The Army isn't making the most of its virtual training devices, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The GAO audit sought to gauge the Army's progress on an effort that started in 2010, to modify training priorities and goals. The Army is currently implementing five initiatives intended to further define training requirements and resources, but the results of those initiatives won't be realized any sooner than fiscal 2017.
According to the report, GAO identified nine training priorities, many with accompanying Army-wide goals. The Army is making progress toward meeting the goals, GAO found.
Read the full report
However, the Army still has gaps in its efforts to integrate virtual training devices into its operational training. Specifically, GAO noted:
- Front-end analysis: The Army has been waiting for devices to be fielded before calculating expected usage. That should be done during the planning stage, as it is one of the factors that should be used to determine the mix of live and virtual training, GAO said.
- Effectiveness analysis: The Army does not define how the effectiveness of virtual training devices should be measured, although it does assign responsibility for analyzing effectiveness, GAO said. The oversight agency examined seven analyses of virtual training devices and found that the objectives and approaches used differed from one to the next.
- Linkage with training strategies: While Army regulations require training developers to incorporate virtual training devices into their strategies, the degree to which that has been done varies. A sample of training strategies that GAO reviewed revealed that none of them described how virtual training devices could be used to accomplish training tasks.
The Army largely concurred with GAO’s findings, according to the report.
