The Office of the Secretary of Defense has taken a number of steps over the past several years to transform its language and regional proficiency capabilities, including designating Senior Language Authorities within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the military services, and other DOD components; developing a governance structure; updating policies; and publishing the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap—the primary document that DOD has used to guide its efforts to date. The governance structure consists of a number of components, including the following: Defense Language Steering Committee: comprised of Senior Language Authorities from the military services and other DOD organizations and chaired by the DOD Senior Language Authority, the committee provides senior-level guidance regarding the language transformation effort and the development of DOD’s language capabilities. Defense Language Action Panel: comprised of less-senior representatives from the same entities represented on the Defense Language Steering Committee, the panel supports the activities, functions, and responsibilities of the Defense Language Steering Committee. Defense Language Office: provides strategic direction and programmatic oversight to the DOD components on present and future requirements related to language as well as regional and cultural proficiency, and supports the DOD Senior Language Authority in carrying out their assigned responsibilities. In addition to setting up a governance structure, DOD published the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap in 2005, and in this document established overarching goals and desired outcomes. DOD considered these outcomes to be the same as objectives. Table 1 below shows the roadmap’s goals and selected objectives. For each roadmap goal, DOD identified several tasks that it planned to complete in support of the objectives, and assigned responsibility to various organizations for initiating efforts to complete the tasks. For example, to support the goal of creating foundational language and regional area expertise, one of the tasks DOD identified was to publish an annual Strategic Language List. This list reflects languages for which DOD has current and projected requirements and for which it intends to allocate resources, such as to provide training and testing, and pay incentives. The Defense Language Office has been responsible for monitoring completion of the roadmap tasks, which totaled 43 tasks. As of June 2010, DOD officials stated that they had completed all of the tasks except one related to developing policy and doctrine, which they consider to be an ongoing effort. Using the roadmap as guidance or a complementary document, each military service has developed or is in the process of developing a service- specific strategy for language and regional-proficiency transformation. These strategies are intended, in part, to guide service training efforts. The military services provide predeployment training to general purpose forces—the amount of which depends on the unit’s mission and the amount of time available for such training as articulated by the commander of the unit. The services have established centers to assist in coordinating, developing, distributing, and providing basic language and regional proficiency training and have also taken steps to incorporate language and regional proficiency into their professional military education for general purpose forces. Our prior work has shown that for a strategic plan to be helpful, it should contain certain key elements, such as measurable performance goals and objectives and funding priorities that are linked to goals. Table 2 below further discusses these elements. While the roadmap did establish goals and desired outcomes, which DOD considered to be objectives, we found they had some limitations, and that other key planning elements were missing. For example: Some goals and objectives in DOD’s roadmap were not measurable or time-bound. For example, one of DOD’s objectives is for the total force to understand and value the tactical, operational, and strategic asset inherent in regional expertise and language. However, we reported that DOD does not define how it intends to measure the total force’s understanding of language and regional expertise or provide a time frame for achieving the objective. In the absence of measurable objectives, DOD officials assessed progress toward goals and objectives by tracking the number of associated roadmap tasks that they consider to be fully operational, meaning DOD’s Senior Language Authority had determined the intent of the task had been met. However, this approach focused solely on the achievement of specific tasks rather than the extent to which the outcome of these tasks reflected progress toward language and regional proficiency transformation goals. We also reported that DOD considered a task fully operational before the task was complete, which further complicated DOD’s ability to measure progress toward goals and objectives. For example, DOD considered the roadmap task that assigned responsibility to the Secretary of the Army to create courses for emerging language needs to be fully operational because a plan to build these courses had been developed. However, at the time, the Army had not yet established the courses and DOD did not continue to formally track the Army’s efforts. DOD had also not identified the resources required to implement the tasks in the roadmap or linked the roadmap to