Human Capital: DOD Needs Complete Assessments to Improve Future Civilian Strategic Workforce Plans
Released: 2012-09-27T00:00:00

Letter

Background

To help conduct human-capital planning efforts for the department’s civilian workforce, DOD’s Strategic Human Capital Planning Office used functional community categories to group together employees who perform similar functions. Each of these communities includes a varying number of mission-critical occupations. For the 2010-2018 strategic workforce plan, 11 functional communities provided some information on their 22 mission-critical occupations in an appendix to the plan. Mission- critical occupations are positions key to DOD’s current and future mission requirements, as well as those that present recruiting and retention challenges. Table 1 lists the 11 functional communities along with their mission-critical occupations.

DOD’s mandated strategic workforce plans are developed by the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service’s Strategic Human Capital Planning Office, which is within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. To collect data and information from the functional communities, the Strategic Human Capital Planning Office develops a reporting template that it sends to the 11 functional community managers within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). The template consists of three sections that request information and data on areas such as workforce end-strength forecasts, constraints that impact the ability to meet end-strength targets, status of competency development, and strategies to fill gaps. To complete the template, the functional community managers work with their counterparts at the component level to collect the necessary information and data for the mission-critical occupations. Once the component-level functional community managers collect the necessary information and data, they send their completed templates back to the functional community integrators, who compile all the information and data for each community into one cohesive functional community document. The Strategic Human Capital Planning Office then compiles the various reports from the functional community managers and integrators and issues the report after it passes an internal review. Figure 1 identifies the key offices that develop the strategic workforce plan.

Our previous work has found that, in general, DOD’s efforts to develop workforce plans have been mixed. In our February 2009 report, we recommended that DOD develop performance plans for its program offices that have responsibilities to oversee development of the strategic workforce plan. Specifically, we recommended that the performance plans include establishing implementation goals and time frames, measuring performance, and aligning activities with resources to guide its efforts to implement its strategic workforce plan. DOD partially concurred with our recommendations and noted that efforts were underway to develop performance plans.

DOD’s Assessments of Existing and Future Critical Skills, Competencies, and Gaps Varied

DOD assessed, to varying degrees, the existing and future critical skills and competencies for all but one of its mission-critical occupations, but the department did not assess gaps for most of them. Further, DOD’s report did not include the most up-to-date or timely information when it issued its most recent report.

DOD Assessed Skills and Competencies for a Majority of Its Mission- Critical Occupations, but the Assessments Varied Widely

Section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code requires that DOD’s strategic workforce plan include an assessment of the critical skills and competencies of the existing civilian-employee workforce and DOD, in response to that requirement, assessed to varying degrees the existing critical skills and competencies for 21 of its 22 mission-critical occupations. We have previously reported that it is essential for agencies to determine the skills and competencies that are critical to successfully achieving their missions and goals. This is especially important as changes in national security, technology, budget constraints, and other factors change the environment within which federal agencies operate. The assessments contained in DOD’s 2010-2018 plan, however, varied significantly in terms of the amount of detail provided. This variation can be attributed, in part, to the fact that some communities are able to draw on existing requirements and standards. For example, the information technology functional community used the Clinger-Cohen Competencies for the Information Technology Workforce, which provide a description of the technical competencies for various information technology occupations, to assess the critical skills and competencies within its workforce. Accordingly, the information technology functional community manager was able to provide detail and specificity when describing this community’s assessment processes and the results of those assessments. Similarly, the medical functional community was able to use existing national standards for licensure and board certification for physicians when it assessed particular critical skills and competencies. This community was able to provide specific details about its assessment processes and the results from those assessments. In contrast, while the installations and environment functional community reported on the competency models available for assessing its two mission-critical occupations, firefighters and safety-and-health managers, this community did not provide the results of any analyses using these models.

DOD is also required to report on the critical skills and competencies that will be needed in its future workforces. We have previously reported that an agency needs to define the critical skills and competencies that it will require in the future to meet its strategic program goals. Doing so can help an agency align its human-capital approaches that enable and sustain the contributions of all the critical skills and competencies needed for the future. Our assessment of DOD’s 2010-2018 strategic workforce plan found that for 17 of the 22 mission-critical occupations, DOD provided some discussion of future competencies. For the remaining five mission-critical occupations, DOD reported that functional community managers were waiting for the completion of competency models for their specific mission-critical occupations before assessing future competencies. One functional community, Intelligence, did not provide an assessment of skills and competencies for either its existing or future mission-critical occupations. DOD officials told us that the intelligence community’s assessments are maintained in classified documents and could not be provided in the department’s 2010-2018 strategic workforce plan. According to the plan, the Offices of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, along with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, agreed instead to capture the reporting requirements in already established human-capital employment plans that were submitted by intelligence-community elements to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Officials from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence acknowledged that they should provide input into DOD’s strategic workforce plan and stated that they would provide input into the next submission of the plan.

