According to DOD, a relocatable facility is a building designed to be readily moved, erected, disassembled, stored, and reused. In classifying buildings as relocatable, the estimated costs for average building disassembly, repackaging, and nonrecoverable building components, including typical foundations, may not exceed 20 percent of the building acquisition cost. DOD has stated that these facilities may be used when they constitute the most feasible and economical means of satisfying an interim facility requirement, which they have defined as a short-term, normally 3 years or less, requirement due to transitory peak military missions, deployments, military contingency operations, disaster relief; or urgent requirements, pending approval and construction of facilities through normal military construction programs. Such facilities can consist of a single trailer, or a set of trailers assembled together to form a larger, modular-type structure. The military services acquire relocatable facilities by either buying or leasing them, depending on the results of an economic analysis to determine the most economical approach. In response to OSD’s request for data on the military services’ use of relocatable facilities over the past 5 years, the services reported that they have bought or leased over 4,000 relocatable facilities and have spent about $1.5 billion to acquire them. According to these data, the Army and the Marine Corps have relied on relocatable facilities the most, reporting to OSD that they have about 2,800 and 800 of these facilities respectively. The Navy and the Air Force reported to OSD that they have about 400 and 200 relocatables respectively. Typically, the military services are using relocatable facilities as barracks, administrative offices, medical facilities, dining halls, and equipment maintenance facilities. Some relocatable facilities we saw during our installation visits are shown in figure 1. The Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment issues guidance on relocatable facilities. DOD last issued guidance on relocatable buildings in 1988. According to that guidance, unlike other nonpermanent buildings, relocatable facilities are to be accounted for as personal property rather than real property, unless these facilities are authorized for procurement using construction procedures, in which case the buildings should be accounted for as real property. Additionally, the guidance states that in classifying a building as relocatable, it must meet a requirement known as the “20 percent rule.” This rule generally means the estimated costs for disassembling the building and repackaging it for storage or reuse, among other cost considerations, may not exceed 20 percent of the cost to acquire the facility. Generally, relocatable facilities are acquired as personal property using procurement or operation and maintenance appropriations. If other buildings do not meet the 20 percent rule, they are acquired as real property with military construction or with operation and maintenance appropriations. In addition to DOD’s guidance, each of the military services have also developed specific guidance to govern the management, acquisition, and disposition of relocatable facilities. For example, to provide more specific guidance on funding relocatables, the Army has issued its own amplifying guidance. This guidance follows DOD Instruction 4165.56 that states that relocatable buildings procured and accounted for in a particular manner are considered personal property. The Army used the funding limits for procurement of equipment when it outlined the funds to be used for relocatable facility acquisition in both an Army regulation and interim policy for relocatable buildings. If the cost to buy or lease relocatables is under $250,000, the Army is to use funds from its Operation and Maintenance appropriations, however if the cost is $250,000 or more, it is to use funds from its Other Procurement, Army, appropriation. In contrast, if the Army is acquiring other buildings, meaning real property, it generally uses funds from its Military Construction appropriations for projects over $750,000. In addition to the committee interest that led to our review, other congressional committees have previously expressed interest in DOD’s use of relocatable facilities, specifically within the Department of the Army. For example: In 2005, the Senate Armed Services Committee expressed concern that the Army had not included funds to sustain or replace trailers with permanent facilities, among other issues. Also in 2005, the House Armed Services Committee noted that it was troubled by the Army’s reliance on temporary facilities to support its modularity initiative and the Army’s failure to budget for permanent construction to replace temporary facilities. The House Armed Services Committee further directed the Army to report on several issues related to the use and replacement of temporary facilities, and the Army provided its report in March 2006. More recently, the House Armed Services Committee directed OSD to submit to the defense committees by March 1, 2009, the department’s plan to replace relocatable buildings with permanent facilities by fiscal year 2015. OSD officials told us they planned on providing these committees with this report as well as the report directed by the Senate Armed Services Committee that was due in July 