Summary: During its downsizing in the early 1990s, the Department of Defense (DOD) did not focus on strategically reshaping its civilian workforce. GAO was asked to address DOD's efforts to strategically plan for its future civilian workforce at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the military services' headquarters, and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). Specifically, GAO determined: (1) the extent to which civilian strategic workforce plans have been developed and implemented to address future civilian workforce requirements, and (2) the major challenges affecting the development and implementation of these plans.
OSD, the service headquarters, and DLA have recently taken steps to develop and implement civilian strategic workforce plans to address future civilian workforce needs, but these plans generally lack some key elements essential to successful workforce planning. As a result, OSD, the military services' headquarters, and DLA--herein referred to as DOD and the components--do not have comprehensive strategic workforce plans to guide their human capital efforts. None of the plans included analyses of the gaps between critical skills and competencies (a set of behaviors that are critical to work accomplishment) currently needed by the workforce and those that will be needed in the future. Without including gap analyses, DOD and the components may not be able to effectively design strategies to hire, develop, and retain the best possible workforce. Furthermore, none of the plans contained results-oriented performance measures that could provide the data necessary to assess the outcomes of civilian human capital initiatives. The major challenge that DOD and most of the components face in their efforts to develop and implement strategic workforce plans is their need for information on current competencies and those that will likely be needed in the future. This problem results from DOD's and the components' not having developed tools to collect and/or store, and manage data on workforce competencies. Without this information, it not clear whether they are designing and funding workforce strategies that will effectively shape their civilian workforces with the appropriate competencies needed to accomplish future DOD missions. Senior department and component officials all acknowledged this shortfall and told us that they are taking steps to address this challenge. Though these are steps in the right direction, the lack of information on current competencies and future needs is a continuing problem that several organizations, including GAO, have previously identified.