DOD officials responsible for developing the strategic workforce plan said they followed a collaborative process and met numerous times to seek input and guidance for developing the plan. To obtain information and data from each functional community, the Strategic Human Capital Planning Office distributed a reporting template to the functional community managers that contained a series of questions related to the requirements of section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code. For the 2010-2018 plan, from May 2009 through October 2010 the Strategic Human Capital Planning Office provided informal guidance for template development to functional community managers, integrators, and action officers. This office also provided additional training and one-on-one sessions with integrators, and tailored meetings with functional community managers to address completion. The template, however, did not define key terms such as skills and competencies. Accordingly, we found that the functional community managers interpreted the questions within the template differently and developed different understandings of key terms. For example, officials in one functional community explained to us that they viewed skills as a subset of a larger category of competencies. Officials in a separate functional community associated skills with employee capabilities and competencies with occupational descriptions. Without clear guidance for assessing skills and competencies, functional community managers are likely to continue to provide inconsistent responses that vary in detail and usefulness to decision makers.

A Majority of Functional Communities Did Not Conduct Competency Gap Assessments for Mission- Critical Occupations, and None Reported the Results of Gap Assessments

Section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code requires DOD to include an assessment of gaps in the existing and future civilian employee workforce that should be addressed to ensure that the department has continued access to the critical skills and competencies needed to accomplish its mission. We have previously reported that once an agency identifies the critical skills and competencies that its future workforce must possess, it can develop strategies tailored to address gaps in the number, skills and competencies, and deployment of the workforce. Our analysis found, however, that functional community managers reported conducting competency gap assessments for only 8 of the 22 mission-critical occupations. These 8 occupations include nurses, pharmacists, clinical psychologists, social workers, medical officers, security specialists, police officers, and human-resources managers. Further, in cases where the functional community managers did conduct gap analyses, they did not report the results of these assessments. Officials responsible for developing the 2010-2018 plan told us that they focused on identifying critical-skill gaps based on staffing levels in the mission-critical occupations. According to these officials, competency gaps will be assessed using the Defense Competency Assessment Tool that is scheduled for initial deployment in late fiscal year 2013.

In some cases, competency models are still being developed that will enable the functional communities to conduct gap assessments for their mission-critical occupations. For example, the financial-management functional community stated specifically in DOD’s plan that it did not complete a gap assessment because competency models for its mission- critical occupations remain incomplete. The financial-management community reported in the plan that, upon completion of its competency models, it will be able to fully assess gaps in knowledge and skills. DOD officials responsible for the plan told us that they anticipate these models to be completed by the end of 2012.

Some functional communities, similarly, are waiting for the completion of an automated competency assessment tool in order to complete their gap assessments. The logistics functional community stated in the plan, for example, that it will use DOD’s Defense Competency Assessment Tool when it becomes available. Because this community, as of September 2010, had more than 18,000 personnel serving in the mission-critical occupation of logistics-management specialist, community officials explained that the workforce is too large to track without an automated tool.

Further, some officials attributed the absence of gap analyses to other priorities that took precedence. Officials acknowledged that they did not address all of the statutory requirements and explained that their work on the Secretary of Defense’s 2010 efficiency initiatives—which were introduced to reduce duplication, overhead, and excess—preempted their efforts to develop responses for DOD’s 2010 Strategic Workforce Plan.

Finally, of the functional communities that reported completing gap assessments for eight of the mission-critical occupations, none reported the results. For example, the medical functional community reported that DOD’s Medical Health System analyzed a variety of data monthly to ensure goals are met and to assess and respond to gaps for all five of its mission-critical occupations: nurses, pharmacists, clinical psychologists, social workers, and physicians. However, the plan did not report the results of any of these assessments. Our analysis of the template DOD sent to the functional community managers found that it was not clear in all cases that each functional community should report the results of any gap analyses or report the reasons why it could not conduct these assessments—if that is the case—or report timelines for when the assessments would be conducted. Without this information, DOD is limited in its ability to identify where its critical shortages lie so that it may direct limited resources to the areas of highest priority.

