[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/POLITICS/11/11/obama.iraq/art.obamairaq.ap.jpg caption="Barack Obama meets with U.S. Army personnel in Basra, Iraq, on July 21."]WASHINGTON (CNN) - The Defense Department will give president-elect Barack Obama's transition team a list of "key decision" that the new administration will face during the first three months of its administration, a Pentagon spokesman said.
The list of issues will be "non-prescriptive," in that it will not be pressing a policy per se, but will simply lay out decisions the new team is going to need to deal with in the first 90 days, according to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
The Pentagon has not spelled out what is on the list, but some elements such as upcoming NATO meetings and preparing a new defense budget to submit to Congress are long-expected items, according to department officials.
In addition, Sec. Gates had surveyed Pentagon staff to see who would be willing to stay on past inaugration day. A high percentage of current employees have said they are willing, Whitman said, although he would not say how many that would be.
On Wednesday, the president-elect's office announced that former Deputy Secretary of Defense John White and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy will lead Obama's Department of Defense transition team. Flournoy is currently president of the Center for a New American Security policy group and White teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School.
The agency review team will be doing a "top to bottom" review, according to Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro. The team will be in place at the Pentagon by the end of the week in an effort to get "information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions prior to the inaugration," the Obama transition office explained in a statement announcing the review teams.