First, workforce planning and development are important elements in fashioning the workforce the federal sector needs. The Voinovich report emphasizes both areas. For many federal agencies, workforce planning is relatively new. Line management and HR staff together need to increase their capability in this area. Spending money on training does not necessarily translate into applied learning and increased analytical thinking at all levels of the organization.
Training needs to be planned to address the organization's current and future needs.
Organizations also need to further the capacity for employees and supervisors alike to discuss learning on the job and to plan for continuous learning, both formal classroom learning and the crucial informal learning that takes place in well-conceived assignments and discussions about the political, technical, and interpersonal components of those assignments. Second, a longer term issue is a re-evaluation of the nature of work. Boxing employees into positions and setting up hierarchies with limited flexibility reduce the organization's ability to focus on outcomes rather than inputs and outputs. It is exciting to see the human capital issues hit the public agenda. This is so true of what goes on in federal agencies, and so far from being addressed or dealt with.