Determining that Army reserve component soldiers are available to mobilize involves the oversight and management by officials from multiple DOD entities, the application of criteria regarding the soldiers’ medical-, training-, and administrative-related availability status, and the recording of this information throughout multiple data systems. Overall, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs is to advise the Secretary of Defense on reserve component matters and oversee all reserve component-related matters. Further, the Secretary of the Army is responsible for, and has the authority necessary to conduct, all affairs of the Department of the Army. These responsibilities include, among other things, organizing, training, and mobilizing forces within two distinct components: the active component and the reserve components—the U.S. Army Reserve and the Army National Guard. Within the Department of the Army, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs is to develop, oversee, and review policies and programs pertaining to the mobilization, demobilization, and availability of the reserve components. The Chief of the Army Reserve is to advise the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army on all issues related to the U.S. Army Reserve Command, which provides trained, equipped, and ready soldiers, leaders, and units to support the combatant commands. Further, as the other reserve component of the Army, the Army National Guard provides trained and equipped units ready to (1) defend property and life to the 54 states and territories of the United States and (2) respond to overseas combat missions, counterdrug efforts, reconstruction missions, and more, as needed. The Chief of the National Guard Bureau is responsible for creating and implementing policy and guidance so that Army National Guard soldiers meet overall Department of the Army standards. The Chief of the National Guard Bureau is also responsible for ensuring that Army National Guard soldiers are accessible, capable, and ready to protect the homeland and to provide combat resources to the Army. The Army Training and Doctrine Command develops, educates, and trains soldiers; supports unit training; and designs, builds, and integrates a mix of capabilities, formations, and equipment in support of Army soldier and unit training. Additionally, the Director of the Defense Health Agency is responsible for managing an Individual Medical Readiness Working Group to monitor, revise, evaluate, and validate data results in conjunction with the services and to recommend individual soldier medical readiness goals. According to Army guidance, unit commanders are to consider soldiers available if they meet a combination of medical, training, and administrative criteria. The following are the six individual medical readiness requirements: annual completion of a periodic health assessment; annual completion of a dental assessment; current on required immunizations; current on required medical laboratory studies such as an HIV test and a DNA sample; possession of individual medical equipment items; and, free of any deployment-limiting medical or dental conditions that may interfere with the soldier’s ability to perform duties while deployed. The following categories are used to define a soldier’s medical availability status depending on how many of the six individual medical readiness requirements are completed: “Fully Medically Ready” if the soldier is current on all six individual medical requirements; “Partially Medically Ready” if the soldier is lacking one or more of the individual medical requirements that could be resolved within 72 hours; “Not Medically Ready” if the soldier possesses a chronic or prolonged deployment- limiting medical or mental condition; or “Medically Indeterminate” if the soldier is missing health information— a status used only until the soldier has completed the required medical and dental examinations. To determine a soldier’s training-related availability status, a unit commander must determine whether the soldier has completed (1) a basic officer leadership course, a warrant officer basic course, or initial entry training requirements, as applicable and also (2) the required training for an assigned duty position. Under law, soldiers in the Army Selected Reserve have up to 2 years to complete these initial training requirements and until they do, they are not considered available to mobilize. Finally, other situations may arise that could lead to a soldier being classified as non-available regardless of the soldier’s medical or training availability status. For example, a soldier is considered “administratively non-available” if he or she is without a family care plan that indicates who will take care of his or her dependents in the case of deployment; under arrest or held in confinement because of legal issues; convicted of a Lautenberg (criminal domestic violence) violation, which makes the soldier non-available for missions requiring the use of firearms: less than 18 years of age; mobilized or deployed; a conscientious objector; or in the process of retiring or being released from active duty. Line of Duty investigations are part of the Army reserve components’ process to manage their soldiers whose service has been interrupted by injury, illness, disease, or death. Soldiers who are not medically ready with medical conditions that will require longer than 72 hours to resolve are to be reported as not available to their units according to Army regulation. Army Reserve and