GAO offers Marine Corps recommendations

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued three recommendations to the Marine Corps regarding the branch’s efforts to track training funds and link them to mission readiness.

The GAO analysis stemmed from a congressional report maintaining the Corps’ budget estimates haven’t included sufficient detail for Congress to determine what benefits funding increases the branch has been requesting would bring.

In its breakdown, the GAO noted the Marine Corps cannot fully track all training funds through the budget cycle, partly because it has not established the consistent use of the Marine Corps Programming Code (MCPC) and the Special Interest Code (SIC). The Marine Corps uses MCPCs to program funds, but GAO found when the Marine Corps spends those funds, it uses a different set of fiscal codes.

While the GAO acknowledged the Marine Corps uses SICs to track funds associated with training exercises, the agency determined units do not use SICs consistently. Without the ability to track unit-level training funds through the budget cycle, the Marine Corps lacks readily available data to assess whether funds were obligated consistent with their programmed intent and to adequately forecast and defend budget requests for training.

Based on its evaluation, the GAO is recommending the Marine Corps tracks training funds through the budget cycle, designates a single entity to oversee establishment of a process linking resources to readiness and conducts an assessment of Cost to Run a MEF (C2RAM).