Research for Quality

A primary tasking for this study was to build a permanent database integrating Navy recruiting, training, and manpower/personnel data which would follow recruits from street to fleet and use variables designed to capture the kinds of information needed by decision-makers. This paper summarizes our analyses and briefly describes the database. It begins with the different analyses we did of the bootcamp period, goes on to a discussion of rating attainment, and finishes with our analyses of trained sailors in the fleet. Findings and recommendations include coding separation reasons more consistently, revising the CNET monthly bootcamp attrition report, more careful screening of sailors with nonacademic course failures who are sent to the fleet, and supporting initiatives to provide a second chance at school for sailors who fail an A-school course.

This paper describes two federal programs that could facilitate the Navy's efforts to recruit pretrained people as well as benefit general recruiting efforts from community colleges: the School-to-Work Opportunities Act and the Tech Prep Act. It offers recommendations on how to apply these programs specifically to the Navy, in terms of the types of targeted fields of study and activities for active participation that are vital components of these federal programs. It also recommends forming partnerships to create tailor-made courses of study around training curricula that have significant civilian overlap, which could save significant training costs and enhance Navy's recruiting efforts at community colleges.

Despite shrinking budgets, the U.S. military is struggling to simultaneously fund force levels, current operations, and an aggressive modernization program. Many believe the military can fund its recapitalization program if cost efficiencies can be achieved from within infrastructure budgets. One way to reduce infrastructure costs is through competition, outsourcing, and privatization. Whether the in-house (or organic) team or the private team wins the contract, the government benefits because the competition lowers costs and increases productivity. This paper examines the maintenance of the Navy's TA-4Js. The value of this analysis is that it allows us to look at a long series of performance and cost data, both for in-house and contractor maintenance. Because we have data on three contractors, we can also examine the effect of changing contractors.

The U.S. Navy Surgeon General tasked the Center for Naval Analyses to evaluate the TRICARE demonstration project. This demonstration is an attempt to coordinate health care for the medical-eligible military population of 300,000 in the Tidewater area of Virginia. When TRICARE matures, it will integrate a series of military treatment facilities, a preferred provider network, and a health maintenance organization, under joint service management. The evaluation consists of a comparison of several measures of effectiveness, before and after TRICARE implementation. We will be comparing Tidewater with two other regions: southern California, which is under CRI (a managed care program), and North Carolina, which is under standard CHAMPUS. The evaluation will take about three years to complete. In the meantime, we have collected baseline data for Tidewater and the comparison sites. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of the baseline analysis of access to, and satisfaction with, health care during the pre-implementation period. This is not an evaluation of TRICARE. The results will be helpful in interpreting subsequent changes in the components of the program after TRICARE implementation.