How the Pentagon could improve the soldier-to-civilian program

SkillBridge — it’s the Defense Department name for a program to help service members, mostly enlisted, transition to civilian life. In examining it, the Government Accountability Office found that DoD doesn’t track program data very well. That means it can’t really tell how effective SkillBridge is or how to improve it. The GAO’s director of defense capabilities and management, Kristy Williams, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin for more details.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin Ms. Williams, good to have you with us.

Kristy Williams Good morning, Tom. It’s good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Tom Temin And is SkillBridge the main program for transitioning or is it just one of several that they have? Because I think given the numbers with SkillBridge, it can’t be the only one.

Kristy Williams Correct, Tom. So, SkillBridge is one of several transition programs that the Department of Defense has for individual service members that are transitioning from military to civilian life. SkillBridge is a voluntary program. The Department of Defense also has some mandatory programs, one being the Transition Assistance Program that provides mandatory transition assistance. But SkillBridge will provide voluntary service to service members of any rank, as you mentioned, enlisted or officer. It gives them the opportunity to gain work experience with civilian organizations commonly referred to as industry partners.

Tom Temin Sure. And the numbers that you well, you were tasked in the NDAA last year with examining this program and you found that the DoD actually fundamentally couldn’t tell how many people had gone through it for several years. So you had to concentrate on just a short data set?

Kristy Williams Correct, Tom. So just to put things into context, when you look at overall numbers, there are about 200,000 service members that transition from their military to civilian life each year. And there is a lot of importance that’s placed on the transitioning of these individuals to ensure that they have the right skills for their post-military success. So when we looked at the SkillBridge program, one of the things that we found, among some other challenges, was that it was really hard for the Department of Defense to know if the program was serving its intended purpose of post-separation employment for these individuals, largely because the data was tracked in an ad hoc manner. And there were variations across the military services.

Tom Temin That would seem to be then a fundamental program management requirement is to measure the outcomes, to know whether the program and the effort put into it and money related thereto is effective.

Kristy Williams Absolutely. So when you look at program performance, having quality performance information is really an important and a fundamental step for decision makers. What that will do is it will help them understand and improve their programs. So specific to SkillBridge, if you look at the collection, the analysis, the reporting of standardized program data, if a department not that it could help them identify any potential shortcomings or challenges with the program, but more importantly, it could help them develop tailored and effective corrective action plans. Bottom line is really to determine if the program is meeting that intended goal again of post-separation employment.

Tom Temin Right. So what did you find they did know? And tell us about the 12,000 sample that you looked at.

Kristy Williams Sure. So part of the mandate we were tasked with looking at data from fiscal years 2019 to 2023. We found that data did not exist for some services and had been tracked inconsistently largely across the board. So we were able to find a common data set across the services and it was for the first two quarters of fiscal year 2024. During that time, we found that almost 12,000 service members across the Department of Defense and for us, that also included the Coast Guard. So we looked at each of the military services to include Space Force and Coast Guard. And we found that, again, almost 12,000 service members across those organizations participated. When you look at a breakdown of those numbers, you’ll see that there was a majority of enlisted. So there was a lot of individuals in the E-4 to E-6 range and Army and Air Force had the highest participation based on the data we were able to track. The challenge was the data was ad hoc and it really varied by service. So some services had standardized collection approaches, while others had to do manual pools, had to pull from one or multiple data sources to provide us with the information.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Kristi Williams. She’s director of defense capabilities and management at the Government Accountability Office. So there’s uneven reporting among the services. And so it’s hard to tell what the real usage is by class or rank, let’s say, of enlisted service or maybe not enlisted service member. But what about the outcomes? Were the services aware of whether people actually had jobs when they did muster out?

Kristy Williams So that was one of the challenges, Tom. So when we spoke with officials across the services, they mentioned that their data collection was ad hoc, largely because there wasn’t a requirement in program guidance that specified for them the types of data that they should collect, and that because of that, the data collection varied from year to year. So bottom line is there were some challenges and really understanding if the program was meeting its intended goals of providing post-separation employment based on the inconsistencies in the variations of the data across time.

