GAO: Jury still out on DoD relocation pilot tests

The Defense Department has yet to show that pilot programs designed to improve relocation services for employees transferred to new locations are working better than the department's traditional system for personal property moves, the General Accounting Office concludes in two new reports.

The Pentagon spends about $3 billion per year on moving military service members and their families. That total includes transportation, storage and management of household furniture, goods and baggage. But the agency has a long history of poor service in military moves. Service members complain of lost and damaged property, slow claims reimbursement and a frustrating moving system that requires several trips to many different offices.

To improve on its record, DoD has launched several pilot programs that test different approaches to military moves. The Army, Navy and Military Traffic Management Command (MTMC) have separate pilot projects underway and DoD is considering starting a fourth test program. The problem, according to GAO, is that DoD can't yet accurately analyze the data from these pilots to discover what works and what doesn't.

"Thus far, DoD has not decided how many approaches it will ultimately test and has not developed evaluation plans that will yield accurate and credible data," said one report, "Defense Transportation: The Army's Hunter Pilot Project Is Inconclusive but Provides Lessons Learned" (NSIAD-99-129). Both the Army and Navy recommend that their pilot programs be adopted agency-wide. But after reviewing those two pilot programs, GAO determined that data was not sufficient to conclude that the programs were more effective than the current relocation system.

The Army conducted its pilot at the Hunter Army Airfield, in Savannah, Ga. Under the experiment, relocation services were contracted out to a private company. The contractor provided point-to-point move management, personal move counseling, direct claims settlement and assistance in buying and selling a home.

According to the Army, customer satisfaction increased by 11 percent, but GAO found that service members were surveyed multiple times by different sources, thereby rendering the data inconclusive. But other survey data did indicate that service members were more satisfied with the pilot than with the traditional system, GAO acknowledged.

The Navy pilot program, which gave service members a choice of moving themselves or of using the current program, differs from the other pilots because it is not a replacement but an alternative to the current system. The Navy pilot limits carrier selection to small businesses and allows service members to use the government charge card to pay.

DoD should test the Navy pilot against the other pilot programs and should work on a more comprehensive approach to evaluating its personal property test programs, GAO said in its other report on the topic, "Defense Transportation: Plan Needed for Evaluating the Navy Personal Property Pilot" (NSIAD-99-138).