2008, although they had not yet done so as of May 2009. To develop these reports, OSD requested that the military services provide data, and the services generally did the following in response to OSD’s data request: Army headquarters officials stated that the Army updated its information on relocatable facilities in March 2008 by requesting data from its installations. Officials noted that these data were compared to data in the Army’s real property database to supplement its completeness. The Army provided its data to OSD in the summer of 2008. Navy headquarters officials stated that the Navy used its database on facilities to obtain information on the number of relocatable facilities it is using. The Navy then provided these data to each of its 13 regions to review and supplement with data not contained in the database. The Navy provided its data to OSD during the summer of 2008. Marine Corps headquarters requested data from its major commands, citing that it was the responsibility of its commands to obtain data on relocatable facility use. The Marine Corps provided its data to OSD in the fall of 2008. Air Force headquarters requested the civil engineer for each of its major commands, who in turn tasked the civil engineer for each Air Force installation, to provide data on relocatable facility use. The Air Force provided its data to OSD in the summer of 2008. Although military services are relying on relocatable facilities to meet shortages in their physical infrastructure needs, OSD lacks oversight over how many of these facilities are being used on defense installations and how much DOD has spent on such facilities. Neither OSD nor the services have a complete or accurate accounting of the number or cost of relocatable facilities because OSD has not issued clear guidance on how the military services should define relocatable facilities, and it lacks a mechanism for collecting and maintaining consistent use and cost data across the services. OSD does not have accurate and complete data on the number of relocatable facilities that the services are using to meet current shortages in their physical infrastructure needs. Although the military services recently reported to OSD that they have bought or leased over 4,000 relocatable facilities over a 5-year period, our assessment of the data uncovered many discrepancies. At six of the seven installations we visited, including locations representing each of the military services, we found discrepancies between the number of relocatable facilities located on those installations and the number that the service headquarters had reported to OSD. For instance: At Fort Bliss, Texas, officials showed us over 100 relocatable facilities located on the installation that were not included in Army’s data provided to OSD on relocatable facilities. Army headquarters did not know about these facilities until shortly prior to our visit. At Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, officials told us that the installation had about 170 relocatable facilities, which was about 80 more than Marine Corps headquarters had reported to OSD. Marine Corps headquarters officials told us they had no way to reconcile the discrepancies and suggested we ask the Marine Corps Forces Command, which was tasked to collect inventory data on relocatable facilities for its installations. Those officials stated that there is a lot of subjectivity in the definitions of relocatable facilities, which is contributing to data discrepancies. At Camp Pendleton, California, officials told us they only had 2 relocatable facilities; however, Marine Corps headquarters reported to OSD that the installation had a total of 330 relocatables and other nonpermanent facilities. Marine Corps headquarters officials told us there is confusion as to how many relocatable facilities are actually at Camp Pendleton. Based on our audit work, we believe there are several factors contributing to the data discrepancies. First, Marine Corps headquarters included both relocatable facilities as well as other nonpermanent facilities in their numbers in response to OSD’s data request. Second, Marine Corps headquarters also included future requirements for these facilities at Camp Pendleton even before obtaining the relocatable facilities. Third, Camp Pendleton officials told us they changed the property classification on their relocatable facilities from personal property to real property based on communications from Marine Corps headquarters officials. Camp Pendleton officials told us they properly classified these facilities although Marine Corps headquarters officials told us the reclassification was not correct. As of April 2009, Camp Pendleton officials told us their data had not changed. At Fort Hood, Texas, we found over 25 facilities that appeared to us to be relocatable facilities but were not accounted for as such. After our review of the installation’s facility records, Fort Hood officials agreed that the facilities we had questioned should have been included in its count of relocatable facilities. We found other instances of data discrepancies at two other installations we visited. Although these discrepancies were minor, they nonetheless still represent an inaccurate count. At Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Virginia, officials told us that they had three fewer relocatable facilities than the data reported to OSD showed.