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Report | Aug. 1, 2018

Compendium of Open Office of Inspector General Recommendations to the Department of Defense

 

The 2018 Compendium lists the number, type, age, and status of 1,558 open recommendations, as of March 31, 2018. In this Compendium, we highlight the 25 high-priority open recommendations that we believe, if implemented, have the potential to result in significant improvements to DoD operations.

We provide, in each summary of the open recommendations, an overview of the DoD OIG project that produced the recommendations and why they are important. The summaries also include the implementation status of the recommendations, a description of information required to close each recommendation.

Recommendations that are not included in our list of high-priority recommendations are still important and warrant the full attention of the DoD. This Compendium also summarizes 33 recommendations made in 24 OIG reports that identified $2.3 billion in potential monetary benefits the DoD could achieve based on management implementation of these recommendations.

We also identify the 56 recommendations that have been open for at least 5 years. These recommendations were issued to 17 DoD Components. In addition, this Compendium identifies 102 recommendations that remain unresolved because the DoD Components have not agreed to implement corrective actions or have not proposed corrective actions to resolve the deficiencies identified in the associated findings. We did not include classified information in this Compendium.

Finally, we believe that DoD senior managers should continue to focus attention on implementing open recommendations and ensure that prompt resolution and action is taken, as required by DoD Instruction 7650.03.2. In particular, we believe that there are several actions that DoD managers can take to help improve the followup process:

• provide management comments to the draft and final reports that clearly state whether or not management agrees with the recommendation;

• when management agrees with the recommendation, its response should include a specific plan of action and milestones regarding how it intends to address the recommendation;

• when management agrees that there is an issue that requires action, but does not agree with the DoD OIG recommended solution, management should propose alternate actions to address the underlying issue;

• when DoD management disagrees with the recommendation or the underlying finding, management should be specific in its rationale for disagreement and provide any documentation it has to support its position;

• when management has taken action to address a recommendation, it should provide the supporting documentation to the DoD OIG in a timely manner. This allows the DoD OIG to review and assess the adequacy of the actions in addressing the recommendation; and

• communicate with the DoD OIG’s followup division and the team that conducted the initial audit or evaluation, if management has questions about the intent of a recommendation or the adequacy of its intended actions.