From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Military Personnel Tempo Description: What do guidelines say about the maximum length of time service members can be away from home? Limited enforcement and data make that a difficult question to answer. Related GAO Work: GAO-18-253, Military Readiness: Clear Policy and Reliable Data Would Help DOD Better Manage Service Members' Time Away from Home Released: April 2018 [ Background Music ] [ John Pendleton: ] This has been a problem for a long time and DOD has simply not made this a priority. [ Matt Oldham: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt Oldham. Even if you don't know much about the military, you likely know that service members often have to work away from home for extended periods, whether it's exercises, training or deployments, it just comes with the territory. I sat down with John Pendleton, a director in our Defense Capabilities and Management team to talk about how the Department of Defense manages service members' time away from home. Now, John, I know I'd rather not work long hours if I don't have to, but I do get to go home at the end of the day. How does this issue that service members face compare to, say, my concerns with a good work-life balance. [ John Pendleton: ] Let's be honest, Matt, if you're in the military, work-life balance means something different. You may be called to deploy to dangerous areas, and it could be for months at a time. Even when you're not deployed, though, you may have to be away from home for training or exercises or other reasons. And this total time away, deployments plus all the other things that take service members away, is called personnel tempo or PERSTEMPO. What our report looked at was how the Defense Department manages this total time away to prevent excessive burdens on individual service members and also their families. [ Matt Oldham: ] Is there a general rule or regulation that all service members can rely on when it comes to personnel tempo? [ John Pendleton: ] Well, there's a little history here. Congress actually passed a law in the late 1990s saying that anything more than 220 days in a year, just over seven months, was pushing it. And they required DOD to track it, even pay service members extra if they exceeded it. After the terrorist attacks in 2001, though, DOD exercised a provision in the law that allowed them to wave it. And it has maintained that waiver ever since. We took a look at the current policies and found that they varied widely today. The overarching policy was set in 2013, but it focuses on time away for deployments not all the other stuff that constitutes PERSTEMPO. The services have approached it differently. The Air Force and the Marines have not set specific PERSTEMPO goals. The Army has a regulation but doesn't enforce it. The Navy and the Special Operations Command concerned about the impact of time away on their folks have set specific goals. For instance the Special Operations Command allows a total of 16 months away in a two-year period, so a fair amount of time away before they would pass that threshold. So the rules and regulations, the policies, are a mixed bag for sure. [ Matt Oldham: ] Do you have a sense of how well the rules are being applied or adhered to per service or Special Operations Command? [ John Pendleton: ] I wish we did but we don't because the data has big holes in it. To get a ballpark, we used the available data that had been collected by DOD and we came up with an estimate that at least 50,000 service members had been away from home more than 220 days in 2016, but the real number is likely much higher. The data was missing records for tens of thousands of personnel. And the Navy's data, for example, differed by 13,000 personnel from the DOD's data and nobody could explain the difference to us. This has been a problem for a long time. GAO cited this in reports going back to the mid-1990s, and DOD has simply not made this a priority. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] It sounds like in order for the Department of Defense to fully understand how it can best manage service members' time spent away from home, it first need to understand the situation as it exists today but that the DOD also has unreliable and incomplete data on this subject. So, John, what did your team recommend? [ John Pendleton: ] Well, we actually made a couple of recommendations that we think are fundamental to managing PERSTEMPO going forward. First, you've got to get the policy right. DOD continues to wave the statutory requirement, but the current policy doesn't address PERSTEMPO in a specific and measurable way. And until they do this, the department basically won't know how much is too much. Second, I think to get to the data problem that you talk about, they need to gather complete and reliable information. This has been a long-standing problem but without it, DOD can't enforce its policies and it can't assess how many service members this is affecting. DOD concurred with both recommendations. So now it will just be a matter of follow through on their part. But you can bet we'll follow up to keep them honest. [ Matt Oldham: ] So, John, what do you believe is the bottom line of your report? [ John Pendleton: ] To manage PERSTEMPO DOD has had to answer two basic questions about time away. How much is too much? And how much are people actually doing? Until they answer these questions by setting clear policy and gathering reliable data, I think they'll be challenged to keep their commitment to take care of service members and their families. [ Matt Oldham: ] John Pendleton is a director in our Defense Capabilities and Management team. And he's the signer of a GAO report on military readiness and personnel tempo. Thank you for your time, John. [ John Pendleton: ] Thank you very much. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. [ Background Music ] [ Matt Oldham: ] For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at gao.gov.