DOD Delayed the Issuance of Its Workforce Plan, and Did Not Update Data

Under a previous strategic-plan requirement, DOD was required to submit a strategic plan to Congress by January 6, 2007, with updates of that plan to be submitted on March 1 of each subsequent year through 2009. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 repealed this requirement, and enacted section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code. From October of 2009 until December 2011, section 115b required the submission of the plan on an annual basis, rather than on any specific date. In December of 2011, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 amended section 115b to make the strategic plan a biennial requirement, rather than an annual one. Our analysis shows, based on these requirements, that DOD’s first three submissions were 304, 115, and 395 days late, respectively. Additionally, while DOD issued its third strategic workforce plan on March 31, 2010, the department issued its fourth, and most recent, plan 24 months later on March 27, 2012. When DOD began development of its fourth plan, the department was required to submit its workforce plan on an annual basis; by the time DOD issued the plan the reporting requirement had been revised from an annual to a biennial requirement. We note, however, that DOD’s report was already at least 8 months overdue at the time of that revision. Further, while DOD delayed issuance of its fourth plan until March 2012, it continued to use fiscal year 2010 data as its baseline. Figure 2 shows the number of days each of DOD’s strategic workforce plans has been late since 2007.

Officials attributed the delays in the production of DOD’s 2010 strategic workforce plan to long internal processing times and staff turnover. According to these officials, the plan’s progress was affected by turnover among contractor personnel as well as the leadership and staff within the strategic workforce planning office at DOD. DOD recognized these delays, and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense for Civilian Personnel Policy testified before the House Armed Services Committee in July 2011 that the 2010-2018 report would be issued in late August 2011. However, it remained in draft form for another 7 months and was not issued until March 2012.

Our prior work on internal control standards for the federal government has shown that agencies rely on timely information to carry out their responsibilities. For an agency to manage and control its operations effectively, it must have relevant, reliable, and timely communications relating to internal as well as external events. We found that although the Strategic Human Capital Planning Office provided suggested timeframes, DOD officials did not adhere to this schedule. Without up-to-date information, decision makers do not have relevant information for managing the critical needs of the federal workforce in a timely manner. Officials responsible for the plan told us they anticipate issuing the 2012 strategic workforce plan between July and September of 2013.

DOD Did Not Assess the Appropriate Mix of Military, Civilian, and Contractor Personnel Capabilities

DOD, in its 2010-2018 workforce plan, did not include an assessment of the appropriate mix of military, civilian, and contractor personnel or an assessment of the capabilities of each of these workforces. Section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code requires DOD to conduct an assessment of the appropriate mix of military, civilian, and contractor personnel capabilities. To compile the workforce mix data, DOD officials responsible for the plan developed and distributed a reporting template to be completed by functional community managers. This template requested the functional community managers to provide the percentages of DOD civilian personnel, military personnel, and contractors in each mission-critical occupation. Additionally, the template requested each functional community to provide information on the desired workforce mix for fiscal year 2016, and interim goals if possible.

Our review found that 2 of the 11 functional communities provided the mix of their workforces, while 9 communities provided partial or no data. Specifically, the medical and human-resources functional communities provided the percentages of military, civilian, and contractor personnel for their current workforce, and reported their desired mix for fiscal year 2016, as the template requested. For example, the medical functional community provided workforce mix data for its military, civilian, and contractor personnel in each of its mission-critical occupations. According to officials responsible for the strategic workforce plan, the medical functional community was able to provide workforce mix data because the community already tracked personnel data as a way to maintain oversight. Conversely, the logistics and information-technology functional communities provided only the military and civilian workforce data and did not include contractor data. The intelligence functional community did not provide any workforce mix data for inclusion in the 2010 strategic workforce plan.

Moreover, data on contractor personnel was incomplete. During this review, DOD officials responsible for the plan stated that they have difficulties tracking contractor data, explaining that DOD contracts for services rather than for individuals. We note, however, that this issue is not new. DOD guidance requires defense officials to consider personnel costs, among other factors, when making certain workforce decisions. For example, a February 2005 DOD directive states that missions shall be accomplished using the least costly mix of personnel (military, civilian, and contract) consistent with military requirements and other needs of the department. Subsequently, in April 2010, DOD issued an instruction that included guidance on implementing the prior directive. Further it is DOD policy that DOD components follow prescribed business rules when performing an economic analysis in support of workforce decisions. These rules apply when, among other circumstances, DOD’s components decide whether to use DOD civilians to perform functions that are currently being performed by contractors but could be performed by DOD civilians.

