United States General Accounting Office 

GAO Report to Congressional Requesters 

September 2003 HUMAN CAPITAL 

Insights for U.S. 

Agencies from Other 

Countries’ Succession 

Planning and 

Management 

Initiatives 

GAO-03-914


a
Highlights of GAO-03-914, a report to 

congressional requesters 

Leading public organizations here 

and abroad recognize that a more 

strategic approach to human 

capital management is essential for 

change initiatives that are intended 

to transform their cultures. To that 

end, organizations are looking for 

ways to identify and develop the 

leaders, managers, and workforce 

necessary to face the array of 

challenges that will confront 

government in the 21st 

century. 

GAO conducted this study to 

identify how agencies in four 

countries—Australia, Canada, New 

Zealand, and the United Kingdom— 

are adopting a more strategic 

approach to managing the 

succession of senior executives 

and other public sector employees 

with critical skills. These agencies’ 

experiences may provide insights 

to executive branch agencies as 

they undertake their own 

succession planning and 

management initiatives. 

GAO identified the examples 

described in this report through 

discussions with officials from 

central human capital agencies, 

national audit offices, and agencies 

in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, 

and the United Kingdom, and a 

screening survey sent to senior 

human capital officials at selected 

agencies. 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-914. 

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact J. Christopher 

Mihm at (202) 512-6806 or mihmj@gao.gov. 

September 2003 

HUMAN CAPITAL 

Insights for U.S. Agencies from Other 

Countries’ Succession Planning and 

Management Initiatives 

Leading organizations engage in broad, integrated succession planning and 

management efforts that focus on strengthening both current and future 

organizational capacity. As part of this approach, these organizations identify, 

develop, and select their human capital to ensure that successors are the right 

people, with the right skills, at the right time for leadership and other key 

positions. To this end, agencies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the 

United Kingdom are implementing succession planning and management 

initiatives that are designed to protect and enhance organizational capacity. 

Collectively, these agencies’ initiatives demonstrated the practices shown 

below. 

Selected Practices Used by Agencies in Other Countries to Manage Succession 

• Receive active support of top leadership. Top leadership actively participates 

in, regularly uses, and ensures the needed financial and staff resources for key 

succession planning and management initiatives. aland’s 

State Services Commissioner developed, with the assistance of a group of six 

agency chief executives who met regularly over a period of 2 years, a new 

governmentwide senior leadership and management development strategy. 

• Link to strategic planning. To focus on both current and future needs and to 

provide leaders with a broader perspective, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s 

succession planning and management initiative figures prominently in the 

agency’s multiyear human capital plan and provides top leaders with an 

agencywide perspective when making decisions. 

• Identify talent from multiple organizational levels, early in careers, or with 

critical skills. For example, the United Kingdom’s Fast Stream program 

specifically targets high-potential individuals early in their civil service careers as 

well as those recently graduated from college with the aim of providing them with 

experiences and training linked to strengthening specific competencies required 

for admission to the Senior Civil Service. 

• Emphasize developmental assignments in addition to formal training. 

Initiatives emphasize developmental assignments in addition to formal training to 

strengthen high-potential employees’ skills and broaden their experience. For 

example, Canada’s Accelerated Executive Development Program temporarily 

assigns executives to work in unfamiliar roles or subject areas, and in different 

agencies. 

• Address specific human capital challenges, such as diversity, leadership 

capacity, and retention. For example, the United Kingdom created a centralized 

program that targets minorities with the potential to join the Senior Civil Service. 

To help retain high-potential employees, Canada’s Office of the Auditor General 

provides comprehensive developmental opportunities. 

• Facilitate broader transformation efforts. To find individuals to champion recent 

changes in how it delivers services and interacts with stakeholders, the Family 

Court of Australia identifies and prepares future leaders who will have the skills 

and experiences to help the organization successfully adapt to agency 

transformation. 

For example, New Ze
Contents


Letter 1 

Results in Brief 3 

Background 6 

Other Countries’ Selected Practices to Manage Succession 8 

Concluding Observations 20 

Agency Comments 21 

Appendix 

Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and Methodology 

Figure Figure 1: Section of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s 

“Succession Room” 

Abbreviations 

AEXDP Accelerated Executive Development Program (Canada)


FCA Family Court of Australia 


OAG Office of the Auditor General (Canada)


OPM Office of Personnel Management 


OPS Ontario Public Service


RCMP Royal Canadian Mounted Police


SES Senior Executive Service


This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the 

United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further 

permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or 

other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to 

reproduce this material separately. 

Page i GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 

23 

12 
Page ii GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
Page 1 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 

A

United States General Accounting Office 

Washington, D.C. 20548 

September 15, 2003 


The Honorable Jo Ann Davis


Chairwoman


Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization


Committee on Government Reform


House of Representatives


The Honorable George V. Voinovich


Chairman


Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal 

Workforce, and the District of Columbia 

Committee on Governmental Affairs 

United States Senate 

Leading public organizations here and abroad recognize that a more 

strategic approach to managing human capital should be the centerpiece of 

any serious change management initiative to transform the cultures of 

government agencies. Such organizations recognize that they need both 

senior leaders who are drivers of continuous improvement and who 

stimulate and support efforts to integrate human capital approaches with 

organizational goals, as well as a dynamic, results-oriented workforce with 

the requisite talents, knowledge, and skills to ensure that they are equipped 

to achieve organizational missions.1 Leading organizations are looking for 

ways to identify and develop the leaders, managers, and workforce 

necessary to face the array of challenges that will confront government in 

the 21st century. 

We are seeing increased attention to strategic human capital management 

and a real and growing momentum for change. The Congress required 

agencies in the federal government to establish a chief human capital 

officer in legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security 

enacted in November 2002.

2 One of the officer’s functions is to align the 

agency’s human capital policies and programs with organizational mission, 

strategic goals, and performance outcomes. We have reported that some 

U.S. agencies have begun to take steps to more closely integrate their 

1

U.S. General Accounting Office, High-Risk Series: Strategic Human Capital Management, 

GAO-03-120 (Washington, D.C.: January 2003). 

