DOD’S POW/MIA MISSION

Capability and Capacity to 

Account for Missing 

Persons Undermined by 

Leadership Weaknesses and 

Fragmented Organizational 

Structure

Statement of Brenda S. Farrell, Director 

Defense Capabilities and Management

Testimony 

Before the Subcommittee on Military 

Personnel, Committee on Armed 

Services, U.S. House of Representatives

For Release on Delivery 

Expected at 8:00 a.m. EDT

Thursday, August 1, 2013

GAO-13-810T

United States Government Accountability Office
 

Page 1 GAO-13-810T 

Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Davis, and Members of the 

Subcommittee:

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to discuss GAO’s 

findings and recommendations about the Department of Defense’s (DOD) 

missing persons accounting mission from our recently issued report, 

DOD’s POW/MIA Mission: Top-Level Leadership Attention Needed to 

Resolve Longstanding Challenges in Accounting for Missing Persons 

from Past Conflicts.

1 DOD reports that more than 83,000 persons are 

missing from past conflicts in Vietnam, Korea, the Cold War, the Persian 

Gulf, and World War II. Since the early 1970s, DOD has identified the 

remains of and accounted for approximately 1,910 persons. Several DOD 

components and organizations, collectively known as the missing persons 

accounting community, have a role in accounting for missing persons. 

Between 2002 and 2012, DOD accounted for an average of 72 persons 

each year. In 2009, Congress established an accounting-for goal in 

Section 541 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 

2010.2 This act required the Secretary of Defense to provide such funds, 

personnel, and resources as the Secretary considers appropriate to 

increase significantly the capability and capacity of DOD, the Armed 

Forces, and commanders of the combatant commands to account for 

missing persons, so that the accounting community has sufficient 

resources to ensure that at least 200 missing persons are accounted for 

annually, beginning in fiscal year 2015.3

In 2012, in a committee report to accompany a bill for the National 

Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, the House Armed 

Services Committee mandated that we review DOD’s efforts to increase 

its capability and capacity to account for missing persons.

The law also added all World 

War II losses to the list of conflicts for which DOD is responsible, thus 

increasing from about 10,000 to 83,000 the number of missing persons 

for whom DOD must account.

4

 

1

GAO, DOD’s POW/MIA Mission: Top-Level Leadership Attention Needed to Resolve 

Longstanding Challenges in Accounting for Missing Persons from Past Conflicts, 

Our resulting 

GAO-13-619 (Washington, D.C.: July 17, 2013).

2

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-84, §541 

(2009) (appended as a note below 10 U.S.C. §1509).

3

In this statement we refer to this statutory requirement as the accounting-for goal.

4

H.R. Rep. No. 112-479 at 153 (2012).

 
 

Page 2 GAO-13-810T 

report focused on DOD’s efforts to accomplish the missing persons 

mission in accordance with the accounting-for goal established by 

Congress. In my statement today, I will focus on three key issues we 

identified in our report, specifically: (1) the accounting community’s 

organizational structure, (2) the lack of clarity regarding community 

members’ roles and responsibilities, and (3) DOD’s planning to meet the 

statutory accounting-for goal. Our full report also discusses challenges in 

other areas, such as processes for conducting operations outside of U.S. 

Pacific Command’s (PACOM) area of responsibility, criteria for prioritizing 

potentially recoverable missing persons, and communication efforts 

among community members.

To identify and assess DOD’s efforts to accomplish its mission to account 

for missing persons, we analyzed guidance and requirements, discussed 

accounting efforts and the structure of the community with community 

members, and surveyed accounting community members and other DOD 

stakeholder or leadership organizations. Our work underlying this 

statement was conducted in accordance with generally accepted 

government auditing standards from June 2012 to June 2013. Those 

standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, 

appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and 

conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe the evidence 

obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions 

based on our audit objectives. Additional details on our scope and 

methodology are contained in our recently issued report.
 

