Samantha E Dinicola

The U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) must evaluate whether military officers being considered for appointments, promotions, or retirements meet an exemplary conduct standard. The authors of this report analyze DoD and Service policies and processes for tracking and reporting adverse and other unfavorable information about military officers and identify opportunities to better align Senate, DoD, and Service expectations, policies, and processes.

This report documents the constraints the U. S. Air Force must operate under in comparison with alternative compensation and benefit structures found in other federal agencies and the private sector. It provides recommendations for actions the Air Force can take to improve the competitiveness of its compensation and benefits packages for select hard-to-fill and mission critical occupations.

The federal government is working to enable simple and strategic hiring practices. Toward this end, the authors identified best practices for recruiting, hiring, and compensation in 41 federal demonstration projects and alternative personnel systems that began between January 2008 and May 2019. These best practices offer solutions for agencies seeking to modernize and refine current personnel programs.

Section 1652 of the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act tasks the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) to perform a zero-based review (ZBR)--a detailed review rather than a simple comparison with previous size or budget--of its cybersecurity and information technology workforces. The ZBR process described in this report constitutes a transparent, repeatable process with which DoD can conduct ZBRs across the DoD cyber enterprise.

Researchers conducted interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders of the U. S. Air Force's Task Force True North (TFTN) initiatives. Thematic analysis of the data collected allowed the team to identify key findings related to each initiative and to TFTN as a whole. The authors offer recommendations designed to help each of the initiatives reach its full potential to improve airmen resilience and well-being.

The Air Force's ability to accomplish national security goals relies heavily on research advances in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. In this context RAND researchers explored the existing academic and professional literature to gain insights into how organizations such as the Air Force should manage, support, and organize their current civilian STEM workerforce to best leverage talent and maximize performance.