2

Title XIII of Pub. L. 107-296, Nov. 25, 2002, Chief Human Capital Officers Act of 2002. 

Page 1 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
human capital and strategic planning processes and hold both human 

capital professionals and operational managers accountable for 

accomplishing organizational missions and program goals.3 More recently, 

the Office of Management and Budget revised Circular A-11 to require that 

federal agencies’ fiscal year 2005 budget submissions as well as their 

annual performance plans prepared under the Government Performance 

and Results Act identify specific activities such as training, development, 

and staffing that agencies plan to take to ensure leadership continuity. In 

addition, as part of the Administration’s efforts to implement the 

President’s Management Agenda, the Office of Personnel Management 

(OPM) set the goal that continuity of leadership and knowledge is assured 

through succession planning and professional development programs in 

25 percent of all federal agencies by July 2004. OPM also identified the 

need for agencies to reduce any current or future skill gaps in mission 

critical occupations and leadership positions. 

We previously reported that other countries have faced challenges in 

managing their human capital and, in particular, managing individual 

performance.4 In addition, other countries face a variety of successionrelated challenges. For example, Canada faces a public service workforce 

with about 80 percent of both its executives and executive feeder groups 

eligible to retire by the end of the decade. The United Kingdom faces the 

challenge of increasing the representation of ethnic minorities among its 

senior executives and has established a goal of doubling the percentage of 

minority representation from 1.6 percent in 1998 to 3.2 percent by 2005. 

New Zealand found that past arrangements for the governmentwide 

development of its senior leaders have not worked, resulting in a shortage 

of fully prepared candidates for public service leadership positions. To 

address this shortage, the government has recently launched a new 

strategic senior leadership and management development initiative. 

Finally, Australia’s central federal human capital agency recently reported 

on the changing career expectations among employees and the possible 

attrition of experienced high-potential employees as two successionrelated challenges to government performance in the future. 

3

U.S. General Accounting Office, Human Capital: Selected Agency Actions to Integrate 

Human Capital Approaches to Attain Mission Results, GAO-03-446 (Washington, D.C.: 

Apr. 11, 2003). 

4

U.S. General Accounting Office, Results-Oriented Cultures: Insights for U.S. Agencies 

from Other Countries’ Performance Management Initiatives, GAO-02-862 (Washington, 

D.C.: Aug. 2, 2002). 

Page 2 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
At your request, this report identifies how agencies in four countries— 

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—and the 

Canadian Province of Ontario are adopting a more strategic approach to 

managing the succession of senior executives and other public sector 

employees with critical skills. To identify these practices, we reviewed the 

literature associated with succession planning and management; found 

examples illustrating these practices through the results of a screening 

survey; analyzed written documentation; and interviewed cognizant 

officials about the identified examples. See appendix I for additional 

information on our objective, scope, and methodology. 

Results in Brief	 Leading organizations engage in broad, integrated succession planning and 

management efforts that focus on strengthening both current and future 

organizational capacity. As part of this approach, these organizations 

identify, develop, and select their human capital to ensure an ongoing 

supply of successors who are the right people, with the right skills, at the 

right time for leadership and other key positions. Agencies in Australia, 

Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom are implementing 

succession planning and management initiatives that reflect this broader 

focus on building organizational capacity. 

While each initiative reflects its specific organizational structure, culture, 

and priorities, collectively we found that agencies in these countries use 

the succession planning and management practices to protect and enhance 

the organization’s capacity. Their experiences may provide insights to U.S. 

executive branch agencies as they undertake their own initiatives in this 

area. 

Succession planning and management initiatives 

· receive active support of top leadership; 

· link to strategic planning; 

· 	identify talent from multiple organizational levels, early in careers, or with 

critical skills; 

· emphasize developmental assignments in addition to formal training; 

· 	address specific human capital challenges, such as diversity, leadership 

capacity, and retention; and 

· facilitate broader transformation efforts. 

Page 3 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
First, to show their support for succession planning and management, 

agencies’ top leadership actively participate in, regularly use, and ensure 

the needed financial and staff resources for these initiatives. For example, 

New Zealand’s State Services Commissioner developed, with the assistance 

of a group of six agency chief executives who met regularly over a period of 

2 years, a new governmentwide senior leadership and management 

development strategy. In the Ontario Public Service, the government’s top 

civil servant and the heads of every ministry meet for an annual 2-day 

retreat to discuss anticipated leadership needs across the government as 

well as the high-potential executives who may be able to meet those needs 

over the next year or two. 

Second, agencies link succession planning and management with their 

strategic plans to focus on both current and future needs and provide 

leaders with a broader perspective. For the Royal Canadian Mounted 

Police, succession planning and management not only figures prominently 

in the agency’s multiyear human capital plan, but it also provides top 

agency leaders with an agencywide perspective when making decisions. 

To this end, the agency uses a specially designated “succession room” to 

provide a visual representation of the agency’s diverse and widely 

dispersed operational functions, which assists top leadership in placing 

and tracking executives and managers across organizational structures. 

Third, agencies use their succession planning and management initiatives 

to identify talent at multiple organizational levels, early in their careers, or 

with critical skills. For example, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has 

three separate programs to identify and develop high-potential employees 

at several organizational levels reaching as far down as the front-line 

constable. The United Kingdom’s Fast Stream program targets highpotential individuals early in their careers. Other agencies use their 

succession management initiatives to identify and develop successors for 

employees with critical knowledge and skills. Transport Canada 

anticipated that the retirements of key regulatory inspectors would 

severely affect the agency’s ability to carry out its mandate. The agency 

encouraged the use of human capital flexibilities, such as preretirement 

transitional leave, to help ensure a smooth transition of knowledge from 

incumbents to successors. 