Army National Guard soldiers are entitled to hospital benefits, pensions, and other compensation for injury, illness, or disease incurred in the line of duty unless their condition was caused by their intentional misconduct or willful negligence. Line of duty investigations are conducted in order to determine whether the soldier was at fault at the time of an injury or death. Possession of one or more medical conditions or physical defects does not mean automatic retirement or separation from the service because many medical conditions are temporary such as broken bones, recovery from surgery, or pregnancy. However, once a medical treatment provider determines that a soldier has a condition that does not appear to meet medical retention standards, the soldier is to be referred to a Medical Evaluation Board Physical Evaluation Board as part of DOD and the Department of The board Veterans Affairs Integrated Disability Evaluation System.considers numerous pieces of information in assessing the soldier for continued service, and one of these pieces of required information is a Line of Duty investigation. In order for these soldiers to again be considered medically ready, and thus available to their units, they must complete the board’s process and be deemed to meet medical retention standards and be fit for duty. Alternatively, the non-available soldier could be discharged from the service. The Army Reserve and the Army National Guard use more than a dozen data systems to record or analyze various pieces of data related to the individual information and medical, training, and administrative status of their soldiers. The Army Reserve and Army National Guard provided individual soldier availability data, listed in Table 1, from the five main data systems they use to track soldier availability-related data. We found that the Army reserve components do not have complete, accurate, and timely data to support the non-availability rates that they report to their higher commands. In January 2015, the Army Reserve and Army National Guard reported overall non-availability rates of 22 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Initially, we obtained and analyzed nationwide soldier non-availability related data from July 2012 through fiscal year 2014 from both the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard in order to conduct a trend analysis of the data. However, due to the magnitude of discrepancies that we found using these historical data, we then requested and obtained data from a non-generalizable sample of six specific units (two Army Reserve commands and four Army National Guard states) for the most recent month available, January 2015, to analyze these discrepancies. The six units provided data on the 85,000 soldiers assigned to these units during this time frame –about 66,000 soldiers listed as available, and 19,000 soldiers listed as non-available. We analyzed a limited number of medical, training, and administrative availability-related variables from five Army reserve component data systems for this sample and found one-third to one-half of the 19,000 soldiers listed as non-available in this sample were non-available due to medical reasons; about one-third were non-available due to training reasons; and about one-quarter were non-available due to other or multiple reasons. Overall, we found that the availability data for more than 3,800 soldiers of the 85,000 soldiers assigned to these units were incomplete, inaccurate, or inconsistent, thus making the data used to report these rates not sufficiently reliable. Because we only analyzed a selection of medical-, training-, and administrative-related availability data, a more comprehensive analysis of the universe of availability- related variables could reveal additional examples of incorrect availability statuses— meaning that the overall non-availability rates reported by the Army Reserve and Army National Guard could be different than the percentages stated above. Of the 66,000 soldiers in our sample reported by the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard as available for mobilization in January 2015, we identified more than 750 soldiers who were inaccurately reported as available—that is, they had conditions that according to Army guidance would mean they were non-available. For example: More than 600 soldiers were listed as available but were currently About 100 soldiers were listed as available but were less than 18 About 30 soldiers listed as available had medically limiting conditions. More than a dozen soldiers were listed as available but were missing health information for more than 5 years; and About 10 soldiers were listed as available but were currently incarcerated. In addition, we also found about 350 cases of soldiers with what unit officials considered to be questionable or incomplete statuses. For example, about 280 individuals had not been present at drill for at least the last 6 months but were listed as available and about 90 individuals had been listed as non-available with a short-term medically limiting code (medically ready within 30 days) for longer than 2 years. Table 2 summarizes the categories and attributes of the incomplete, inaccurate, or inconsistent data that we identified for the sample of six units as of January 2015. Senior Army Reserve and Army National Guard unit officials agreed that the examples we identified showed instances of inaccurate information, represented situations that were questionable in nature, or highlighted records that were incomplete.