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Department of Homeland Security: Strategic Management of Training Important for Successful Transformation

GAO-05-888 Published: Sep 23, 2005. Publicly Released: Sep 23, 2005.
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Highlights

Training can play a key role in helping the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) successfully address the challenge of transformation and cultural change and help ensure that its workforce possesses the knowledge and skills needed to effectively respond to current and future threats. This report discusses (1) how DHS is addressing or planning to address departmentwide training and the related challenges it is encountering; (2) examples of how DHS training practices, specifically those related to planning and evaluation, reflect strategic practices; and (3) examples of how DHS uses training to foster transformation and cultural change.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Homeland Security To help DHS establish and implement an effective and strategic approach to departmentwide training, the Secretary of Homeland Security should adopt additional good strategic planning and management practices to enhance the department's training strategic plan by (1) creating a clearer crosswalk between specific training goals and objectives and DHS's organizational and human capital strategic goals and (2) developing appropriate training performance measures and targets.
Closed – Not Implemented
The Department of Homeland Security has addressed part of this recommendation but not all parts. Responding to the first part of this recommendation, DHS has considerably clarified the crosswalk between its current training goals and objectives and the department's broader organizational and human capital goals in the FY 2009-2013 Training Leaders Council Strategic Plan and DHS Learning and Development Strategy. Both documents provide a road map to help readers to link DHS's approach towards developing and delivering departmentwide training with key organizational planning documents such as the DHS Human Capital Strategic Plan and the DHS Strategic Plan as well as the goals and objectives they contain. On the other hand, the department has not provided evidence of similar progress involving the development of appropriate training performance measures and targets.
Department of Homeland Security To help DHS establish and implement an effective and strategic approach to departmentwide training, the Secretary of Homeland Security should clearly specify authority and accountability relationships between the Chief Human Capital Officer office and organizational components regarding training as a first step to addressing issues DHS has identified for fiscal year 2006.
Closed – Implemented
The Department of Homeland Security has addressed this recommendation in two ways. First, DHS has substantially revised the two-page Management Directive (MD 3210) referenced in GAO-05-888 to more clearly specify authority and accountability relationships. The revised directive (renamed MD 258-01, "Employee Training, Education, and Development") currently appears in the department's management directive guidance database and significantly clarifies roles, responsibilities, policy, and procedures regarding the training function at DHS. Second, the FY 2009-2013 Training Leaders Council Strategic Plan provides information specifying the role played by the Training Leaders Council and how the council works with other DHS offices/components to address DHS's training goals and objectives. This document is signed (and thereby endorsed) by 18 key DHS training executives who are also members of the council.
Department of Homeland Security To help DHS establish and implement an effective and strategic approach to departmentwide training, the Secretary of Homeland Security should ensure that the department and component organizations develop detailed implementation plans and related processes for training initiatives.
Closed – Implemented
In GAO-05-888 we noted that because of the department's "dual accountability" governance structure, departmentwide training efforts can present special challenges that make detailed implementation plans particularly important. The DHS Training Leaders Council Strategic Plan for FY 2009-2013 includes an appendix that provides a detailed implementation plan. The appendix identifies specific actions, activities, and key milestones needed to achieve specific goals and objectives. In this regard, the FY 2009-2013 strategic plan represents a significant improvement over the FY 2006-2010 plan we reviewed while conducting our work. The DHS National Security Professional Development Implementation Plan, issued in October of 2008, provides another example of a key departmental training plan that devotes considerable space to the details of implementation including governance and accountability, specific actions and timeframes, and resources required.
Department of Homeland Security To help DHS establish and implement an effective and strategic approach to departmentwide training, the Secretary of Homeland Security should, when setting funding priorities, give appropriate attention to providing resources to support training councils and groups to further DHS's capacity to achieve its departmentwide training goals.
Closed – Implemented
The Department of Homeland Security has addressed this recommendation by significantly increasing departmental training resources to provide DHS with additional capacity to achieve departmentwide training goals and objectives. As we reported in GAO-05-888, when we started our review DHS had only one FTE dedicated to carrying out all of its training initiatives at the departmental level and that this number increased to a total of three FTEs by the end of our study. An August 2009 organizational staffing chart of DHS's enterprise learning and development function shows more than 25 FTEs are allocated to work on departmentwide training goals and activities. According to DHS's Chief Learning Officer (CLO), these FTEs are assisted by approximately 20 contractors. Both the DHS CLO and the Deputy CLO stated that the current level of resources provides a considerable improvement in capacity over what was available at the time of our review, and represents a level that allows the department to make progress toward achieving its training goals.

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Topics

Employee trainingHomeland securityHuman capital managementInternal controlsOrganizational changePerformance measuresPolicy evaluationStrategic planningTraining utilizationHuman resources management