The Government Accountability Office has recommended that the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security set clear expectations for oversight and come up with tools that can help improve accountability for specific mission areas.
The recommendations were made after GAO found that the office at the Department of Defense failed to define key terms critical to oversight and improve business rules for governance bodies.
The DOD office did not develop tools to evaluate the effectiveness of the security and intelligence enterprises.
“Without taking further actions, the office cannot fully assess the extent to which the enterprises are meeting the objectives of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and the 2020 Defense Intelligence Strategy,” the GAO report reads.
GAO also noted that since 2017, the office has assumed new responsibilities across the areas of identity intelligence, law enforcement, personnel vetting and artificial intelligence and has introduced organizational changes to align with those responsibilities.
The office also uses policy development, governance bodies and inspections, among other mechanisms, to facilitate oversight of the defense security and intelligence enterprises, according to the congressional watchdog.