Fourth, agencies’ succession planning and management initiatives 

emphasize developmental assignments in addition to formal training to 

strengthen high-potential employees’ skills and broaden their experience. 

For example, Canada’s Accelerated Executive Development Program 

Page 4 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
temporarily assigns executives who have the potential to become assistant 

deputy ministers to work in unfamiliar roles or subject areas and in 

different agencies. One challenge sometimes encountered with 

developmental assignments in general is that agencies resist letting their 

high-potential staff leave their current positions to move to another 

organization. The Accelerated Executive Development Program has 

addressed this challenge by having a central government agency pay 

participants’ salaries, which makes executives more willing to allow 

talented staff to leave for developmental assignments. New Zealand has 

responded to this challenge by appropriating funds to help defray the costs 

to backfill positions for individuals on developmental assignments. 

Fifth, agencies use their succession planning and management initiatives to 

address specific human capital challenges such as achieving a more diverse 

workforce, maintaining leadership capacity, and increasing the retention of 

high-potential employees. For example, the United Kingdom created and 

has actively marketed a centralized program that targets minorities with 

the potential to join the Senior Civil Service. To help maintain leadership 

capacity despite the fact that three quarters of Canada’s assistant deputy 

ministers will be retirement eligible by 2008, the Canadian government uses 

the Accelerated Executive Development Program to identify and develop 

executives with the potential to effectively fill these positions in the future. 

To better retain talented employees with the potential to become future 

leaders, Canada’s Office of the Auditor General provides comprehensive 

developmental opportunities as part of its succession planning and 

management initiative. 

Finally, agencies use succession planning and management to facilitate 

broader transformation efforts by selecting and developing leaders and 

managers who support and champion change. For example, the Family 

Court of Australia is using its succession planning and management 

initiative to identify and prepare future leaders who will be able to help the 

organization successfully adapt to recent changes in how it delivers its 

services, and then champion those changes throughout the Court. In the 

United Kingdom, an official told us that the National Health Service uses its 

succession planning and management initiative to select and place 

executives who will champion broader organizational reform efforts. 

We provided drafts of the relevant sections of this report to officials from 

the central agencies responsible for human capital issues, the individual 

agencies, and the national audit offices for each of the countries we 

reviewed, as well as subject matter experts in the United States. They 

Page 5 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
generally agreed with the contents of this report. We made technical 

clarifications where appropriate. We also provided a draft of this report to 

the Director of OPM for her information. 

Background	 Many federal agencies have yet to adopt succession planning and 

management initiatives. In 1997, the National Academy of Public 

Administration reported that of the 27 agencies responding to its survey, 

2 agencies had a succession planning program or process in place; 2 

agencies were planning to have one in the coming year; and 4 agencies 

were planning one in the next 2 years.5 In 1999, a joint OPM and Senior 

Executive Association survey reported that more than 50 percent of all 

career members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) said that their 

agencies did not have a formal succession planning program for the SES, 

and almost 75 percent said that their agencies did not have such a program 

for managers.

6 Of those who reported that their agencies did have 

succession planning programs for either executives or managers, 54 

percent of the career senior executives said that they had not participated 

in the executive-level programs and 65 percent said they had not 

participated at the manager level. On the basis of this survey and anecdotal 

evidence, OPM officials told us in 2000 that they found that most agencies 

would not likely have a formal, comprehensive succession plan.7 

Further, we have reported that a lack of succession planning has 

contributed to two specific human capital challenges currently facing the 

federal government. The first challenge is the large percentage of career 

senior executives who will reach regular retirement eligibility over the next 

several years. In 2000, we reported that 71 percent of the SES members 

employed as of October 1998 would reach regular retirement eligibility by 

5

National Academy of Public Administration, Managing Succession and Developing 

Leadership: Growing the Next Generation of Public Service Leaders (Washington, D.C.: 

August 1997). 

6

1999 OPM/Senior Executive Association Survey of the Senior Executive Service. Complete 

results of the survey, along with additional background and methodological information, are 

available on OPM’s Web site at www.opm.gov/ses/survey.html. 

7

U.S. General Accounting Office, Senior Executive Service: Retirement Trends Underscore 

the Importance of Succession Planning, GAO/GGD-00-113BR (Washington, D.C.: May 12, 

2000). 

Page 6 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
the end of fiscal year 2005.

8 More recently, we estimated that more than 

half of the SES members in federal service as of October 2000 will have left 

the government by October 2007.

9 We concluded that without careful 

planning, these separations pose the threat of an eventual loss in 

institutional knowledge, expertise, and leadership continuity. 

The second challenge facing federal agencies impacted by a lack of 

succession planning is the amount of diversity in their executive and 

managerial ranks. As the demographics of the public served by the federal 

government change, a diverse executive corps can provide agencies with 

an increasingly important organizational advantage that can help them to 

achieve results. We have reported that, as of 2000, minority men and 

women made up about 14 percent of the career SES. If current promotion 

and hiring trends continue, the proportions of minority men and women 

among senior executives will likely remain virtually unchanged over the 

next 4 years.10 

The literature shows that public and private sector organizations use a 

range of approaches when planning for, and managing, succession-related 

challenges. These approaches span a continuum from the “replacement” 

approach, which focuses on identifying particular individuals as possible 

successors for specific top ranking positions, to the “integrated” 

succession planning and management approach. Under the integrated 

approach, succession planning and management is a strategic, systematic 

effort that works to ensure a suitable supply of potential successors for a 

variety of leadership and other key positions. These two approaches 

essentially reflect a shift in emphasis of succession planning from a risk 

management tool, focused on the near-term, operational need to ensure 

backup people are identified in case a top position becomes vacant, to a 

strategic planning tool, which identifies and develops high-potential 

individuals with the aim of filling leadership and other key roles in the 

future. 

8

GAO/GGD-00-113BR. 

