Auditors investigating price tag of Defense personnel reforms

Congressional auditors are investigating the cost of implementing the Pentagon's new personnel system, in response to a request from four senators.

The Government Accountability Office is looking into the Defense Department's budget for training, communications, technology and other infrastructure needed to implement the National Security Personnel System, said Derek Stewart, GAO's director of defense capabilities and management.

The Pentagon has floated a rough estimate of $158 million, but employee groups call that figure a gross underestimation. Stewart said GAO wants to make sure Congress has an accurate idea of the cost so it can be assured that Defense is allotting enough money for the massive human resources overhaul.

"How can the Congress be assured that DoD is going to devote the necessary resources to implement and maintain the system effectively and efficiently, given all the other competing demands in the Pentagon?" Stewart said. "What I want somebody to show me is there's a commitment to the resources to make this happen. That can be a budgetary line item; it can be a pot of money that's dedicated to NSPS just sitting off to the side with a fence around it."

The review comes at the request of Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman and ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman and ranking member of the committee's Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia.

"It is rare that we get a request signed by a chairman and a ranking member of a full committee and subcommittee," Stewart said. "So that created an importance for us to look at NSPS cost."

Nanci Langley, deputy staff director for the Democrats on the subcommittee, said that Akaka, for one, is not convinced there are adequate resources to fund the reforms.

"All the signatories agree that adequate resources are needed for the system to be effective, fair and transparent," Langley said.

GAO elevated the senators' request to the level of a "Comptroller General Authority" because of the high level of congressional interest in the issue. That designation will give the auditors more authority to set their own timeline for the research and will allow them to gather and disseminate more information during the process. Stewart said his group hopes to have its work complete by the fall.

NSPS program executive officer Mary Lacey said her office was not aware the GAO review was taking place, but that officials there look forward to working with auditors.

Stewart said much of his group's work will involve visiting each Defense Department component to determine its budget forecast for NSPS -- a task no one within the department has completed to lawmakers' satisfaction. He said he believes there is a valid explanation for why a more concrete and -- in the opinion of many -- accurate estimate was never gathered by the Pentagon itself.

"There is an NSPS program office, but that program office doesn't fit neatly under any other office within the Pentagon," Stewart said. "Well, then, whose responsibility is it to roll up the cost? It's not the program office; their responsibility is to design the program and get it implemented."

Stewart said his study most likely will not examine the cost of paying employees under the new system, but his auditors will keep their eyes open for any concerns about that.