Page 3 GAO-13-810T 

Many DOD organizations, collectively known as the missing persons 

accounting community, have a role in accounting for the missing, as 

discussed below.5 The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD 

Policy) and U.S. Pacific Command6

• USD Policy is responsible for developing, coordinating, and 

overseeing the implementation of DOD policy to account for personnel 

unaccounted for as a result of hostile acts. The Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs, 

who reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is 

responsible for, among other things, exercising policy, control, and 

oversight for the entire process of accounting for missing persons; 

monitoring and advocating for program funding requirements and 

resources for the mission; and leading and coordinating related 

communications efforts, such as the public outreach program.

(PACOM) are the two top-level 

leadership organizations in the accounting community.

• The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) is 

responsible for, among other things, overseeing archival research and 

standardizing procedures for methodology and prioritization; rendering 

final analytic judgments as to what constitutes fullest possible 

accounting for each case by identifying possibilities for future action, 

or determining when no further pursuit is possible; and defining, 

maintaining, and enumerating accounting lists. The DPMO Director is 

responsible for overseeing the execution of DPMO’s mission and 

duties. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Prisoner of 

War/Missing Personnel Affairs serves as the DPMO Director and 

reports to USD Policy in that capacity as well.

 

5

Section 1509 of Title 10 of the United States Code defines the members of DOD’s 

Prisoner of War/Missing in Action accounting community, who are assigned roles by 

statute or by DOD directives and instructions. See 10 U.S.C. §§ 1501(a) and 1509(b)(2); 

DOD Directive 5110.10, Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) 

(Sept. 21, 2005); and DOD Directive 2310.07E, Personnel Accounting—Losses Due to 

Hostile Acts (Nov. 10, 2003, certified current as of Aug. 21, 2007). While many of these 

organizations have responsibilities outside of the missing persons accounting mission, 

only their roles for this mission are described here. 

6

PACOM is one of DOD’s six geographic combatant commands. PACOM’s area of 

responsibility encompasses about half of the earth’s surface, stretching from the waters off 

the west coast of the United States to the western border of India, and from Antarctica to 

the North Pole.

Background 
 

Page 4 GAO-13-810T 

• PACOM exercises authority over the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in 

Action Accounting Command (JPAC), which is responsible for 

conducting operations in support of achieving the missing persons 

accounting mission. In 2003 JPAC was established as a Joint 

Command by the merger of the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting with 

the Central Identification Laboratory – Hawaii in order to achieve unity 

of command, permanence of operational elements, and efficiency and 

effectiveness in the use of DOD’s resources, as well as to strengthen 

the command and control of military forces in achieving the fullest 

possible accounting. JPAC’s functions include analysis, archival 

research, investigations, recoveries, repatriations, identifications, and 

reporting. The Central Identification Laboratory is the laboratory 

component of JPAC.

• The military services have a role, with their service casualty offices 

serving as the primary liaison for families concerning missing persons 

recovery and accounting. Officials from these offices also assist 

families and help explain the methods used to account for their 

missing loved ones. Additional activities include gathering family 

deoxyribobucleic acid (DNA) reference samples, coordinating 

responses to family inquiries and concerns, and maintaining family 

contact information.

• The past conflict accounting section of the Armed Forces DNA 

Identification Laboratory conducts DNA analyses of remains of 

missing persons from past military conflicts for JPAC and its 

laboratory component, the Central Identification Laboratory, and 

maintains the past conflict accounting family reference sample 

database, to include processing of all DNA references. The Armed 

Forces DNA Identification Laboratory is part of the Armed Forces 

Medical Examiner System, which reports to the Army Surgeon 

General.

• The Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory provides technical and 

analytical support to the accounting community, and is primarily 

tasked by JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory to analyze and 

identify life science equipment-related artifacts that have been 

recovered and may potentially be related to missing persons cases. 

The Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory is part of the Air Force 

Materiel Command.

In addition to these members of the missing persons accounting 

community, many other organizations play a role in the missing persons 

accounting process, including the Office of the Under Secretary of 
 

Page 5 GAO-13-810T 

Defense for Personnel and Readiness, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and 

the State Department. In addition, family and veterans organizations 

serve as constituency groups to the accounting community.