By law, DOD is required to annually compile and review an inventory of activities performed pursuant to contracts to help provide better insights into the number of contractor full-time equivalents providing services to the department, and the functions they are performing. Additionally, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 requires appropriate DOD officials to develop a plan, including an enforcement mechanism, to ensure that this inventory of contracted services is used to inform strategic workforce planning, among other things. The act also directed the Secretary of Defense to establish policies and procedures for determining the most appropriate and cost-efficient mix of military, civilian, and contractor personnel to perform the mission of the department. Further, the act directed that these policies and procedures should specifically require DOD to use the strategic workforce plan, among other things, when making these determinations, and that these policies and procedures, once developed, should inform the strategic workforce planning process. Earlier this year, we reported that DOD has difficulty collecting data on the number of contractors performing work, and that DOD is working on a means to collect the data. We also reported that DOD has submitted to Congress a plan to collect personnel data directly from contractors that would help inform the department of the number of full-time-equivalent contractor staff. According to this plan, DOD will institute a phased-in approach to develop an inventory of contracted services database by fiscal year 2016.

In the meantime, the functional communities did not provide all required information, in part, because the department did not request it. The template, for example, did not ask the functional communities to report the capabilities of their civilian, military and contractor personnel in mission-critical occupations, and as a result none of the functional communities reported them. Further, the template did not ask the functional communities to report on their assessments of the appropriate mix of these workforces within their communities and, accordingly, none of the communities provided this type of assessment. Without a complete assessment, it is difficult for DOD to know if its civilian workforce is properly sized to carry out its vital missions.

DOD Developed Results-Oriented Performance Measures to Assess Progress, but These Measures Do Not Fully Align with Congressional Reporting Requirements

DOD developed five performance measures to assess progress in implementing its strategic workforce plan, and the measures generally align with the department’s goals. We have previously reported that performance measures should align with goals and track progress toward the goals of the organization. However, it is not clear in all cases how these measures will help DOD demonstrate progress in meeting all of the reporting requirements contained in section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code.

DOD Identified Performance Measures to Assess Progress in Implementing Its Strategic Workforce Plan

In response to statutory requirements, DOD developed five results- oriented performance measures to assess progress in implementing its strategic workforce plan. Specifically, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness developed five baseline performance measures, which address: workforce-mission readiness (the percentage of managers reporting that they have the talent needed to meet their mission); mission-critical occupations’ end-strength (the percentage difference between the actual end-strength and the target end-strength for mission-critical occupations); key milestones (the percentage of key milestones met by each mission-critical occupation); competency-model development (the number of competency models developed for mission-critical occupations); and loss rates for new hires (18-month loss rate from hiring date for new federal-civilian hires in mission-critical occupations).

According to the 2010-2018 plan, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness based the first four of these measures—workforce mission readiness, mission-critical occupations’ end-strength, key milestones, and competency-model development—on goals identified in DOD’s companion document to its overall civilian human-capital strategic plan. According to the plan, officials developed the fifth measure—loss rates for new hires—to support the overall strategic plan for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. Collectively, these baseline measures were established relative to the strategic objectives set for tracking and supporting organizational decision making within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.

We have previously reported that performance measures should align with goals and track progress toward the goals of the organization. Additionally, OPM best practices state that performance measures can help drive desired behavior, provide direction, and enable an organization to test its progress in achieving goals. Accordingly, DOD developed the five measures to meet goals and objectives identified in a key DOD strategic document. All five performance measures include targets to track progress toward goals—such as a 70 percent target for key milestones in mission-critical occupations—so that the results of any progress can be easily compared to the targets. Additionally, the performance measures are quantifiable. For example, one of the performance measures establishes a 15 percent variance between the actual end-strength and the target end-strength of mission-critical occupations.

While DOD introduced these measures for the first time in its 2010-2018 strategic workforce plan, the department conducted preliminary assessments of its progress against those measures. In this plan, DOD reported in its preliminary observations that it has met two performance measures—key milestones and competency-model development—and partially met two other measures—workforce-mission readiness and the end-strength of mission-critical occupations. For example, according to OSD’s preliminary assessment, more than half of the mission-critical occupations were within the 15 percent variance. DOD will use the fifth performance measure, which addresses loss rates for new hires, to assess the department’s progress in implementing the plan in the next strategic workforce planning cycle.

