We recently issued an exposure draft of an assessment guide that introduces a framework for evaluating a federal agency’s training and development efforts. This assessment guide consists of a set of principles and key questions that federal agencies can use to ensure that their training and development investments are targeted strategically and are not wasted on efforts that are irrelevant, duplicative, or ineffective. As detailed in our assessment guide, the training and development process can loosely be segmented into four broad, interrelated components: (1) planning/front- end analysis, (2) design/development, (3) implementation, and (4) evaluation. Figure 1 depicts an overview of this process along with the general relationships between the four components that help to produce a strategic approach to federal agencies’ training and development efforts. Although these components can be discussed separately, they are not mutually exclusive and encompass subcomponents that may blend with one another. For instance, evaluation is an integral part of the planning/front-end analysis as agencies strive to reach agreement up front on how the success of various strategies to improve performance, including training and development efforts, will be assessed. As noted in the assessment guide, agencies can build on lessons learned and performance data and feedback from previous experiences. This report can provide a starting point for agencies to use to build on the experiences and lessons learned by the five agencies we reviewed as part of their efforts to design and develop training and development programs. (See app. II for a description of the five agencies included in this study.) Our assessment guide also summarizes our observations on the core characteristics that make a training and development process effective and strategically focused on achieving results. These eight core characteristics are described in more detail in appendix III, and include leadership commitment and communication, partnerships and learning from others, data quality assurance, and continuous performance improvement. A concerted effort to integrate these core characteristics can further an agency's efforts to continually improve its training and development process. Federal agencies face diverse challenges in their efforts to identify and measure the skills and competencies that their employees must possess to support missions and goals. Officials from the five agencies in our review recognized the importance of assessing the need for specific skills and competencies now and in the future in order to identify related workforce training needs. These agencies generally focused on the desired performance of the agency and its employees, determined the difference between the desired and actual skill levels, and attempted to identify the key factors contributing to performance, including the need for enhanced workforce competencies. Officials used a variety of approaches and tools to assist in determining the human capital skills and competencies that are critical to achieving their long-term goals. An agency’s ultimate goal in undertaking training and development efforts is, of course, to optimize employee and organizational performance. To help ensure that each training program is linked to improving individual and agency performance, agencies first need to analyze their strategic and performance goals so that they can determine where training and development can most effectively enhance goal achievement. Organizations can evaluate the extent to which human capital approaches support their accomplishment of current, emerging, and future strategic goals through the use of workforce planning. Workforce planning focuses on determining the skills and competencies needed now and in the future to meet the agency’s goals; identifying the current and projected level of the skills and competencies of the workforce; and crafting strategies for acquiring, developing, and retaining people to address any identified needs. These needs include the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for the agency to pursue its current and future mission as well as the size of the workforce and its deployment across the organization. After identifying the skills and competencies that employees need now or in the future, agencies must tackle the challenge of determining what combination of strategies to use, such as hiring new employees with needed skills and competencies, relying on outsourcing, and/or enhancing employees’ skills and competencies through training and development. While agencies’ approaches to workforce planning will vary, we have identified the need for a strategic workforce planning process to ensure that each agency’s human capital program capitalizes on its workforce’s strengths and addresses related challenges in a manner that is clearly linked to achieving the agency’s missions and goals. Figure 2 presents a model of this strategic workforce planning process. The focus in this report is on the workforce strategies that involve the design of training and development programs. The five agencies used several approaches to design training and development programs that focused on skills and competencies their assessments indicated needed enhanced attention. One common approach that officials used to help identify training needs was interviewing or surveying managers, supervisors, and employees. Agencies also established councils and held conferences, made comparisons with leading organizations through benchmarking, and analyzed workforce data and trends. OPM’s 2001 skills assessment, for example, relied on a survey of agency managers and supervisors. Officials used the survey results to identify the most important occupational competencies needed to achieve OPM’s mission, the level at which