The department’s response to the accounting-for goal established in the 

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 brought into 

sharp relief longstanding disputes that have not been addressed by toplevel leaders, and have been exacerbated by the accounting community’s 

fragmented organizational structure. As I will describe in more detail later 

in this statement, leadership from the Under Secretary of Defense for 

Policy and Pacific Command have been unable to resolve disputes 

between community members in areas such as roles and responsibilities 

and developing a community-wide plan to meet the statutory accountingfor goal. Further, the accounting community is fragmented in that the 

community members belong to diverse parent organizations under 

several different chains of command. With accounting community 

organizations reporting under different lines of authority, no single entity 

has overarching responsibility for community-wide personnel and other 

resources. For example, although the Deputy Assistant Secretary of 

Defense for Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs has statutory 

responsibility for policy, control, and oversight of the entire accounting 

process, JPAC—which performs investigations, recoveries, 

identifications, and other key functions—falls under the authority of 

PACOM, rather than reporting to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of 

Defense for Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs. As a result, no 

single entity can implement or enforce decisions without obtaining 

widespread consensus. We have previously reported that having a single 

designated leader is often beneficial because it centralizes accountability 

for achieving outcomes and can accelerate decision-making.7

Concerns have arisen over the years, both within and outside of DOD, 

with regard to whether the current organizational structure of DOD’s 

missing persons accounting community enables the community to most 

effectively meet its mission. For example, a 2006 Institute for Defense 

Analyses study concluded that significant improvements could be made 

 

7

GAO, Managing for Results: Key Considerations for Implementing Interagency 

Collaborative Mechanisms, GAO-12-1022 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 27, 2012). 

Accounting 

Community’s 

Fragmented 

Organizational 

Structure Exacerbates 

Weaknesses in 

Leadership 
 

Page 6 GAO-13-810T 

by increasing the lines of coordination in the accounting community and 

recommended that the community acknowledge DPMO as the leader in 

the accounting effort. The study also described some of the problems 

associated with the current organization; for example, that DPMO does 

not have tasking authority over the other organizations, and that while 

there are multiple lines of authority, no one organization has effective 

authority over execution of the entire mission.

In our July 2013 report, we found that a majority of accounting community 

and DOD stakeholder organizations believe that an alternative 

organizational structure for the accounting community would be more 

effective. We administered a questionnaire asking representatives from 

each accounting community organization whether various options for 

reorganizing the missing persons accounting community could improve 

the community’s ability to meet its mission.8

Responses to our questionnaire also demonstrated a lack of confidence 

about the current organizational structure among many community and 

DOD stakeholder organizations. For example, 13 of the 14 survey 

respondents indicated that the current organizational structure did not 

enable or only somewhat enabled the community to develop the required 

capability and capacity to achieve the accounting-for goal. In addition, 12 

respondents indicated that the current organizational structure did not 

enable or only somewhat enabled the community to collectively determine 

necessary resources. Furthermore, 9 respondents indicated that the 

current organizational structure did not at all enable the accounting 

community to define and agree on their respective roles and 

responsibilities.

One question asked 

respondents to rank five organizational options that would best enable the 

accounting community to meet its mission. We found that 12 of the 13 

survey respondents who answered the question ranked an option with a 

more centralized chain of command as the most effective in enabling the 

accounting community to achieve its mission. Ten of these 12 

respondents ranked the current organizational structure as the least 

effective or second least effective option for achieving the mission of the 

accounting community.

 

8

This questionnaire is reprinted in appendix I of our July 2013 report, along with a 

summary of the responses. For more details on the organizations that responded to the 

questionnaire and how we administered it, please see the scope and methodology section 

in appendix II of our July report. See GAO-13-619. 
 

