The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction on July 31 released a review of the Legacy Afghanistan research and development program and the Afghanistan Source Operations Management training and mentoring program — programs that cost the Department of Defense a total of $457.7 million. The results of this investment, however, were not promising.
With no indication of improvement to the Afghanistan intelligence operations, the two programs did not achieve their pre-determined objectives. Although a complete and accurate review of the two programs and their successes could not be determined due to a lack of complete training records, performance metrics, and complete reliance on contractor-provided data, SIGAR examined what was available.
The examination of the Legacy program revealed poor results. The findings include:
- Only 10 of the 24 police intelligence students training to become Ministry of the Interior trainers completed the nine courses needed although 14 of the students completed one to eight courses;
- Of the four Afghan National Army student trainers looking to become a Ministry of the Defense trainer, zero completed any more than four of the six courses needed, but all passed at least three;
- Only one of the six Afghan National Army students looking to become a Ministry of Defense instructor completed any of the four courses required.
Measuring the ASOM capability and independence of intelligence training was done through the use of an aspect ratio score scaling from zero to five. A score above a 4.0 meant the site was ready to transition to the Afghan government; scores above a 3.5 carried a few risks; and anything lower than a 3.5 were not ready to transition. Of the 111 intelligence sites, reports from 2013 revealed that only 47 were found to have ratio scores above a 3.5. Forty-five sites had scores below a 3.5 but were transitioned with plans to address any deficiencies, and 10 were determined to be incapable of self-assessment.
In all, only 47 percent of the training and mentoring sites were ready to fully transfer to the Afghan government at the end of the programs. The other 66 percent were either transferred with various levels of capability or not transitioned at all.
In addition, Imperatis, the contractor tasked with overseeing and training students, failed to monitor their subcontractor’s costs, according to the report. This failure led to the subcontractor to begin incurring costs before the contracts were officially awarded, resulting in the United States government paying more than legally required.
SIGAR made two recommendations for going forward. One recommendation included reviewing all awards and oversight of the two programs to identify any areas that could be adjusted to provide better oversight control and performance measurements for future research and development contracts. The second recommendation was to review the ongoing intelligence training and mentoring contracts while also incorporating measurements and verification of contractor performances and outcomes. The Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy agreed with both recommendations.
For more information, or to read the full report go here.
Rachael Kalinyak is an editorial intern with Network Solutions.
