Human Capital: Building Diversity in GAO's Senior Executive Service

A high-performance organization relies on a dynamic workforce with the requisite talents, multidisciplinary knowledge, and up-todate skills to ensure that it is equipped to accomplish its mission and achieve its goals. For GAO having a diverse workforce and Senior Executive Service (SES)corps is an organizational strength that contributes to the achievement of results by bringing a wider variety of perspectives and approaches to policy development and implementation, strategic planning, problem solving, and decision making. The Office of Opportunity and Inclusiveness (O&I) was created by the Comptroller General in 2001 to transform the agency's diversity management practices. As such O&I is the principal adviser to the Comptroller General on diversity and equal opportunity matter. The subcommittee asked us to provide information on the diversity of GAO's Senior Executive Service and the agency's succession planning efforts. This testimony focuses on the diversity of GAO's workforce and leadership team and our efforts and processes for building and maintaining diversity in our SES and throughout our workforce.