Page 7 GAO-13-810T 

In contrast, not a single organization we surveyed ranked the current 

organizational structure as the most effective organizational option, and 

only three organizations—USD Policy, PACOM, and JPAC—ranked the 

current organizational structure as the second most effective 

organizational option. Illustrating a disconnect between leadership’s 

perspective and the rest of the community, only two organizations in our 

survey—USD Policy and PACOM, the two top-level leadership 

organizations in the accounting community—responded that the current 

structure greatly enables appropriate senior leadership involvement. USD 

Policy and PACOM stated that all of the organizational options, including 

the current organizational structure, offer access to DOD senior 

leadership. In addition, senior officials from these offices questioned 

whether the benefit of reorganization would result in real change and 

would be worth undergoing turmoil in the organization. While we 

recognize that a reorganization may pose challenges, such as creating 

the potential for short-term impacts on operations due to disruption,9

 our 

findings in our July 2013 report show that the majority of accounting 

community members and other stakeholders lack confidence in the status 

quo, and we believe that the potential benefits of reorganizing and/or 

clarifying roles and responsibilities could outweigh those challenges. 

We recommended in our July 2013 report that the Secretary of Defense 

examine options for reorganizing the accounting community, to include 

considering organizational options that provide a more centralized chain 

of command over the accounting community’s mission. DOD concurred 

with this recommendation, stating that it will consider options for 

reorganizing the accounting community, ranging from maintaining the 

status quo to consolidation of DPMO and JPAC, as well as examining 

whether the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory might also be included 

in this consolidation. DOD explained that the consolidated organization 

could be placed under the Office of the Secretary of Defense or a nongeographic combatant command to facilitate its worldwide mission and 

avoid competition for resources with a geographic combatant command’s 

war-fighting priorities. 

 

9

GAO, Government Reorganization: Potential Benefits and Drawbacks of Merging the 

National Marine Fisheries Service into the Fish and Wildlife Service, GAO-13-248 

(Washington, D.C.: Feb. 14, 2013). 
 

Page 8 GAO-13-810T 

While DOD is working to revise its existing guidance and develop new 

guidance, the roles and responsibilities of the various members of the 

missing persons accounting community are not all clearly articulated in 

existing DOD directives or instructions. We have previously reported on 

the need for collaborating agencies to work together to define and agree 

on their roles and responsibilities.10 DOD has established several 

directives and instructions related to the missing persons accounting 

program.11 However, none of this guidance clearly delineates the specific 

roles and responsibilities of all the organizations comprising the missing 

persons accounting community in the four key areas that we examined for 

our July 2013 report: (1) equipment and artifact identification and 

analysis, (2) research and analysis, (3) investigations, and (4) family 

outreach and external communications. Disagreements over roles and 

responsibilities where the guidance is broad or vague enough to support 

different interpretations has led to discord, lack of collaboration, and 

friction among the community’s members, and particularly between 

DPMO and JPAC. For example, JPAC views itself as having the lead on 

operational activities, such as conducting investigation and recovery 

missions, and JPAC officials expressed concerns with DPMO’s plans to 

conduct some operational activities. Moreover, the lack of clarity in the 

guidance has given rise to overlapping and fragmented efforts among 

accounting community members. We have previously reported that 

overlap in efforts may be appropriate in some instances, especially if 

agencies can leverage each others’ efforts. In other instances, however, 

overlap may be unintended, may be unnecessary, or may represent an 

inefficient use of U.S. government resources.12

 

10

As described in table 1, in 

GAO-12-1022; GAO, Interagency Collaboration: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight 

of National Security Strategies, Organizations, Workforce, and Information Sharing, 

GAO-09-904SP (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 25, 2009); GAO, Results-Oriented Government: 

Practices That Can Help Enhance and Sustain Collaboration among Federal Agencies, 

GAO-06-15 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 21, 2005). 

