GAO

The Army and Marine Corps have documented some information at the unit level for service members who completed language and culture predeployment

training, but the services have not fully captured information within service-level training and personnel systems on service members who completed training or their corresponding proficiency. DOD and service guidance require the services

to document language and culture training completion and proficiency gained

from training in service-level systems. However, GAO identified several factors

that limited the services’ ability to implement this guidance. For example, the

Army’s primary training system did not have data fields for all mandatory

language and culture tasks and, as a result, units were unable to document the

completion of this training. In addition, while the Army collects some language

proficiency data within its primary personnel system, the Army considers these

data unreliable because of weaknesses in its approach to collecting them. To

improve the accuracy of information within this system, the Army established a

task force in January 2011, which has identified a number of key tasks and is at

varying stages of completing its work. The Marine Corps did not document

language and culture predeployment training completion in any servicewide

training or personnel system and a system has not been designated for this

purpose. Further, the Marine Corps had not required marines who completed

significant language training to take formal proficiency tests and, therefore, the

service did not have language proficiency data for these marines. By not

capturing information within service-level training and personnel systems on the

training that general purpose forces have completed and the language

proficiency gained from training, the Army and Marine Corps do not have the

information they need to effectively leverage the language and culture knowledge and skills of these forces when making individual assignments and assessing future operational needs.

US Government Accountabilty Office (Estados Unidos)

d1250.pdf