High-performing public organizations have found that maintaining a quality workforce requires them to systematically assess current and future workforce needs and formulate a long-term strategy to attract, retain, develop, and motivate employees. While simple in theory, strategic planning can be difficult to carry out. Managers must, for example, acquire accurate information on the workforce, set goals for employee performance, and develop ways to measure that performance. According to our previous work, strategic workforce planning should involve certain key principles. Among these principles is the need to involve top management, employees, and other stakeholders in developing, communicating, and implementing a strategic workforce plan. Other principles include determining the critical skills that will be needed, developing strategies to address any gaps in these skills, building the capability needed to address educational and other requirements important to support workforce planning strategies, and monitoring and evaluating progress toward workforce goals. However, federal agencies have for years lacked a strategic approach to workforce management. Consequently, since 2001, we have identified human capital management as a high-risk area needing urgent attention and transformation. OPM provides information and guidance on a wide range of strategies that departments and agencies can use to help strategically plan for and maintain a workforce sufficient to accomplish their missions. This includes standard retention and recruitment payments, such as recruitment incentives and student loan repayments. OPM can also authorize departments to use additional strategies to address workforce shortage situations should standard strategies prove insufficient. For example, OPM can approve higher salaries for individual positions in an occupation if the agency has difficulty staffing a position requiring an extremely high level of expertise that is critical to the agency’s successful accomplishment of an important mission. In addition to maintaining a workforce sufficient for routine functions, departments and agencies are directed by the President to ensure they can carry out essential functions during a “catastrophic event.” Such a catastrophic event is any natural or man-made incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions. To do so, agencies must develop continuity of operation plans for emergencies that disrupt normal operations. Continuity planning includes identifying and establishing procedures to ensure vital resources are safeguarded, available, and accessible to support continuity operations. Vital resources are personnel, equipment, systems, infrastructures, supplies, and other assets required to perform an agency’s essential functions. DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides direction to the federal executive branch for developing continuity plans and programs, including pandemic plans. For one type of catastrophic event, a pandemic that severely reduces the workforce, DHS has developed guidance that identifies specific elements agencies should consider as they plan to maintain essential services and functions. FEMA concluded that planning for a pandemic requires a state of preparedness that goes beyond normal continuity of operations planning. On March 1, 2006, FEMA first issued guidance to assist departments and agencies in identifying special considerations for protecting the health and safety of employees and maintaining essential functions and services during a pandemic. The Implementation Plan for the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza recommends that organizations plan for a 40 percent absenteeism rate at the height of a pandemic. In addition, it called for department and agency pandemic plans to be completed by March 31, 2006. Departments and agencies must also plan for other events that could place extraordinary demands on their workforce, such as a catastrophic outbreak of a foreign animal disease. In December 2003, the President issued a Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD-8) to establish national policy to strengthen the preparedness of the United States to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies. As part of its efforts to meet HSPD-8, a White House Homeland Security Council working group developed National Planning Scenarios for 15 major events, including a biological attack with a foreign animal disease, foot-and-mouth disease. According to the scenario, terrorists introduce the disease in several locations and states simultaneously. The transportation of livestock spreads the contagious virus to surrounding states and, within 10 days of the attack, more than half of the states may be affected. Ultimately, almost half the nation’s beef, dairy, and swine would be affected. These scenarios serve as the basis for assessing the nation’s preparedness for such an event by defining tasks that may be required and the capabilities needed governmentwide to perform these tasks. Although not a prescription for the resources needed to achieve these capabilities, they are intended to help identify such resource needs and guide planning efforts. No single jurisdiction or agency will be expected to perform every task, so the response to a catastrophic event will require coordination among all levels of government. State and local agencies are typically the first to respond, but federal agencies become involved if state resources are overwhelmed. In