11Including: DOD Directive 2310.07E, Personnel Accounting—Losses Due to Hostile Acts

(Nov. 10, 2003, certified as current as of Aug. 21, 2007); DOD Instruction 2310.05, 

Accounting for Missing Persons, Boards of Inquiry (Jan. 31, 2000, incorporating 

administrative change Mar. 14, 2008); DOD Directive 5110.10 Defense Prisoners of 

War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) (Sept. 21, 2005); DOD Instruction 3001.03,

Accounting for Personnel Lost in Past Conflicts-The Armed Forces Identification Review 

Board (AFIRB) (Mar. 14, 2008); DOD Instruction 1300.18, DOD Personnel Casualty 

Matters, Policies, and Procedures (Jan. 8, 2008, incorporating change Aug. 14, 2009).

12GAO, Humanitarian and Development Assistance: Project Evaluations and Better 

Information Sharing Needed to Manage the Military’s Efforts, GAO-12-359 (Washington 

D.C.: Feb. 8, 2012).

DOD Guidance Does 

Not Clearly Articulate 

Roles and 

Responsibilities for 

All Accounting 

Community 

Organizations 
 

Page 9 GAO-13-810T 

implementing the accounting mission, we found that overlapping and 

duplicative13

Table 1: Identified Areas of Overlap and Duplication in the Accounting Community That Have Led to Inconsistent Practices 

and Inefficiencies

efforts have led to inconsistent practices and inefficiencies in 

four key areas.

Accounting Community Organizations Areas of Overlap and Duplication Identified

The Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action 

Accounting Command and the Life Sciences 

Equipment Laboratory

Equipment and Artifact Identification and Analysis Overlap

The Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command’s Central 

Identification Laboratory has a capability to analyze life support equipment that 

overlaps with the analysis that the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory provides.

Equipment and Artifact Identification and Analysis Duplication

The Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command’s Central 

Identification Laboratory has requested duplicate analyses by sending resolved 

cases to the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory for analysis and reporting.

The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel 

Office and the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in 

Action Accounting Command 

Research and Analysis Overlap

The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office and the Joint Prisoner of 

War/Missing in Action Accounting Command have overlapping operational 

functions that include research and analysis responsibilities.

Investigations Overlap

The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office and the Joint Prisoner of 

War/Missing in Action Accounting Command have overlapping operational 

functions that include investigation responsibilities.

The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel 

Office, the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action 

Accounting Command, and the service casualty 

offices

Family Outreach and External Communications Overlap

The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, the Joint Prisoner of 

War/Missing in Action Accounting Command, and the service casualty offices all 

play a role in family outreach and external communications. The service casualty 

offices serve as the primary liaison for families; the Defense Prisoner of 

War/Missing Personnel Office conducts periodic updates and annual government 

briefings for families; and the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting 

Command hosts numerous private tours for family members and provides 

operational briefings and individual family meetings at multiple family update 

events. 

Source: GAO analysis of agency-provided information.

Today, I will highlight one of those areas: equipment and artifact 

identification and analysis. JPAC and the Life Sciences Equipment 

Laboratory disagree about the laboratory’s roles and responsibilities for 

equipment and artifact identification and analysis, and DOD guidance is 

vague regarding those responsibilities. As a result, the interactions 

 

13Duplication occurs when two or more agencies or programs are engaged in the same 

activities or provide the same services to the same beneficiaries.
 

Page 10 GAO-13-810T 

between JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory and the Life Sciences 

Equipment Laboratory have been inefficient and ineffective and have led 

to underutilizing government resources, as the following example 

demonstrates. JPAC and Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory officials 

disagree about roles and responsibilities in terms of which conflicts and 

types of equipment the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory can analyze. 