DOD’s Performance Measures Are Not Fully Aligned With Congressional Reporting Requirements

We have previously recommended that DOD develop a performance plan that includes establishing implementation goals and time frames, measuring performance, and aligning activities with resources. While the performance measures that DOD established to monitor the department’s progress in implementing its strategic workforce plan generally align with departmental goals and priorities, it is not clear in all cases how the five measures will help DOD demonstrate progress in meeting all the reporting requirements contained in section 115b of Title 10 United States Code. While DOD is not required to develop performance measures that monitor progress in meeting the statutory requirements, our prior work has shown that agencies that have been successful in measuring their performance generally developed measures that are responsive to multiple priorities and complement different program strategies. Additionally, DOD is required to develop performance measures to monitor progress in implementing the strategic workforce plan, and the plan itself states that one of its goals is to make progress toward meeting the statutory requirements.

Section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code requires DOD to include in its 2010-2018 strategic workforce plan an assessment of, among other things, gaps in the existing and future civilian workforce that should be addressed to ensure that the department has continued access to the critical skills and competencies, and the appropriate mix of military, civilian, and contractor personnel capabilities. During this review, we found, as we reported earlier in this report, that the department did not conduct comprehensive assessments in these two areas. Although one of DOD’s performance measures—key milestones—identifies assessments of competency gaps and workforce mix as key milestones, the plan does not describe how the department assessed progress in these areas or interim steps as to how it plans to meet these milestones. As a result, it is unclear how this measure addresses DOD’s progress in implementing the portions of the plan related to these two requirements, and how the performance measures and the department’s efforts align with and address congressional requirements. According to prior GAO work, performance measures should align with and indicate progress toward the goals of the organization. Without a clear, effective alignment of DOD’s performance measures with United States Code requirements, the department will not be in the best position to measure and report how it is meeting its congressional requirements.

Conclusions

With about a third of DOD’s civilian workforce eligible to retire by 2015— during a time of changing national security threats and challenging fiscal realities—it is imperative that decision makers in DOD and Congress have access to complete and timely information on the skills, competencies, and any associated gaps within DOD’s civilian workforce. However, because the office responsible for developing the plan did not provide sufficiently detailed guidance to the managers who were responsible for providing key data, the information in the current plan on skills and competencies varies significantly. Further, while DOD officials have stated that they do not have the necessary tools in place to conduct gap analyses across the board, the department has not reported the results of any gap analyses that it has conducted nor provided reporting timeframes for conducting remaining gap analyses; this situation diminishes the plan’s utility as a workforce planning document. To the extent that DOD provided data in 2012, the data was based on information from 2010, which further limits this document’s use for planning purposes. When the reports use dated information, decision makers do not have relevant information for managing the critical needs of the federal workforce. Further, DOD did not collect all required information for its 2010-2018 strategic workforce plans, including the number or percentage of military, civilian, and contractor personnel and the capabilities for those three workforces. Without revised guidance specifying the need to collect all information required for a complete assessment to determine the appropriate mix of the three workforces, DOD will have difficulty in determining if its civilian workforce is properly sized to carry out essential missions. Finally, where DOD has identified performance measures and indicated progress toward the goals of the strategic plan, those measures are not, in all cases, aligned with DOD’s congressionally mandated reporting requirements; also, the measures do not provide detail about how DOD plans to meet those requirements, making it difficult for DOD to demonstrate progress.

Recommendations for Executive Action

To meet the congressional requirement to conduct assessments of critical skills, competencies, and gaps for both existing and future civilian workforces, we recommend that the Secretary of Defense direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to include in the guidance that it disseminates for developing future strategic workforce plans clearly defined terms and processes for conducting these assessments.

To help ensure that Congress has the necessary information to provide effective oversight over DOD’s civilian workforce, we recommend that the Secretary of Defense direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to conduct competency gap analyses for DOD’s mission- critical occupations and report the results. When managers cannot conduct such analyses, we recommend that DOD report a timeline in the strategic workforce plan for providing these assessments.

To help ensure that the data presented in DOD’s strategic workforce plans are current and timely, we recommend that the Secretary of Defense direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to establish and adhere to timelines that will ensure issuance of future strategic workforce plans in accordance with statutory timeframes.