certain catastrophic events, it becomes the responsibility of DHS to coordinate the federal response. Four of the five key agencies that employ veterinarians—APHIS, FSIS, ARS, and Army—regularly assess the sufficiency of their veterinarian workforces for routine program activities, and all four identified existing or potential shortages. FDA does not perform such assessments. At the department level, USDA and HHS have not assessed their veterinarian workforces across their component agencies, whereas DOD has delegated this task to the Army. Finally, there is no governmentwide assessment of the veterinarian workforce. Specifically, OPM has not conducted a governmentwide effort to address current and future veterinarian shortages identified by component agencies, and efforts by the Congress to address the national shortage have thus far had minimal impact. APHIS, FSIS, ARS, and Army conduct regular workforce assessments. While APHIS reported it does not currently have a shortage, it identified a potential future shortage. FSIS, ARS, and Army have identified both existing and potential future shortages. FDA does not conduct such assessments, but officials there told us the veterinarian workforce is adequate to meet its responsibilities. Our work has shown that agencies should be held accountable for the ongoing monitoring and refinement of human capital approaches to recruit and hire a capable and committed federal workforce. APHIS reported that none of its six units that employ veterinarians has identified a current shortage, but officials told us they are concerned about the future size and skills of the veterinarian workforce. First, the agency reported that 30 percent of its veterinarians will be eligible to retire by the end of fiscal year 2011, potentially creating a serious shortage. This is consistent with our previous work where we reported that one-third of federal career employees on board at the end of fiscal year 2007 are eligible to retire between spring 2008 and 2012. In addition, APHIS is concerned that it will be unable to maintain an adequate workforce of veterinary pathologists. This is consistent with a report by the United States Animal Health Association, which found a shortage of over 40 percent nationwide. An APHIS laboratory director told us that veterinary pathologists are integral to work conducted in APHIS diagnostic laboratories, including work on diseases that threaten animal and human health. For example, APHIS veterinary pathologists work on bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a fatal degenerative disease—commonly known as mad cow disease—that has been linked to at least 165 human deaths worldwide. APHIS also identified a need to maintain a veterinarian workforce with sufficient expertise to help protect livestock and the nation’s food supply from foreign animal diseases. We reported in 2005 that many U.S. veterinarians lack the training needed to identify such diseases, whether naturally or intentionally introduced. Finally, after the terrorist attacks of 2001, USDA’s responsibilities were broadened to enhance the ability of the United States to manage domestic incidents. As such, in addition to being the lead for coordinating any response efforts to incidents involving an animal disease, APHIS will now also play a supporting role in incidents not directly related to animal diseases. For example, APHIS veterinarians may be called upon to assist in ensuring the safety and security of the commercial food supply or for caring for livestock stranded in hurricanes and floods. These increased responsibilities raise concerns about the ability of veterinarians to respond to multiple, simultaneous events, according to agency officials. APHIS has supported training opportunities to help overcome some of these projected skill gaps. The agency has also set a goal of recruiting at all veterinary colleges and working with universities to help them include relevant training in their course offerings. In addition, APHIS uses bonuses to attract and maintain its veterinarian workforce. During the first 9 months of fiscal year 2008, it provided one retention and one relocation bonus to veterinarians, totaling $41,654. Over the past decade, FSIS has not had a sufficient number of veterinarians and remains unable to overcome this shortage, according to FSIS officials. The agency’s goal was to have 1,134 veterinarians on staff in fiscal year 2008, but it fell short of that by 166 veterinarians, or 15 percent. Moreover, since fiscal year 2003, the FSIS veterinarian workforce has decreased by nearly 10 percent—from 1,073 to 968. The majority of these veterinarians work in slaughter plants. Federal law prohibits slaughtering livestock or poultry at a plant that prepares the livestock or poultry for human consumption for use in interstate commerce unless the animals have been examined by USDA inspectors and requires the humane slaughtering and handling of livestock at such plants. In implementing federal law, each slaughter plant is covered by one or more FSIS veterinarians to, among other things, ensure the safety and quality of meat and poultry products and the humane treatment of livestock during slaughter. Agency data from the past 5 years reveal that vacancy rates for veterinarian positions in slaughter plants vary by location and year, from no vacancy to as many as 35 percent of the positions vacant. FSIS headquarters officials and veterinarians working in slaughter plants differed on the impact of this shortage.