JPAC officials told us it is unlikely that they would forward case work to 

the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory for conflicts other than Vietnam, 

and that they do not send ground equipment14

Since 2010, DPMO has attempted to address issues surrounding the 

accounting community organizations’ roles and responsibilities by 

developing new guidance or revising existing guidance, but these efforts 

have not been completed. DPMO has drafted a revision to DOD Directive 

2310.07E and has also drafted a new DOD instruction to provide more 

clarity with regard to roles and responsibilities. As of May 2013, however, 

neither the draft instruction nor the revised directive had been finalized, 

because the drafts had been stymied by disagreements among 

community members regarding their respective roles and responsibilities 

as stated in the drafts. Both DPMO officials and JPAC officials said they 

have made progress in addressing these areas of disagreement, and 

DPMO officials stated that they hoped to have the draft directive finalized 

by September 2013 and the draft instruction published by March 2014. 

remnants to the equipment 

laboratory, regardless of conflict. Conversely, Life Sciences Equipment 

Laboratory officials stated that their capabilities can support analysis of 

cases for conflict periods ranging from World War I through current 

military operations for all military services, and that their mission includes 

analyzing artifacts recovered at aircraft crash or ground action loss sites. 

Further, a 2004 memorandum of agreement between JPAC and the Life 

Sciences Equipment Laboratory states that the Life Sciences Equipment 

Laboratory has the capability to provide analysis for equipment from 

World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and current day conflicts. 

Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory officials expressed concern that 

JPAC and its Central Identification Laboratory are trying to exclude the 

Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory from the accounting process by 

downplaying its potential contributions. This example shows how the lack 

of clearly defined roles and responsibilities has led to disagreements and 

inefficient and ineffective interactions among community members. 

 

14Ground equipment includes servicemembers’ personal gear such as helmets, body 

armor, canteens, and weapons.
 

Page 11 GAO-13-810T 

Because the drafts of these documents are still under revision, it is 

unclear whether the final guidance will clarify the roles and responsibilities 

sufficiently to address the four areas of overlap and disagreement 

summarized in table 1 above. Until DOD issues its revised directive and 

new instruction that more clearly define the roles and responsibilities of all 

the accounting community organizations, these areas of inefficient 

overlap may continue, and the disputing factions within the accounting 

community may continue to hinder future progress.

Consequently, we recommended in our July 2013 report that the 

department revise and issue guidance to clarify roles and responsibilities 

of accounting community members and negotiate a new memorandum of 

agreement between the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory and JPAC. 

DOD concurred with both of these recommendations.

While DOD has made some progress in drafting a community-wide plan 

to increase its capability and capacity to meet the statutory accounting-for 

goal, as of June 2013 DOD had not completed a community-wide plan. 

We have previously reported that overarching plans can help agencies 

better align their activities, processes, and resources to collaborate 

effectively to accomplish a commonly defined outcome.15

 

15

However, our 

July 2013 report found that community-wide planning to meet the 

accounting-for goal established by Congress has been impeded by 

disputes and by a lack of coordination among members of the missing 

persons accounting community, with DPMO and JPAC developing two 

competing proposed plans, neither of which encompassed the entire 

accounting community. In response to a December 2009 memorandum 

from the Deputy Secretary of Defense directing the Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs to 

begin planning to meet the accounting-for goal, USD Policy and PACOM 

allowed the development of these two competing proposed plans for 

obtaining additional funding and resources to meet the mandated 

capability and capacity. According to DPMO officials, neither the Joint 

Staff nor USD Policy provided oversight or intervention in the 

disagreement. These officials stated that such oversight and intervention 

could have helped JPAC and DPMO to resolve their impasse by 

improving communication, interaction, and cooperation. Both plans called 

GAO-09-904SP. 

Development of 

Community-wide Plan 

Is Impeded by a 

Fragmented Approach 

to Planning and 

Disputes among 

Community Members
 

Page 12 GAO-13-810T 

for increased capability and capacity and for a new satellite remains 

identification laboratory located in the continental United States. However, 

the two plans differed as to which organization would have control over 

much of the increased capability and capacity, with each plan favoring the 

organization that authored it. The other accounting community members 

and their resource needs were not mentioned in either proposed plan.

