Outmoded approaches to personnel functions such as job classification, pay, and performance management are hampering the ability of agencies to recruit, retain, and develop employees. At the same time, agency operations are being deeply affected by a set of evolving trends in federal work, including how work is done and the skills that employees need to accomplish agency missions. Given these cha

GAO, along with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and individual agencies, has identified skills gaps in numerous government-wide occupations. According to GAO's 2019 analysis of federal high-risk areas, skills gaps played a role in 17 of the 35 high-risk areas. Causes vary but these skills gaps often occur due to shortfalls in one or more talent management activities such as robust workfo

From 2006 through 2014, government-wide engagement levels--as measured by the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) Employee Engagement Index (EEI)--increased to an estimated high of 67 percent in 2011 and then declined to an estimated 63 percent in 2014. This decline is attributable to several large agencies--including the Department of Defense--bringing down the government-wide average. The go

In summary, the six agencies we reviewed made very little use of the NDAA waiver authority in fiscal years 2010 and 2011. The Department of Treasury made the most, although still very little, use of the waiver authority in both fiscal years--167 waivers in fiscal year 2010 and 214 waivers in fiscal year 2011. Agency officials told us that their agencies used a combination of NDAA and other waiver

(1) Significant overall progress has been made to improve timeliness, largely due to DOD, which comprises the vast majority of clearances. IRTPA established an objective for each authorized adjudicative agency to "make a determination on at least 90 percent of all applications for a personnel security clearance within an average of 60 days from the date of receipt of the completed application by

Although policies concerning compensation for deployed civilians are generally comparable across agencies, GAO found some issues that affect the amount of compensation--depending on such things as the agency's pay system or the employee's grade/band--and the accuracy, timeliness, and completeness of this compensation. For example, two civilian supervisors with comparable salaries who deploy under

The federal government lacks a comprehensive understanding of the sufficiency of its veterinarian workforce. More specifically, four of five component agencies GAO reviewed have assessed the sufficiency of their veterinarian workforce to perform routine activities and have identified current or future concerns. This includes USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS), Food Safety

On the basis of data submitted by the 41 departments and agencies and our discussions with them, 77 individuals holding noncareer positions were converted to career positions during the 32 months from May 1, 2001, through December 31, 2003. These conversions were reported by 18 of the 41 departments and agencies we surveyed. The other 23 departments and agencies reported no conversions during thi

GAO identified important lessons learned from five federal agencies' experiences in designing training and development programs for their employees that could be useful to other agencies facing similar challenges. These lessons learned are related to the following three areas. Assessing Agency Skill Requirements and Identifying Training Needs: The agencies used a variety of approaches to assess c

The executive branch agencies GAO reviewed have taken key actions to integrate their human capital approaches with their strategies for accomplishing organizational missions and to shift the focus of their human capital office from primarily compliance activities to consulting activities. Agency leaders included human capital leaders in key agency strategic planning and decision making and, as a