employees possessed those competencies, and the level at which they would be needed in the future. Their analysis identified minor gaps in the level of competencies needed for both current and future work in mission critical occupations. In addition, the analysis pointed out more serious developmental needs for OPM’s retirement and insurance benefits specialists. These needs were related to the changing role of these specialists, who increasingly need to work more closely with clients in responding to complex issues. Also in 2001, IRS established a workforce planning council consisting of senior management representatives from each of the agency’s operating divisions. IRS officials told us that this council has become the primary vehicle for communicating workforce planning information among IRS’s four operating divisions. At FWS, the human resources office hosted a 3- day workforce planning conference in 2002 to draw on the experience and expertise of agency personnel in identifying critical workforce issues for the agency for the next 3 to 5 years. Managers and program experts representing all eight major FWS program offices, seven field regions, and headquarters offices participated. Agencies also compared their performance and needed skills and competencies with leading organizations through benchmarking. In August 2000, VHA commissioned an internal task force charged with developing a well-defined, comprehensive succession plan for the agency. The ideas garnered from benchmarking led to VHA establishing an expectation for agency leaders to help identify and train their successors. The task force’s December 2001 report presented a comprehensive succession plan for VHA, and implementing a comprehensive leadership development program was one of the six major components of this plan. Agency officials also analyzed workforce data to assess skills and help identify training needs. Generally, they collected information on employee demographics and retirement eligibility and used these data to project attrition and retirement rates. OPM officials, for example, collected and analyzed attrition and turnover data on the agency’s senior executives along with the distribution of current executives by unit and projected retirements through 2010. They also collected and analyzed data on hires, separations, and workforce diversity across the agency. As part of this analysis, officials assessed the agency’s use of contractors and considered how sourcing alternatives could affect OPM’s plans for hiring, training, and development. Officials from the five agencies told us that they used a wide range of resources and tools to assess skills and competencies as part of identifying and designing needed training and development programs. They used workforce planning models; assessed the workforce in view of organizational, occupational, and unit-based competency standards; conducted knowledge and skills inventories; and evaluated job performance appraisals and information from individual development plans (IDP). To identify needed executive competencies, for example, OPM used a five-step workforce planning model that it had developed in its role of providing human capital tools for use by other federal agencies (see fig. 3). The resulting analysis called for enhancing leadership development within OPM. Officials said that their agencies have transitioned, or are in the process of transitioning, to more comprehensive, consistent planning approaches. This transition is coming about as agencies attempt to institutionalize their workforce planning efforts as part of their ongoing strategic planning and budgeting processes. In 2002, FWS conducted its first formal, agencywide workforce planning process. Although FWS initially employed a contractor to help develop a permanent workforce planning process, it plans to continue to manage it in-house. This workforce planning process is to be implemented on a 2-year cycle that is integrated with the agency’s strategic planning and budgeting processes. By considering the viewpoints of a range of stakeholders and candidly and openly assessing progress toward meeting their goals, agencies can help ensure that their strategic and annual performance planning processes adequately reflect current ideas, policies, and practices in the field. Agencies continue to integrate workforce planning into these other planning processes. It is important to note that a wide variety of strategies other than training and development are also available to agency leaders as they attempt to transform their cultures and operations. Training and development is not always the best solution—reengineering processes or other actions may be needed to build an environment that effectively supports performance. In addition, training and development strategies frequently need to be implemented in conjunction with other initiatives, given that the day-to-day environment and organizational culture may also need to change to enable employees to successfully use new skills or competencies on the job. Our review identified four lessons learned by the agencies related to assessing skills and competencies to identify, focus, and prioritize training needs. Lesson learned: Involve key stakeholders and benchmark with other organizations when identifying skills and competencies to help ensure that training and development programs are aligned with current and emerging needs and business practices. Organizations in the private and public sectors have increasingly turned to developing competency models that outline behaviorally defined skills and competencies employees should possess and that can be tied directly to training and development plans and programs. We have found that an effective performance management system uses competencies to provide a fuller assessment of performance.