Military service branches should train officers about their own evaluation process and provide better feedback about them, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report. (Robert H. Reid/Stars and Stripes)
The U.S. military services should routinely train their officers about the intricacies of their officer evaluation systems and provide detailed feedback after each evaluation cycle, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report.
The government watchdog agency found each of the Defense Department’s military services — the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Space Force — could improve their officer evaluation systems with some adjustments after a roughly 22-month review. While the GAO found the services were all using some “key practices,” they failed to incorporate others that could help them ensure their systems that evaluate commissioned officers produce accurate and unbiased results from which promotions boards can decide who should advance.
Among the recommended changes, GAO suggested the services could better align how they evaluate commissioned officers with their overarching goals for their service, conduct regularly scheduled and detailed reviews of their officer evaluation systems, and provide officers “timely and actionable feedback” on their performance.
By adopting such practices, according to the GAO report released Wednesday, “the services will have better assurance that their performance evaluation systems are designed, implemented, and regularly evaluated to ensure effectiveness.”
Each service has its own officer evaluation system that use different measures to grade an officer’s performance. Those performance evaluations are considered crucial when deciding to promote officers or place them in critical command positions. There are about 215,000 active-duty commissioned officers across the Defense Department, according to the GAO.
The evaluation systems differ dramatically across the services, analysts found. For example, the Navy uses a five-point scale to grade naval officers on their performance in various categories. The Marine Corps uses a seven-point scale. The Army, Air Force and Space Force each use a four-point scale.
The Air Force and Space Force use the same officer evaluation program, but Space Force — the newest military branch — is in the process of developing its own system, GAO reported.
The GAO analysts found the services, other than the Marine Corps, do not have clear policy outlining how often officers should be trained on navigating their officer evaluation systems. Army officers are typically trained on the systems as second lieutenants in their Basic Officer Leadership Courses before taking command assignments, the agency found. The Navy and Air Force, meanwhile, do not appear to have specific intervals in which officers receive such training. The Navy provides online training access on its performance evaluations system, but the videos do not explain “how to evaluate officer performance or how to write a self-assessment.” GAO said it could not determine whether Air Force officers received training on evaluation systems or how often.
“Providing ongoing training on the performance evaluation system supports personnel’s understanding of and ability to operate the system in a manner consistent with organizational goals and objectives,” analysts wrote. “By developing a plan for the delivery of ongoing training to all officers on their respective performance evaluation systems, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force may increase assurance that officers receive consistent and timely training on their systems and are able to conduct necessary steps in a manner that aligns with organizational goals and objectives.”
GAO also found the Army and Marine Crops should improve the feedback that they provide their officers after evaluations. The Navy and Air Force routinely provide their officers with “timely and actionable feedback” on their performance during the evaluations period, but Army and Marine Corps policies do not require such post-evaluation discussion.
During its review, GAO interviewed 31 officers from across the military services to evaluate their familiarity with the evaluation systems. Analysts found only 16 of those officers received any feedback after their most recent evaluation, including multiple Army and Marine officers.
One Marine officer told the GAO that feedback was considered “a good practice but not a requirement,” and Marine officers routinely received no feedback from their raters. The Army, meanwhile, requires periodic performance counseling for officers between the ranks of second lieutenant and captain, but it has no such requirement for majors and above.
“Personnel need to know in a timely manner how they are doing, including both strengths and areas to improve,” the GAO analysts concluded.
The agency said Pentagon officials largely agreed with their findings in the report and agreed to implement most of their recommendations.
Despite the issues GAO found, analysts reported the vast majority of the 19 officers serving on promotions boards they interviewed for the study were confident in their services’ officer evaluation systems.
Most of the promotion board members concluded the evaluations were useful for making decisions on advancing an officer in rank because they rarely “see a generic report that did not clearly indicate future potential” of an officer. One promotions board member, however, told GAO, the evaluations usefulness was limited “because the reports provide the best possible image of the officer since the goal is to get the officer promoted.”
Overall, GAO analysts concluded, “promotion board members felt the evaluation reports provided sufficient information to inform their decisions about which officers to recommend for promotions.”
