DOD Has Established Processes for Implementing and Tracking Recommendations to Improve Leadership, Morale, and Operations, GAO-16-597R: Published: Jul 14, 2016. Publicly Released: Jul 14, 2016.
“Why GAO Did This Study – DOD has identified nuclear deterrence as its highest priority mission. In 2014, in response to several incidents involving the nation’s nuclear deterrent forces and their senior leadership, the Secretary of Defense directed two reviews of DOD’s nuclear enterprise. These two reviews identified problems with leadership, organization, investment, morale, policy, and procedures, as well as other shortcomings that are adversely affecting the nuclear deterrence mission. The reviews also made recommendations to address these problems. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 includes a provision for GAO to review DOD’s process for addressing the recommendations of the nuclear enterprise reviews. In addition, Senate Report 114-49 includes a provision that GAO review certain matters related to DOD’s approach for addressing the recommendations. This report describes the extent to which DOD has established processes to (1) implement the recommendations of the two nuclear enterprise reviews and (2) track the implementation of these recommendations and measure the effectiveness of the actions it has taken to address them. To identify DOD’s processes for implementing the recommendations, tracking the progress of the implementation, and measuring the effectiveness of actions taken, GAO reviewed key documents and interviewed DOD officials regarding the processes the department and services have developed. We compared the processes to relevant criteria from Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government.”