Military personnel and health records face two problems at once: improper disclosure and slow release to people seeking them. A GAO report published and publicly released October 16 identifies weaknesses in staffing and the systems used to process requests.
What the review found
The military services reported 49 breaches during fiscal years 2021–2025. GAO's Fast Facts says improper releases affected more than 1,000 service members.
GAO also submitted 26 covert requests for records. Of the 18 processed requests, one was improperly released without redacting personally identifiable information. Those are the test's reported results; they do not establish a breach rate for all military records requests.
During the review, the Navy had one employee processing Freedom of Information Act requests. Officials linked staffing limitations to an increase in average processing time from 1.6 to 55.5 days. That is a finding from the reviewed period, not a current waiting-time promise.
Health records have a separate systems problem
GAO says Defense Health Agency staff must find records across multiple systems and review them for information requiring redaction. Officials described complex workflows and system problems; scanned or lengthy records can make redaction especially cumbersome.
The report says DOD had not assessed its current framework and systems for processing health-record requests to identify opportunities to streamline them.
Five recommendations to follow
Four recommendations address workforce planning for personnel-record processing across the services. A fifth seeks assessment of the health-record request framework and systems as part of an agency study.
All five were marked open when read October 17. DOD generally concurred, according to GAO. Concurrence does not establish implementation, and these aggregate findings cannot tell an individual whether their own information was disclosed.