To enhance the information that DOD provides Congress in its strategic workforce plan, we recommend that the Secretary of Defense direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to provide guidance for developing future strategic workforce plans that clearly directs the functional communities to collect information that identifies not only the number or percentage of personnel in its military, civilian, and contractor workforces but also the capabilities of the appropriate mix of those three workforces.

To better develop and submit future DOD strategic workforce plans, we recommend that the Secretary of Defense direct the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to enhance the department’s results-oriented performance measures by revising existing measures or developing additional measures that will more clearly align with DOD’s efforts to monitor progress in meeting the strategic workforce planning requirements in section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

In written comments on a draft of this report, DOD concurred with our first recommendation and partially concurred with the remaining four recommendations. DOD comments are reprinted in appendix II.

While DOD acknowledged that we had conducted a thorough review and assessment of DOD’s Fiscal Year 2010-2018 Strategic Workforce Plan for, DOD also expressed its disappointment that we did not appear to give the department credit for the major progress that it has made, including actions to reframe its planning progress from the current state to a comprehensive future state by 2015. Further, DOD stated that the overall negative tone – in its opinion – overshadowed the monumental efforts of the department. We disagree. The objectives in our final report are consistent with the objectives we presented to DOD when we first notified the department of our review at the beginning of this engagement, and we did provide positive examples where DOD had responded to congressional direction, especially as those actions related to our report’s objectives. For example, we state clearly in our report, among other things, that DOD assessed to varying degrees the existing and future critical skills and competencies for all but one of its mission-critical occupations. This has been a longstanding issue and represents progress. Further, we reported that DOD developed performance measures to assess progress in implementing its workforce plan. This was a new reporting requirement for DOD, and we reported that DOD had been responsive to this requirement.

DOD also asserted that our recommendations simply restate areas for improvement that the department already identified in its plan, and which have already been implemented since the plan was published. We note, however, that these issues are not new. We first reported on DOD’s strategic workforce planning for its civilian workforce in 2004. Subsequently, Congress mandated that DOD develop and submit civilian workforce strategic plans to the congressional defense committees, and that we conduct our own independent assessment of those plans. We have previously conducted 3 reviews of DOD’s plans since 2008 and our work has reported mixed results. We recommended in 2008, for example, that DOD address all of its statutory reporting requirements, and note that DOD did not concur with this recommendation. (In 2010, we reported that DOD’s civilian workforce plan addressed 5 and partially addressed 9 of DOD’s 14 legislative requirements.) In 2009, we recommended, among other things, that DOD develop a performance plan that includes establishing implementation goals and timeframes, measuring performance, and aligning activities with resources. DOD partially concurred with these recommendations. Given the response by DOD to our previous reports and recommendations on these issues, we have reviewed the recommendations that we present in this report and continue to believe that corrective action is needed.

DOD concurred with our first recommendation to include in guidance that it disseminates for developing future workforce plans clearly defined terms and processes for conducting these assessments. DOD stated in its agency comments, among other things, that it has already provided numerous governance and policy documents, and more, to assist key stakeholders in meeting strategic workforce plan reporting requirements. We make similar statements in our report. DOD also stated in its agency comments, however, that the department strives for continuous improvement and has already provided additional guidance for the next planning cycle, for this reason they believe no additional direction from the Secretary of Defense is needed. We do not disagree that DOD strives for continuous improvement. However, during the course of our audit work, we found, as we state in our report, that functional community managers interpreted questions in DOD’s guiding template differently and developed different understandings of key terms. Therefore, we continue to believe that this recommendation will enhance the development of DOD’s next strategic workforce plan.

DOD partially concurred with our second recommendation that DOD conduct gap analyses for DOD’s mission-critical occupations and report on the results, and, when managers cannot conduct such analyses, report a timeline for providing these assessments. DOD also stated its belief that no additional direction from the Secretary of Defense is needed with regard to this recommendation. In its agency comments, DOD stated that the department focused on the identification of critical skill gaps based on staffing levels in its mission-critical occupations. We agree that DOD’s plan includes these data. However, we reported that DOD is required to include an assessment of competency gaps in its existing and future civilian employee workforces, and that our analyses found that DOD’s functional community managers reported conducting gap assessments for only 8 of DOD’s 22 mission-critical occupations. Therefore we continue to believe that DOD needs to conduct these analyses and, for clarity, we added references to competency gap analyses in our finding and recommendation, as appropriate. DOD stated in its agency comments that competency gaps will be assessed in the future.