9

U.S. General Accounting Office, Senior Executive Service: Enhanced Agency Efforts 

Needed to Improve Diversity as the Senior Corps Turns Over, GAO-03-34 (Washington, 

D.C.: Jan. 17, 2003). 

10GAO-03-34. 

Page 7 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
GAO, similar to other federal agencies, faces an array of succession 

planning challenges. The succession planning and management approach 

we are using to respond to our internal challenges is consistent with the 

practices we identified in other countries. 

Other Countries’ 

Selected Practices to 

Manage Succession 

To manage the succession of their executives and other key employees, 

agencies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom are 

implementing succession planning and management practices that work to 

protect and enhance organizational capacity. Collectively, these agencies’ 

succession planning and management initiatives 

• receive active support of top leadership; 

• link to strategic planning; 

•	 identify talent from multiple organizational levels, early in careers, or 

with critical skills; 

• emphasize developmental assignments in addition to formal training; 

•	 address specific human capital challenges, such as diversity, leadership 

capacity, and retention; and 

• facilitate broader transformation efforts. 

Receive Active Support of 

Top Leadership 

Effective succession planning and management programs have the support 

and commitment of their organizations’ top leadership. Our past work has 

shown that the demonstrated commitment of top leaders is perhaps the 

single most important element of successful management.11 In other 

governments and agencies, to demonstrate its support of succession 

planning and management, top leadership (1) actively participates in the 

initiatives, (2) regularly uses these programs to develop, place, and 

promote individuals, and (3) ensures that these programs receive sufficient 

financial and staff resources, and are maintained over time. 

11U.S. General Accounting Office, Management Reform: Elements of Successful 

Improvement Initiatives, GAO/T-GGD-00-26 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 15, 1999). 

Page 8 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
For example, each year, the Secretary of the Cabinet, Ontario Public 

Service’s (OPS) top civil servant, convenes and actively participates in an 

annual 2-day succession planning and management retreat with the heads 

of every government ministry. At this retreat, they discuss the anticipated 

leadership needs across the government as well as the individual status of 

about 200 high-potential executives who may be able to meet those needs 

over the next year or two. Similarly, in New Zealand, the State Services 

Commissioner—an official whose wide-ranging human capital 

responsibilities include the appointment and review of public service chief 

executives—developed, with the assistance of a group of six agency chief 

executives who met regularly over a period of 2 years, a new 

governmentwide senior leadership and management development 

initiative. This effort culminated in the July 2003 roll out of the Executive 

Leadership Programme and the creation of a new central Leadership 

Development Centre. 

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) senior executive committee 

regularly uses the agency’s succession planning and management programs 

when making decisions to develop, place, and promote its top 500-600 

employees, both officers and civilians. RCMP’s executive committee, 

consisting of the agency’s chief executive, the chief human capital officer, 

and six other top officials, meets quarterly to discuss the organization’s 

succession needs and to make the specific decisions concerning individual 

staff necessary to address those needs. In 2001-2002, this process resulted 

in 72 promotions and 220 lateral transfers. 

Top leaders also demonstrate support by ensuring that their agency’s or 

government’s succession planning and management initiatives receive 

sufficient funding and staff resources necessary to operate effectively and 

are maintained over time. Such commitment is critical since these 

initiatives can be expensive because of the emphasis they place on 

participant development. For example, a senior human capital manager 

told us that the Chief Executive of the Family Court of Australia (FCA) 

pledged to earmark funds when he established a multiyear succession 

planning and management program in 2002 despite predictions of possible 

budget cuts facing FCA. Although human capital training and development 

programs are sometimes among the first programs to be cut back during 

periods of retrenchment, FCA’s Chief Executive has repeatedly stated to 

both internal and external stakeholders that this will not happen. 

Similarly, at Statistics Canada—the Canadian federal government’s central 

statistics agency—the Chief Statistician of Canada has set aside a 

Page 9 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
percentage, in this case over 3 percent, of the total agency budget to 

training and development, thus making resources available for the 

operation of the agency’s four leadership and management development 

programs. According to a human capital official, this strong support has 

enabled the level of funding to remain fairly consistent over the past 10 

years. Finally, the government of New Zealand has committed 

NZ$19.6 million (about U.S.$11.2 million in July 2003) over four years, 

representing both central government and agency contributions, for the 

implementation of its new governmentwide senior leadership and 

management development strategy. 

Link to Strategic Planning	 Leading organizations use succession planning and management as a 

strategic planning tool that focuses on current and future needs and 

develops pools of high-potential staff in order to meet the organization’s 

mission over the long term. That is, succession planning and management 

is used to help the organization become what it needs to be, rather than 

simply to recreate the existing organization. We have previously reported 

on the importance of linking succession planning and management with the 

forward-looking process of strategic and program planning.12 In Canada, 

succession planning and management initiatives focus on long-term goals, 

are closely integrated with their strategic plans, and provide a broader 

perspective. 

For example, at Statistics Canada, committees composed of line and senior 

managers and human capital specialists consider the human capital 

required to achieve its strategic goals and objectives. During the 2001 

strategic planning process, the agency’s planning committees received 

projections showing that a majority of the senior executives then in place 

would retire by 2010, and the number of qualified assistant directors in the 

executive development pool was insufficient to replace them. In response, 

the agency increased the size of the pool and introduced a development 

program of training, rotation, and mentoring to expedite the development 

of those already in the pool. According to a Statistics Canada human 

capital official, these actions, linked with the agency’s strategic planning 

process, have helped to ensure that an adequate number of assistant 

directors will be sufficiently prepared to succeed departing senior 

executives. 

12U.S. General Accounting Office, Human Capital: A Self-Assessment Checklist for Agency 

Leaders, GAO/OCG-00-14G (Washington, D.C.: September 2000). 

