**GAO-09-568**                      Published: Jun 19, 2009. Publicly Released: Jun 19, 2009.                  

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## Highlights

Violent extremist movements and ongoing military operations have prompted the Department of Defense (DOD) to place greater emphasis on improving language and regional proficiency, which includes cultural awareness. GAO was asked to assess the extent to which DOD has (1) developed a strategic plan to guide its language and regional proficiency transformation efforts and (2) obtained the information it needs to identify potential language and regional proficiency gaps and assess risk. To conduct this assessment, GAO analyzed DOD's Defense Language Transformation Roadmap, reviewed the military services' strategies for transforming language and regional proficiency capabilities, and assessed the range of efforts intended to help identify potential gaps.

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## Topics

National Defense

Data collectionDefense capabilitiesForeign languagesMilitary forcesMilitary operationsMilitary trainingPerformance measuresPrioritizingRegional planningRequirements definitionRisk assessmentRisk managementStrategic planningTraining utilizationCultural awarenessProgram goals or objectivesPolicies and procedures