Tom Temin And not just post-separation employment, but post-separation employment related to the internships and the training they might have had. That is to say, if they were wanting to be a mechanical engineer somewhere. But in fact their post-military employment was flipping burgers. That doesn’t say the program was a success either.

Kristy Williams Correct. And let me back up a little bit and say when you look at the opportunities that the SkillBridge program will provide to service members, and the goal is really to match civilian opportunities to military job training, provide that experience to enhance an individual’s market ability. If you looked at the SkillBridge website, we’re talking about things across the spectrum of employment, energy, information technology, manufacturing, retail. You can find a wealth of opportunities and these are things like internships, apprenticeships, job training. Now it is limited. The service members can only participate in this program in their last 180 days of service. But the bottom line is to see if the market ability is related to their military job training and if the program has achieved the success that set out to achieve.

Tom Temin So fundamentally, the Defense Department doesn’t know the answers to those questions.

Kristy Williams So, yes, the inconsistent data approaches for tracking does create some challenges for them to fully know if the program is meeting those goals.

Tom Temin And then you therefore had a pretty long list of recommendations, I think about seven.

Kristy Williams Yes, Tom, we did. So if you look at the recommendations, our fundamental high level recommendation was directed to the Department of Defense, and there is a set of SkillBridge guidance. And the guidance didn’t include information on what types of data should be tracked by each of the military services and how that data should be tracked and reported to the military civilian transition office who oversees the SkillBridge program. So our first recommendation was focused on including that information in the guidance. We then had six additional recommendations, one to each of the military services to include Space Force. And then one to the Coast Guard that really specified once the department had a chance to update that guidance that they should then collect and analyze SkillBridge program data and report that data to DoD through the military civilian transition office and really identify shortcomings in any associated corrective action plans that would help them improve the program’s performance.

Tom Temin Is there a mechanism for collecting and gathering and reporting this data? Can you go to say if you’re someone in charge of SkillBridge for your military branch, is there a screen you can call up that says SkillBridge? And there’s the names and there’s the ranks and there’s the jobs and that kind of thing. Do they have the mechanism to actually do this? It’s sounds easy to say, but pretty hard to do.

Kristy Williams So I can’t get into the specifics of each individual service of tracking system. I don’t have the details on that. And what I can tell you, Tom, is that one of the things that we like to do as an agency is really to afford the organizations the opportunity to to build the programs, to build the collection tools around them. Now, I will say SkillBridge has has a pretty robust website. If you look on their website, they track a lot of information to include industry partners and participants in the program. So there are opportunities and there are tools that are available to collect that. I think one of the things that we would like to empower the organizations to do is really build those systems in a manner that will help them most effectively to collect and track the data. At the end of the day, though, some consistency across is helpful, so that DoD’s office that is responsible for overseeing the program has some consistency in the data across the services.

Tom Temin I guess that’s kind of a universal lesson then. If you’re going to establish a program, especially a statutory program, then part of that program establishment is the ways to collect the metrics in an organized way and be able to use them for program evaluation.

Kristy Williams Absolutely. So, you know, having that performance information and having quality data, having a consistent way to track information through all among some key standards and practices that organizations can follow to ensure that their programs are successful, programs are achieving goals and achieving their intended purposes.

Tom Temin And did the Pentagon and the different services say, yeah, Kristy, you’re right?

Kristy Williams Well, they didn’t necessarily say yes Kristy, you’re right, but in terms of the recommendations, yes, DoD did concur with the GAO’s recommendations and plan on taking steps to implement those recommendations moving forward.

Tom Temin Kristy Williams as director of defense capabilities and management at the GAO. Thanks so much for joining me.

Kristy Williams Thank you, Tom. I appreciate you having me.

Tom Temin And we’ll post this interview along with a link to her report at federalnewsnetwork.com/federaldrive. Subscribe to the Federal Drive wherever you get your podcasts.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.