Page 10 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
In Ontario, succession planning and management has been a required 

component of the government’s human capital planning framework since 

1997. OPS requires that the head of each ministry develop a succession 

plan that (1) anticipates the ministry’s needs over the next couple of years, 

(2) establishes a process to identify a pool of high-potential senior 

managers, and (3) links the selection of possible successors to both 

ministry and governmentwide opportunities and business plans. These 

plans, which are updated annually at the deputy ministers retreat, form the 

basis for Ontario’s governmentwide succession planning and management 

process. While OPS has not conducted a formal evaluation of the impact of 

this process, a senior human capital official told us that succession 

planning and management has received a much greater level of attention 

from top leadership and now plays a critical role in OPS’ broader planning 

and staffing efforts. 

For RCMP, succession planning and management is an integral part of the 

agency’s multiyear human capital plan and directly supports its strategic 

needs, and it also uses this process to provide top leadership with an 

agencywide perspective. RCMP is responsible for a wide range of police 

functions on the federal, provincial, and local levels, such as illegal drug 

and border enforcement, international peacekeeping services, and road 

and highway safety. In addition, RCMP provides services in 10 provinces 

and three territories covering an area larger than the United States. Its 

succession planning and management system provides the RCMP 

Commissioner and his executive committee with an organizationwide 

picture of current and developing leadership capacity across the 

organization’s many functional and geographic lines. 

To achieve this, RCMP constructed a “succession room”—a dedicated 

room with a graphic representation of current and potential job positions 

for the organization’s top 500-600 employees covering its walls—where the 

Commissioner and his top executives meet at least four times a year to 

discuss succession planning and management for the entire organization. 

For each of RCMP’s executive and senior manager-level positions in 

headquarters and the regions, the incumbent and one or more potential 

successors are depicted on individual movable cards that display relevant 

background information (see fig. 1). An electronic database provides 

access to more detailed information for each incumbent and potential 

successors, including skills, training, and past job experience that the 

executive committee considers when deciding on assignments and 

transfers. In addition, high-potential individuals as well as employees 

currently on developmental assignments outside RCMP are displayed. 

Page 11 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
According to a senior human capital official, because the succession room 

actually surrounds the RCMP’s top leadership with an accessible depiction 

of their complex and wide-ranging organization, it provides a powerful tool 

to help them take a broader, organizationwide approach to staffing and 

management decisions. 

Figure 1: Section of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s “Succession Room” 

Page 12 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
Identify Talent from 

Multiple Organizational 

Levels, Early in Careers, or 

with Critical Skills 

Effective succession planning and management initiatives identify highperforming employees from multiple levels in the organization and still 

early in their careers. In addition, leading organizations use succession 

planning and management to identify and develop knowledge and skills 

that are critical in the workplace. 

RCMP has three separate development programs that identify and develop 

high-potential employees at several organizational levels. For example, 

beginning at entry level, the Full Potential Program reaches as far down as 

the front-line constable and identifies and develops individuals, both 

civilians and officers, who demonstrate the potential to take on a future 

management role. For more experienced staff, RCMP’s Officer Candidate 

Development Program identifies and prepares individuals for increased 

leadership and managerial responsibilities and to successfully compete for 

admission to the officer candidate pool. Finally, RCMP’s Senior Executive 

Development Process helps to identify successors for the organization’s 

senior executive corps by selecting and developing promising officers for 

potential promotion to the senior executive levels. 

The United Kingdom’s Fast Stream program targets high-potential 

individuals early in their civil service careers as well as recent college 

graduates. The program places participants in a series of jobs designed to 

provide experiences such as developing policy, supporting ministers, and 

managing people and projects—each of which is linked to strengthening 

specific competencies required for admission to the Senior Civil Service. 

According to a senior program official, program participants are typically 

promoted quickly, attaining mid-level management in an average of 

3.5 years, and the Senior Civil Service in about 7 years after that. 

Other agencies use their succession planning and management initiatives 

to identify and develop successors for employees with critical knowledge 

and skills. For example, Transport Canada estimated that 69 percent of its 

safety and security regulatory employees, including inspectors, are eligible 

for retirement by 2008. Faced with the urgent need to capture and pass on 

the inspectors’ expertise, judgment, and insights before they retire, the 

agency embarked on a major knowledge management initiative in 1999 as 

part of its succession planning and management activities. To identify the 

inspectors whose leaving would most severely affect the agency’s ability to 

carry out its mandate, Transport Canada used criteria that assessed 

whether the inspectors (1) possessed highly specialized knowledge, skills, 

or expertise, (2) held one-of-a-kind positions, (3) were regarded as the “goto” people in critical situations, and/or (4) held vital corporate memory. 

Page 13 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
Next, inspectors were asked to pass on their knowledge through 

mentoring, coaching, and on-the-job training. To assist this knowledge 

transfer effort, Transport Canada encouraged these inspectors to use 

human capital flexibilities including preretirement transitional leave, which 

allows employees to substantially reduce their workweek without reducing 

pension and benefits payments. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 

a federal central management agency, found that besides providing easy 

access to highly specialized knowledge, this initiative ensures a smooth 

transition of knowledge from incumbents to successors. 

Emphasize Developmental 

Assignments in Addition to 

Formal Training 

Leading succession planning and management initiatives emphasize 

developmental or “stretch” assignments for high-potential employees in 

addition to formal training. These developmental assignments place staff 

in new roles or unfamiliar job environments in order to strengthen skills 

and competencies and broaden their experience. In the United States, 

training and development opportunities—including developmental 

assignments—must be offered fairly, consistent with merit system 

principles. However, according to a 1999 survey of career SES in the 

United States, 67 percent reported that they had never changed jobs by 

going to a different component within their agency or department. 

Moreover, 91 percent said that they never served in more than one 

department or agency during their entire executive careers.13 Agencies in 

other countries use developmental assignments, accompanied by more 

formal training components and other support mechanisms, to help ensure 

that individuals are capable of performing when promoted. 

