The services need more training on completing officer evaluations, and leaders must make sure subordinates receive the feedback they need to learn and develop, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office.

“Effectively evaluating the performance of active-duty military officers and supporting officer development are essential to cultivating an officer corps with the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities to lead the military of the future,” the report says. “These decisions carry important national security implications, affecting both the composition of the military and the quality of its current and future leadership.”

Across the services, there are about 215,000 active-duty commissioned officers, according to the report.

The Army’s performance evaluation system aims “to identify the Army’s best performers and those with the greatest potential for promotion,” and officers in grades O-1 through O-5 are rated using a check box that ranges from “excels” to “unsatisfactory,” according to the report.

Of the 11 key practices of officer performance evaluation assessment identified by GAO, the Army fully incorporates seven and partially incorporates four, outperforming the Navy and the Marine Corps. This includes establishing and communicating a clear purpose for the system, aligning performance expectations with organizational goals, evaluating performance based on relevant competencies and conducting performance evaluations in a timely fashion.

Though the Army “provides some performance evaluation-related training,” including through briefings during required courses of instruction, gaps remain. “The Army’s policy for the performance evaluation system does not specify what training on the performance evaluation system is required, when training is required, and who is responsible for providing training,” the report found.

Further, the Army has incorporated and implemented some key practices into its performance evaluation system, but officers would benefit from timely, actionable feedback. “The Army has established some limited time frames for the provision of performance feedback to some officer grades, but it has not required that all officer grades receive performance feedback or that feedback be provided following a performance evaluation,” the report found. “Moreover, it does not have a mechanism to help ensure that feedback occurs after a performance evaluation.”

In the report, the GAO makes 20 recommendations across the services, including five to the Army.

The report suggests that the Army secretary “develop a plan” for ongoing training of all officers on the Army’s performance evaluation system and “revise the Army’s performance evaluation system to require … performance feedback to all officers at key points in the process,” among other recommendations. 

Proper performance evaluation and promotion selection for officers “is critical for the future of the department’s leadership,” according to the report.

“While the military services have variously updated performance evaluation system policies and studied aspects of their evaluation systems, opportunities to strengthen these efforts exist,” the report found. “By developing plans to regularly evaluate their officer performance evaluation systems, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force will achieve better insight into whether their systems are operating effectively and in a manner that achieves intended results.”

Read the full report here.