DOD also partially concurred with our third recommendation that DOD establish and adhere to timelines that will ensure issuance of future strategic workforce plans in accordance with statutory timeframes but, similarly to its other responses, added that no additional direction is needed from the Secretary of Defense at this time. In its comments, DOD stated that the department does have an established planning process and timeline, and that this established process aligns with the budget cycle and takes about a year to complete because of the size and complexity of the department. DOD added that the planning cycle timeline is flexible enough to allow for significant events, among other things, and provided a notional strategic workforce plan timeline as an attachment to its agency comments. However, we continue to believe it is key that DOD take steps to adhere to the timelines it establishes to meet congressional reporting requirements and enhance the utility of its future reports. As we note in our report, DOD has issued all of its strategic workforce plans late since 2007.

Regarding our fourth recommendation, DOD also partially concurred that DOD provide guidance for developing future workforce plans that clearly directs the functional communities to collect information that identifies not only the number or percentage of personnel in its military, civilian, and contractor workforces but also the capabilities of the appropriate mix of those three workforces. While DOD agreed that additional improvements are necessary, the department again stated that it did not believe additional direction is necessary from the Secretary of Defense. In its comments, DOD stated that is preparing to pilot a capabilities-based approach to assess civilian and military workforce and contract support. We continue to note DOD’s existing requirement to conduct an assessment of the appropriate mix of military, civilian, and contractor personnel capabilities, and we look forward to seeing the results of DOD’s pilot program.

Finally, DOD also partially concurred with our fifth recommendation that the department enhance its results-oriented performance measures by revising existing measures or developing additional measures that will more clearly align with DOD’s efforts to monitor progress in meeting the strategic workforce planning requirements contained in statute. However, again, DOD did not believe any additional direction from the Secretary of Defense was needed. In its response, DOD stated that the measures in the fiscal year 2010-2018 strategic workforce plan do assess progress both in implementing the strategic workforce plan and in meeting the statutory requirements and, as an attachment to its comments, provided a matrix—that it developed in response to our draft report—to show linkages between the two. Based on the matrix, we agree with DOD’s assertion that some alignment does exist between the performance measures and the statutory criteria. However, the justification that DOD provided in its matrix for demonstrating these linkages is not always clear. Further, DOD did not include this analysis in its plan. We did not state in our report that the performance measures that DOD developed were inappropriate in some way. However, our analysis did find that DOD continues to struggle to meet its statutory reporting requirements. Therefore, we continue to believe that DOD can enhance its performance measures by more clearly aligning them to those requirements.

We are sending copies of this report to the Secretary of Defense, the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and appropriate congressional committees. In addition, this report will also be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions regarding this report, please contact me at (202) 512-3604 or farrellb@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are listed in appendix III.

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

For all three objectives, we evaluated DOD’s 2010-2018 Strategic Workforce Plan and supporting documentation. We also interviewed Department of Defense (DOD) officials responsible for developing the Strategic Workforce Plan. These include officials from the Strategic Human Capital Planning Office and the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and the military departments. We also met with functional community managers in the information technology, financial management, logistics, and law enforcement communities to determine how each of these communities conducted their strategic workforce planning and how coordination occurred between the various levels of DOD. We selected these four functional communities because they represent three of the largest and one of the smallest functional communities included in the plan. Further, DOD business-systems modernization (information technology), financial management, and DOD supply-chain management (logistics) are on GAO’s High-Risk list. To aid in all aspects of our review, we also met with Office of Personnel Management (OPM) officials to identify relevant policy or guidance to federal agencies. Finally, we found the data contained in DOD’s 2010- 2018 plan to be sufficiently reliable for purposes of assessing efforts in developing and producing civilian strategic workforce plans and providing context of these efforts.

To determine the extent to which DOD assessed existing and future critical skills, competencies, and gaps in its civilian workforce, we reviewed information and data contained in DOD’s 2010-2018 strategic workforce plan to identify which of the functional communities completed these assessments, the methods and tools that the functional communities used to conduct the assessments, and the extent to which the functional communities reported the results of their assessments. We obtained and reviewed existing DOD guidance, including guidance related to any automated systems the department may use to facilitate these assessments. We also obtained and reviewed OPM guidance on conducting assessments of the skills, competencies, and gaps of the federal civilian workforces. This included a review of documents to ascertain how DOD used OPM’s Workforce Analysis Support System and Civilian Forecasting System to develop the department’s civilian- workforce forecasts and projections. Finally, to evaluate the timeliness of DOD’s submissions of its strategic workforce plans, we reviewed GAO’s prior work on DOD’s previous plans as well as our work on internal control standards.