The dispute concerning the competing proposed plans was resolved 

through DOD’s Program Budget Review Process in January 2011, after 

being assessed by a DOD-wide team led by DOD’s Office of Cost 

Assessment and Program Evaluation. In a DOD resource management 

decision,16

While the community has taken some recent steps to draft a communitywide plan as directed by the 2009 memo from the Deputy Secretary of 

Defense, we found that disagreements between JPAC and DPMO 

hindered progress in developing the community-wide plan. According to 

both DPMO and JPAC officials, the areas of disagreement included topics 

such as (1) the division of research and analysis responsibilities between 

DPMO and JPAC; (2) determination of the appropriate levels of effort for 

each of the various conflicts; and (3) agreement on a policy to address 

lower priority cases that have been on JPAC’s list of potential recovery 

sites for a long time. As of June 2013, DPMO and JPAC officials said that 

the areas of disagreement had been informally resolved and needed to 

be documented. DPMO had developed a draft of the community-wide 

plan, but DPMO officials explained that the draft would not be sufficiently 

comprehensive to share for review among the community members until 

DOD programmed more than $312 million in proposed 

additional resources over fiscal years 2012 through 2016 in support of 

JPAC’s plan, including an additional 253 personnel—reflecting a greater 

than 60 percent increase over JPAC’s 2011 level. However, key parts of 

JPAC’s plan are not being realized. For example, JPAC has been unable 

to conduct the number of investigation and recovery missions called for in 

the plan, in part due to an inability to hire the additional personnel who 

had been authorized and also in part due to the budget reductions and 

expected furloughs associated with sequestration. As of May 2013, the 

JPAC plan, which does not incorporate the larger accounting community, 

is DOD’s only plan to increase capability and capacity to account for 

missing persons.

 

16DOD, Resource Management Decision 700 (Jan. 2011). 
 

Page 13 GAO-13-810T 

it incorporated the informal agreements that have recently been resolved. 

The officials stated that they now plan to finalize the community-wide plan 

by the end of calendar year 2013.

In the absence of a community-wide plan, the members of the accounting 

community have had varied success in independently identifying and 

obtaining funds and resources to help meet the accounting-for goal. 

Moreover, there is no community-wide process to provide resources for 

the missing persons accounting mission. Each member organization of 

the accounting community has its own processes for requesting 

resources, because they belong to diverse parent organizations, and 

these processes are not integrated or coordinated. Until DOD finalizes a 

community-wide plan that addresses the resource needs of community 

members as well as changes in planned operations, the accounting 

community will be challenged to justify the resources it needs to increase 

DOD’s capability and capacity to account for at least 200 missing persons 

a year by 2015, and DOD’s ability to achieve that required increase may 

be at risk.

We recommended in our July 2013 report that the department finalize the 

community-wide plan to develop the increased capability and capacity 

required by statute, with the support and participation of all community 

members. DOD concurred with our recommendation. In total, our full 

report contains nine recommendations with which DOD generally 

concurred. The report also contains DOD’s comments, which state the 

steps the department plans to take to implement our recommendations.

In conclusion, while we are encouraged that DOD generally concurred 

with all nine of the recommendations in our July 2013 report, we note that 

prompt action on the part of the department to address these 

recommendations is critical, because the 2015 timeframe for DOD to 

meet the accounting-for goal is rapidly approaching. Further, as time 

passes, the information needed for missing persons recoveries continues 

to deteriorate. Families have been waiting for decades to discover the 

fate of their loved ones, and the weaknesses that we identified in DOD’s 

capability and capacity to account for missing persons jeopardize the 

department’s ability to provide some measure of closure to those families 

whose loved ones are still missing as a result of their service to their 

country.
 

Page 14 GAO-13-810T 

Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Davis, this concludes my prepared 

remarks. I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you or other 

Members of the Subcommittee may have.

For future questions about this statement, please contact Brenda S. 

Farrell, Director, Defense Capabilities and Management, at (202) 512-

3604 or farrellb@gao.gov. In addition, contact points for our Offices of 

Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page 

of this statement. Individuals who made key contributions to this 

statement include Margaret Best, Assistant Director; Renee Brown, Terry 

Richardson, Leigh Ann Sennette, Cheryl Weissman, Allen Westheimer, 

and Michael Willems.

Contacts and 

Acknowledgments 

(351855)
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