Participants in RCMP’s Full Potential Program must complete at least two 

6- to 12-month developmental assignments intended to enhance specific 

competencies identified in their personalized development plans. These 

assignments provide participants with the opportunity to learn new skills 

and apply existing skills in different situations and experience an increased 

level of authority, responsibility, and accountability. For example, a civilian 

from technical operations and a police officer were given a 1-year 

assignment to create balanced scorecards that are linked to RCMP’s goals. 

Another program assignment involved placing a line officer, previously in 

charge of a single RCMP unit, in the position of acting district commander 

131999 OPM/Senior Executive Association Survey of the Senior Executive Service. Complete 

results on these items as well as other survey questions concerning SES job experience and 

mobility are available at www.opm.gov/ses/s30.html. 

Page 14 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
responsible for the command of multiple units during a period of resource 

and financial constraint. To reinforce the learning that comes from the 

developmental assignments, participants attend a 6-week educational 

program provided by Canada’s Centre for Management and Development 

that covers the personal, interpersonal, managerial, and organizational 

dimensions of leadership. Each participant also benefits from the support 

and professional expertise of a senior-level mentor. Staff who complete 

this program will be required to continue their formal development as 

RCMP officer candidates. 

In Canada’s Accelerated Executive Development Program (AEXDP), 

developmental assignments form the cornerstone of efforts to prepare 

senior executives for top leadership roles in the public service. Canada 

created AEXDP in 1997 to strategically manage the development of senior 

executives who have the potential to become assistant deputy ministers 

within 2 to 6 years. AEXDP prepares individuals for these senior 

leadership positions through the support of coaches and mentors, formal 

learning events, and placements in a series of challenging developmental 

assignments. These stretch assignments help enhance executive 

competencies by having participants perform work in areas that are 

unfamiliar or challenging to them in any of a large number of agencies 

throughout the Canadian Public Service. For example, a participant with a 

background in policy could develop his or her managerial competencies 

through an assignment to manage a direct service delivery program in a 

different agency. Central to the benefit of such assignments is that they 

provide staff with the opportunity to practice new skills in a real-time 

setting. Further, each assignment lasts approximately 2 years, which 

allows time for participants to maximize their learning experience while 

providing agencies with sufficient opportunity to gain a real benefit from 

the participants’ contributions. 

AEXDP reinforces the learning provided by the developmental assignments 

with activities such as “action learning groups” where small groups of five 

or six program participants meet periodically to collectively reflect on and 

address actual work situations or challenges facing individual participants. 

A senior official involved in the program told us that the developmental 

placements help participants obtain in-depth experience in how other 

organizations make decisions and solve problems, while simultaneously 

developing a governmentwide network of contacts that they can call on for 

expertise and advice in the future. 

Page 15 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
One challenge sometimes encountered with developmental assignments in 

general is that executives and managers resist letting their high-potential 

staff leave their current positions to move to another organization. 

Agencies in other countries have developed several approaches to respond 

to this challenge. For example, once individuals are accepted into Canada’s 

AEXDP, they are employees of, and paid by, the Public Service 

Commission, a central agency. Officials affiliated with AEXDP told us that 

not having to pay participants’ salaries makes executives more willing to 

allow talented staff to leave for developmental assignments and it fosters a 

governmentwide, rather than an agency-specific, culture among the 

AEXDP participants. 

In New Zealand, a senior official at the State Services Commission, the 

central agency responsible for ensuring that agencies develop public 

service leadership capability, told us that the Commission has 

recommended legislation that would require that agency chief executives 

work in partnership with the State Services Commissioner to find ways to 

release talented people for external developmental assignments. In 

addition, the government has appropriated NZ$600,000 (about U.S.$344,000 

in July 2003) over the next 4 years to help the Commissioner assist agency 

chief executives who might like to release an individual for a 

developmental assignment but are inhibited from doing so because of 

financial constraints, including those associated with finding a 

replacement. 

Address Specific Human 

Capital Challenges 

Leading organizations stay alert to human capital challenges and respond 

accordingly. Government agencies around the world, including in the 

United States, are facing challenges in the demographic makeup and 

diversity of their senior executives. Agencies in other countries use 

succession planning and management to achieve a more diverse 

workforce, maintain their leadership capacity as their senior executives 

retire, and increase the retention of high-potential staff. 

Achieve a More Diverse Workforce. Leading organizations recognize 

that diversity can be an organizational strength that contributes to 

achieving results. Our work has shown that U.S. federal agencies will need 

to enhance their efforts to improve diversity as the SES turns over.

14 In 

14GAO-03-34. 

Page 16 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
addition, OPM has identified an increase in workforce diversity, including 

in mission critical occupations and leadership roles, as one of its human 

capital management goals for implementing the President’s Management 

Agenda. Both the United Kingdom and Canada use succession planning 

and management systems to address the challenge of increasing the 

diversity of their senior executive corps. 

For example, the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office created Pathways, a 

2-year program that identifies and develops senior managers from ethnic 

minorities who have the potential to reach the Senior Civil Service within 

3 to 5 years. This program is intended to achieve a governmentwide goal to 

double the representation of ethnic minorities in the Senior Civil Service 

from 1.6 percent in 1998 to 3.2 percent by 2005. Pathways provides 

executive coaching, skills training, and the chance for participants to 

demonstrate their potential and talent through a variety of developmental 

activities such as projects and short-term work placements. A Cabinet 

Office official told us that the program is actively marketed through a series 

of nationwide informational meetings held in locations with large ethnic 

minority populations. In addition, program information is sent to 

government agency chief executives and human capital directors, and the 

top 600 senior executives across the civil service, and executives are 

encouraged to supplement the self-nominating process by nominating 

potential candidates. This official noted that although the first Pathways 

class will not graduate until November 2003, 2 out of the 20 participants 

have already been promoted to the Senior Civil Service. 

