers the Congress into making choices between programs — which could create political problems among constituents. The agency then has to rework its resource allocation to accomplish its overall objectives within the reduced budget.
Even with technical agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, much of the congressional questioning at budgetary hearings has related to matters such as overtime, travel expenses, the purchase of equipment, depreciation of capital equipment, and whether computers are being purchased or leased. Congressmen are more at home with these questions than with a decision as to whether an unmanned planetary probe should be attempted in 1971 or 1973.
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