To determine the extent to which DOD assessed its workforces to identify the appropriate mix of military, civilian, and contractor personnel capabilities, we reviewed information and data contained in DOD’s 2010- 2018 strategic workforce plan to identify which functional communities assessed their workforce mix and the process those communities used to carry out their assessments. We also analyzed DOD’s plan to determine the extent to which the plan included an evaluation of the specific capabilities of military, civilian, and contractor personnel. Additionally, we obtained and reviewed DOD guidance on conducting assessments of the appropriateness of the mix of workforces in the federal government.

To determine the extent to which DOD assessed its progress in implementing its strategic workforce plan by using results-oriented performance measures, we reviewed DOD’s 2010-2018 strategic workforce plan to identify the performance measures DOD chose to assess its implementation of its plan. We also obtained and reviewed DOD and OPM guidance on using results-oriented performance measures and then evaluated DOD’s efforts to apply such guidance. We evaluated DOD’s results-oriented performance measures and compared them to the statutory requirements for the plan as identified in the section 115b of Title 10 of the United States Code to determine the extent to which the measures developed addressed the requirements. We also evaluated the performance measures using best practices identified in our previous work to determine their validity and appropriateness.

We conducted this performance audit from July 2011 to September 2012 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Defense

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

Contact

Brenda S. Farrell, (202) 512-3604 or farrellb@gao.gov.

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the individual named above, Marion Gatling, Assistant Director; David Moser, Assistant Director; Jerome Brown; Julie Corwin; Brian Pegram; Richard Powelson, Courtney Reid; Terry L. Richardson; Norris Smith; Jennifer Weber; and Michael Willems made key contributions to this report.

Related GAO Products

Human Capital: Complete Information and More Analysis Needed to Enhance DOD’s Civilian Senior Leader Strategic Workforce Plan. GAO-12-990R. Washington, D.C.: September 19, 2012.

DOD Civilian Workforce: Observations on DOD’s Efforts to Plan for Civilian Workforce Requirements. GAO-12-962T. Washington, D.C.: July 26, 2012.

Defense Acquisition Workforce: Improved Processes, Guidance, and Planning Needed to Enhance Use of Workforce Funds. GAO-12-747R. Washington, D.C.: June 20, 2012.

Defense Acquisitions: Further Actions Needed to Improve Accountability for DOD’s Inventory of Contracted Services. GAO-12-357. Washington, D.C.: April 6, 2012.

Defense Workforce: DOD Needs to Better Oversee In-sourcing Data and Align In-sourcing Efforts with Strategic Workforce Plans. GAO-12-319. Washington, D.C.: February 9, 2012.

DOD Civilian Personnel: Competency Gap Analyses and Other Actions Needed to Enhance DOD’s Strategic Workforce Plans. GAO-11-827T. Washington, D.C.: July 14, 2011.

High-Risk Series: An Update. GAO-11-278. Washington, D.C.: February 16, 2011.

Human Capital: Opportunities Exist for DOD to Enhance Its Approach for Determining Civilian Senior Leader Workforce Needs. GAO-11-136. Washington, D.C.: November 4, 2010.

Human Capital: Further Actions Needed to Enhance DOD’s Civilian Strategic Workforce Plan. GAO-10-814R. Washington, D.C.: September 27, 2010.

Human Capital: Opportunities Exist to Build on Recent Progress to Strengthen DOD’s Civilian Human Capital Strategic Plan. GAO-09-235. Washington, D.C.: February 10, 2009.

Human Capital: The Department of Defense’s Civilian Human Capital Strategic Plan Does Not Meet Most Statutory Requirements. GAO-08-439R. Washington, D.C.: February 6, 2008.

DOD Civilian Personnel: Comprehensive Strategic Workforce Plans Needed. GAO-04-753. Washington, D.C.: June 30, 2004.

Human Capital: Key Principles for Effective Strategic Workforce Planning. GAO-04-39. Washington, D.C.: December 11, 2003.

Human Capital: Strategic Approach Should Guide DOD Civilian Workforce Management. GAO/T-GGD/NSIAD-00-120. Washington, D.C.: March 9, 2000.