Rather than a specific program, Canada uses AEXDP, an essential 

component of their succession planning and management process for 

senior executives, as a tool to help achieve a governmentwide diversity 

target. For example, the government has set a goal that by 2003, certain 

minorities will represent 20 percent of participants in all management 

development programs. After conducting a survey of minorities, who 

showed a considerable level of interest in the program, officials from 

AEXDP devoted 1 year’s recruitment efforts to identify and select qualified 

minorities. The program reported that, in the three prior AEXDP classes, 

such minorities represented 4.5 percent of the total number of participants; 

however, by March 2002, AEXDP achieved the goal of 20 percent minority 

participation. In addition, an independent evaluation by an outside 

consulting firm found that the percentage of these minorities participating 

in AEXDP is more than three times the percentage in the general senior 

executive population. 

Page 17 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
Maintain Leadership Capacity. Both at home and abroad, a large 

percentage of senior executives will be eligible to retire over the next 

several years. In the United States, for example, the federal government 

faces an estimated loss of more than half of the career SES by October 

2007.

15 Other countries that face the same demographic trend use 

succession planning and management to maintain leadership capacity in 

anticipation of the turnover of their senior executive corps due to expected 

retirements. Canada is using AEXDP to address impending retirements of 

assistant deputy ministers—one of the most senior executive-level 

positions in its civil service. As of February 2003, for example, 76 percent 

of this group are over 50, and approximately 75 percent are eligible to retire 

between now and 2008. A recent independent evaluation of AEXDP by an 

outside consulting firm found the program to be successful and concluded 

that AEXDP participants are promoted in greater numbers than, and at a 

significantly accelerated rate over, their nonprogram counterparts. 

Specifically, of the participants who joined the program at the entry level, 

39 percent had been promoted one level and another 7 percent had been 

promoted two levels within 1 year compared to only 9 percent and 1 

percent for nonparticipants during the same period. This evaluation 

further concluded that AEXDP is a “valuable source” of available senior 

executives and a “very important source of well-trained, future assistant 

deputy ministers.” 

Increase Retention of High-Potential Staff. Canada’s Office of the 

Auditor General (OAG) uses succession planning and management to 

provide an incentive for high-potential employees to stay with the 

organization and thus preserve future leadership capacity. Specifically, 

OAG identified increased retention rates of talented employees as one of 

the goals of the succession planning and management program it 

established in 2000. According to a senior human capital official, OAG 

provided high-potential employees with comprehensive developmental 

opportunities in order to raise the “exit price” that a competing employer 

would need to offer to lure a high-potential employee away. The official 

told us that an individual, who might otherwise have been willing to leave 

OAG for a salary increase of CN$5,000, might now require CN$10,000 or 

more, in consideration of the developmental opportunities offered by the 

agency. Over the program’s first 18 months, annualized turnover in OAG’s 

high-potential pool was 6.3 percent compared to 10.5 percent officewide. 

15GAO-03-34. 

Page 18 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
This official told us that the retention of members of this high-potential 

pool was key to OAG’s efforts to develop future leaders. 

Facilitate Broader 

Transformation Efforts 

Effective succession planning and management initiatives provide a 

potentially powerful tool for fostering broader governmentwide or 

agencywide transformation by selecting and developing leaders and 

managers who support and champion change. Our work has shown the 

critical importance of having top leaders and managers committed to, and 

personally involved in, implementing management reforms if those reforms 

are to succeed.16 Agencies in the United Kingdom and Australia promoted 

the implementation of broader transformation efforts by using their 

succession planning and management systems to support new ways of 

doing business. 

In 1999, the United Kingdom launched a wide-ranging reform program 

known as Modernising Government, which focused on improving the 

quality, coordination, and accessibility of the services government offered 

to its citizens. Beginning in 2000, the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office 

started on a process that continues today of restructuring the content of its 

leadership and management development programs to reflect this new 

emphasis on service delivery. For example, the Top Management 

Programme supports senior executives in developing behaviors and skills 

for effective and responsive service delivery, and provides the opportunity 

to discuss and receive expert guidance in topics, tools, and issues 

associated with the delivery and reform agenda. These programs typically 

focus on specific areas that have traditionally not been emphasized for 

executives such as partnerships with the private sector and risk 

assessment and management. A senior Cabinet Office official responsible 

for executive development told us that mastering such skills is key to an 

executive’s ability to deliver the results intended in the government’s 

agenda. 

The United Kingdom’s Department of Health has embarked on a major 

reform effort involving a 10-year plan to modernize the National Health 

16U.S. General Accounting Office, Results-Oriented Cultures: Using Balanced Expectations 

to Manage Senior Executive Performance, GAO-02-966 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 27, 2002); 

Managing for Results: Using Strategic Human Capital to Drive Transformational 

Change, GAO-02-940T (Washington, D.C.: July 15, 2002); and A Model of Strategic Human 

Capital Management, GAO-02-373SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 15, 2002). 

Page 19 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
Service by, among other things, devolving power from the government to 

the local health services that perform well for their patients, and breaking 

down occupational boundaries to give staff greater flexibility to provide 

care. A National Health Service official told us that the service recognizes 

the key contribution that succession planning and management programs 

can have and, therefore, selects and places executives who will champion 

its reform and healthcare service delivery improvement efforts. For 

example, the Service’s National Primary Care Development Team created a 

leadership development program specifically tailored for clinicians with 

the expectation that they will, in turn, champion new clinical approaches 

and help manage the professional and organizational change taking place 

within the health service. 

At the FCA, preparing future leaders who could help the organization 

successfully adapt to recent changes in how it delivers services is one of 

the objectives of the agency’s Leadership, Excellence, Achievement, 

Progression program, established in 2002. Specifically, over the last few 

years FCA has placed an increased emphasis on the needs of external 

stakeholders. This new emphasis is reflected in the leadership capabilities 

FCA uses when selecting and developing program participants. For 

example, one of these capabilities, “nurturing internal and external 

relationships,” emphasizes the importance of taking all stakeholders into 

account when making decisions, in contrast to the FCA’s traditional 

internally focused culture. In addition, according to a senior human capital 

manager, individuals selected to participate in the FCA’s leadership 

development program are expected to function as “national drivers of 

change within the Court.” To this end, the program provides participants 

with a combination of developmental assignments and formal training 

opportunities that place an emphasis on areas such as project and people 

management, leadership, and effective change management. 

