Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) implementation and enforcement of disclosure laws requiring certain former DOD employees to report any subsequent employment with certain DOD contractors.

GAO found that: (1) about 6,600 former military officers and civilian employees holding industrial security clearances worked for defense contractors during fiscal years (FY) 1986 and 1987; (2) the disclosure laws exempted about 20 percent of those former mid- and high-level DOD personnel from reporting their defense-related employment, since they did not work with major defense contractors; (3) only 1,450 of the 4,900 nonexempt former employees reported their defense-related employment; (4) DOD could not determine the compliance rate of former employees who did not have security clearances; (5) DOD did not take all of the administrative enforcement actions available to it to enforce former employees' compliance with reporting requirements; (6) DOD reviewed the reports it received and certified them if it did not identify conflicts of interest; (7) most reports generally complied with reporting requirements, although former employees did not always honor DOD requests for additional information; and (8) DOD regulations required former employees to report whether they worked on major defense systems while at DOD and at the defense contractor, but DOD did not provide space on its reporting form for such information.