The Military Spouse Education and Career Opportunities Program

The Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy sought assistance from the RAND Corporation to assess whether and how initiatives under the Department of Defense's Spouse Education and Career Opportunities (SECO) program address objectives in supporting the education and employment of military spouses. These initiatives include the My Career Advancement Account Scholarship, career counseling services available through the SECO Call Center, the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, and Department of Defense State Liaison Office efforts. This report recommends a system by which SECO staff can conduct internal monitoring of the portfolio of these efforts as a way to document and track progress of early outcomes, suggest midterm corrections, and lay important groundwork for more in-depth investigations of whether longer-term objectives are being met. It describes the logic of the program, key performance indicators, and the steps in building and utilizing the monitoring system. Internal monitoring is designed to provide constant and continual feedback on the progress of a program, and is typically conducted by program staff. Development of this system involved developing a logic model for the program, using specific criteria to specify structured indicators to measure the goals and objectives outlined in the logic model, detailing guidelines for developing indicator targets and benchmarks, and organizing indicators, targets, and benchmarks into a monitoring matrix. Finally, the report outlines challenges to implementing and maintaining the proposed system and suggests possible solutions.