Sustaining Service Members and Their Families

"The Department of Defense (DoD) routinely seeks ways to become more efficient and reduce costs. Each military service provides its members and their families with a wide range of services supported by resources that are paid for using congressionally appropriated funding (APF), nonappropriated funding (NAF), or a combination thereof. DoD was interested in determining whether any administrative NAF activities could be consolidated and, if so, whether consolidation would save costs. DoD created a task force to explore these issues and identified several areas for improvement, ranging from contracting to information technology. DoD Military Community and Family Policy asked the RAND National Defense Research Institute to review the work of the task force and provide an independent assessment of specific recommendations. In collaboration with the sponsor, RAND provided intensive analysis of recommendations in two areas for improvement that the task force identified. Researchers determined that application of consolidation could achieve improvement and savings in some NAF accounting activities, but that there is considerably less potential in the case of NAF employee benefits" --