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The military services could improve their officer evaluation systems with some simple adjustments, a congressional watchdog reported last month after a 22-month review.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that all the services use some "key practices," but do not incorporate others that could help ensure their systems produce more accurate and unbiased results.
A provision in the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act required the GAO to undertake the review.
While the report references the "approximately 215,000 active-duty commissioned officers across the Department of Defense," Army and Air National Guard officers are evaluated with the same systems as their active-component counterparts.
The report is available here.
The GAO developed the 11 key practices it used to assess the services' officer evaluations through "a literature review of scholarly and peer-reviewed publications and key practices used by public- and private-sector organizations."
It also reviewed military service policies, manuals, forms and other documentation; conducted "nongeneralizable" interviews with 19 promotion board members and 31 active-duty officers; and interviewed DoD officials.
By adopting such practices, the GAO said, "the services will have better assurance that their performance evaluation systems are designed, implemented, and regularly evaluated to ensure effectiveness."
Among the other recommended changes, the watchdog suggested the services better align how they evaluate officers with the overarching goals for their service, conduct regular and detailed reviews of their officer evaluation systems and provide officers "timely and actionable feedback" on their performance.
Each service has its own officer evaluation system that uses different measures to grade an officer’s performance.
For example, the Army, Air Force and Space Force each use a four-point scale to evaluate its officers. But the Marine Corps uses a seven-point scale, and the Navy uses a five-point scale.
The GAO's analysts found the services — other than the Marine Corps — do not have clear policies 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, the agency found.
But 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," they added.
— By John Goheen