its funding requests. In short, the roadmap did not contain any funding information; therefore, DOD had not identified the total cost of its transformation effort. In its annual budget requests, DOD had requested funding for 22 major language and regional proficiency programs that it considered to be priorities, as reflected in what it calls the Defense Language Program of Record. However, the two documents were not clearly linked; therefore we were unable to determine how the 22 programs related to the tasks and activities outlined in the roadmap. At the time of our work, DOD recognized that the roadmap was not a true strategic plan, and that the department had reached a point with its transformation efforts where such a plan was needed. In the absence of a comprehensive strategic plan that includes measurable performance goals and objectives, funding priorities linked to goals, and accountability for achieving results, we concluded it would be difficult for DOD to guide the military services as they develop and implement their strategies, and supporting programs and activities, and also to ensure these efforts were synchronized and consistent with departmentwide goals. Furthermore, for both the department and Congress, the lack of a comprehensive plan would make it difficult to develop or evaluate funding requests, respectively, and assess progress towards achieving successful transformation of language and regional proficiency capabilities. Therefore, we recommended that DOD develop a strategic plan with all the key elements I have mentioned. In its comments, DOD agreed and stated that it planned to complete a strategic plan by September 2009, which it referred to as the Defense Language and Regional Program Strategic Plan for 2010-2015. Our latest information from DOD officials, as of this month, is that the plan has been drafted and is undergoing final review and approval. They expect to publish the plan later this year and told us it will include elements such as performance goals, objectives, and funding priorities linked to goals. They stated that an implementation plan with metrics to measure progress will be published at a later date. While a specific milestone has not been established, it will be important that DOD complete this action quickly. In addition to a comprehensive strategic plan, it is important for DOD to have complete information on the current level of language and regional proficiency within its forces as well as the requirements for these capabilities. With this knowledge, the department can identify gaps and assess risks. Risk assessment helps decision makers identify and evaluate potential risks so that alternatives can be designed and implemented to mitigate that risk. It also allows them to prioritize needs and allocate resources based on such factors as strategic, operational, and financial considerations. At the time of our June 2009 report, DOD had efforts underway to gather inventory data and define requirements, but did not yet have complete information. Since then, DOD has made some progress in each of these areas. At the time of our June 2009 report, DOD was in the process of developing a strategic management tool called the Language Readiness Index. Once fully operational, DOD expects this tool to contain inventory and requirements data on the language and regional proficiency capabilities of military, civilian, and contractor personnel. By matching the inventory and requirements data, DOD intends to be able to determine potential gaps in capabilities and assess risk to its ability to conduct current military operations as well as potential future military operations. At the time of our prior report, DOD had obtained information on military personnel language skills through a combination of testing, referred to as the Defense Language Proficiency Test, and through service members voluntarily sharing or “self reporting” information in personnel records. This information, which includes the name of the foreign language and the skill level—as measured on a scale from 0 (no proficiency) to 5 (educated native proficiency)—with respect to speaking, listening, and reading, had been incorporated into the Language Readiness Index. However, DOD had not yet incorporated information about the language skills of DOD civilians and contract linguists in the Language Readiness Index, but planned to do so. We also reported that DOD did not yet have a complete inventory of the regional proficiency skills of all service members or DOD civilians. Instead, DOD only identified and tracked those military members serving in specific occupations requiring a high level of regional proficiency, such as Foreign Area Officers. DOD guidance provided regional proficiency skill level guidelines—measured on a scale from 0 (prenovice) to 5 (expert)—intended to provide DOD components with benchmarks for assessing regional proficiency needs, developing regional proficiency curricula, and assessing DOD-wide regional proficiency capabilities. However, these guidelines did not provide measurable definitions that would allow for testing of particular regional proficiency levels. Unlike language proficiency skill levels, which have been defined and can be measured, DOD had found it difficult to define the elements needed to assess regional proficiency levels because such a definition must take into account knowledge and experience of historical, political, cultural, sociological, economic, and geographic factors across many global regions or specific foreign countries.