Military Moves, Measured: Why GAO’s Review of DOD’s Relocation Reforms Matters to Federal Contractors

The Government Accountability Office’s report, MILITARY MOVES: DOD Needs Better Information to Effectively Oversee Relocation Program Reforms (GAO-25-107771, Sept. 2025), led by Alissa H. Czyz and colleagues, is a case study in how large, complex federal service transitions can falter when capacity, performance, and cost intelligence are incomplete. For federal government contractors—prime and sub alike—the findings offer a timely blueprint for de-risking major program transitions and for aligning proposal strategies, data-sharing, and subcontractor incentives with government oversight needs.

GAO recounts DOD’s attempt to centralize the Defense Personal Property Program’s household-goods moves under the single-manager Global Household Goods Contract (GHC), awarded in 2021 and launched in limited form in 2024. Despite phased ramp-up, DOD confronted repeated missed pickups and deliveries as volume increased, culminating in the Secretary of Defense forming a PCS Joint Task Force in May 2025 and terminating the GHC in June 2025. The report’s central diagnosis is not simply “underperformance,” but the absence of sufficiently comprehensive, verifiable information about industry capacity, service delivery, and comparative costs—information that is essential to govern a nationwide logistics network that executes roughly 300,000 shipments annually.

For contractors, the capacity narrative is pivotal. GAO found that the government could not reliably validate the contractor’s claimed network capacity; the contractor reported an ability to handle roughly 200,000 shipments per year yet struggled with a fraction of that during implementation. This is a cautionary tale about the difference between nominal capacity and operationally available capacity under real-world incentive structures. GAO notes industry concerns that subcontract compensation under the GHC was less competitive than prevailing ToS rates—a price-signal problem that weakens network participation precisely when surge elasticity is needed. Contractors proposing national service transformations should expect agencies to press for auditable, periodically verified capacity evidence and should design pricing and subcontractor engagement models that can withstand comparative market tests.

Performance oversight reveals a second lesson: instrumentation gaps reduce the fidelity of KPI-driven governance. GAO observes that customer satisfaction surveys were not triggered when stages failed to occur (e.g., when pickups were never performed and tasks were reverted to the legacy channel). The result: systematic blind spots in customer experience data and reduced diagnostic power for corrective action. Contractors should anticipate more stringent, failure-aware telemetry requirements and should proactively offer instrumented workflows that capture events, non-events, and handoffs across government and contractor IT systems—especially when multiple platforms must remain synchronized for scheduling and quality assurance.

Third, costs. GAO describes unplanned transition-IT expenses beyond initial estimates and up-front “management fees” paid on task orders that were later terminated, with the department seeking reimbursement. Beyond the immediate accounting, the finding signals a renewed push for transparent cost comparators between legacy and new models. Contractors should be prepared to supply apples-to-apples cost mappings—including accessorials, management fees, and risk premia—to help agencies evaluate whether transformation is cost-effective at scale. Expect stronger contract language on recoverability of fees when work is not performed and on the conditions for price adjustments in volatile labor and freight markets.

Finally, regulatory friction mattered. The report highlights uncertainty in applying McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act requirements across multi-jurisdiction moves and complex labor stacks—issues that particularly burden small movers. In future competitions, contractors that convert these ambiguities into clear compliance playbooks and scalable operating procedures will be more credible partners.

In sum, GAO’s single recommendation—that DOD obtain comprehensive information on capacity, performance, and costs going forward—is also a roadmap for industry. Winning and performing under large, reform-oriented contracts will increasingly hinge on verifiable capacity models, failure-aware performance telemetry, transparent cost frameworks, and practical compliance architectures that make the agency’s oversight job easier. For federal contractors, the message is clear: data is not paperwork—it is the product.

Disclaimer: This summary is for general information only and does not constitute legal, accounting, or procurement advice. Readers should consult the official GAO report and qualified counsel before making decisions based on these findings. Accuracy is believed reliable as of publication but not guaranteed.