Concluding 	 As governmental agencies around the world anticipate the need for leaders 

and other key employees with the necessary competencies to successfully Observations	 meet the complex challenges of the 21st century, they are choosing 

succession planning and management initiatives that go beyond simply 

replacing individuals in order to recreate the existing organization, to 

initiatives that strategically position the organization for the future. 

Collectively, the experiences of agencies in Australia, Canada, New 

Zealand, and the United Kingdom demonstrate how governments are using 

succession planning and management initiatives that receive the active 

support of top leadership, link to strategic planning, identify talent 

Page 20 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
throughout the organization, emphasize developmental assignments in 

addition to formal training, address specific human capital challenges, and 

facilitate broader transformation efforts. Taken together, these practices 

give agencies a potentially powerful set of tools with which to strategically 

manage their most important asset—their human capital. 

While there is no one right way for organizations to manage the succession 

of their leaders and other key employees, the experiences of agencies in 

these four countries provide insights into how other governments are 

adopting succession practices that protect and enhance organizational 

capacity. While governments’ and agencies’ initiatives reflect their 

individual organizational structures, cultures, and priorities, these 

practices can guide executive branch agencies in the United States as they 

develop their own succession planning and management initiatives in order 

to ensure that federal agencies have the human capital capacity necessary 

to achieve their organizational goals and effectively deliver results now and 

in the future. 

Agency Comments	 We provided drafts of the relevant sections of this report to cognizant 

officials from the central agency responsible for human capital issues, 

individual agencies, and the national audit office for each of the countries 

we reviewed as well as subject matter experts in the United States. They 

generally agreed with the contents of this report. We made technical 

clarifications where appropriate. Because we did not evaluate the policies 

or operations of any U.S. federal agency in this report, we did not seek 

comments from any U.S. agency. However, because of OPM’s role in 

providing guidance and assistance to federal agencies on succession 

planning and leadership development, we provided a draft of this report to 

the Director of OPM for her information. 

As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce its contents 

earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report for 30 days from the 

date of this letter. At that time, we will provide copies of this report to 

other interested congressional committees, the directors of OPM and the 

Office of Management and Budget, and the foreign government officials 

contacted for this report. In addition, we will make copies available to 

others upon request and the report will be available at no charge on the 

GAO Web site at www.gao.gov. 

Page 21 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
If you have any questions concerning this report, please contact me or 


Lisa Shames on (202) 512-6806 or at mihmj@gao.gov and shamesl@gao.gov. 


The major contributors to this report were Peter J. Del Toro and


Rebecka L. Derr.


J. Christopher Mihm


Director, Strategic Issues


Page 22 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
Appendix I 

Objective, Scope, and Methodology


To meet our objective to identify how agencies in other countries are 

adopting a more strategic approach to managing the succession of senior 

executives and others with critical skills, we selected Australia, Canada, 

New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the Canadian Province of Ontario 

based on our earlier work where we examined their implementation of 

results-oriented management and human capital reforms.1

 We reviewed the 

public management and human capital literature and spoke with subject 

matter experts to obtain additional context and analysis regarding 

succession planning and management. A key resource was the National 

Academy of Public Administration’s work on the topic, including their 

maturity model and subsequent revisions, which describe the major 

succession planning process elements of initiatives that take a strategic 

approach to building organizational capacity.

2 

We identified the examples illustrating the practices through the results of 

over 30 responses to a questionnaire sent to senior human capital officials 

at selected agencies. We analyzed written documentation including 

reports, procedures, guidance, and other materials concerning succession 

planning and management programs for agencies in these countries along 

with government-sponsored evaluations of these programs when available. 

We interviewed more than 50 government officials from Australia, Canada, 

New Zealand, and the United Kingdom by telephone, or in person during a 

visit to Ottawa, Canada. To obtain a variety of perspectives, we spoke to 

officials from the countries’ national audit offices, central management, 

and human capital agencies. 

The scope of our work did not include independent evaluation or 

verification of the effectiveness of the succession planning and 

management initiatives used in the four countries, including any 

performance results that agencies attributed to specific practices or 

aspects of their programs. We also did not attempt to assess the prevalence 

of the practices or challenges we cite either within or across countries. 

Therefore, countries other than those cited for a particular practice may, or 

1

GAO-02-862 and U.S. General Accounting Office, Managing for Results: Experiences 

Abroad Suggest Insights for Federal Management Reforms, GAO/GGD-95-120 (Washington, 

D.C.: May 2, 1995). 

2

See, National Academy of Public Administration, Paths to Leadership: Executive 

Succession Planning in the Federal Government (Washington, D.C.: December 1992), The 

State of Executive Succession Planning in the Federal Government (Washington, D.C.: 

December 1994), and Managing Succession and Developing Leadership: Growing the Next 

Generation of Public Service Leaders (Washington, D.C.: August 1997). 

Page 23 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
Appendix I


Objective, Scope, and Methodology


may not, be engaged in the same practice. Because of the multiple 

jurisdictions covered in this report, we use the term “agency” generically to 

refer to entities of the central government including departments, 

ministries, and agencies, except when describing specific examples where 

we use the term appropriate to that case. 

We conducted our work from January through June 2003 in Washington, 

D.C., and Ottawa, Canada, in accordance with generally accepted 

government auditing standards. We provided drafts of the relevant 

sections of this report to officials from the central agencies responsible for 

human capital issues, individual agencies, and the national audit office for 

each of the countries we reviewed as well as subject matter experts in the 

United States. We also provided a draft of this report to the Director of 

OPM for her information. 

(450165) Page 24 GAO-03-914 Succession Planning and Management in Other Countries 
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