The Office of Personnel Management maintains USAJOBS—a website for posting federal job opportunities from across the government. USAJOBS connects federal agencies with job seekers and facilitates the transfer and merit-based promotions of current federal employees. Since the redesign of USAJOBS in 2016, OPM has assessed and enhanced the user experience with the website. For example, OPM added in...

A 2009 executive order called for actions to increase veteran employment in the federal government. But concerns have been raised about the retention and job satisfaction of newly hired veterans. We found that, compared to similar non-veterans, veterans: Left government jobs at a higher rate (6.7% vs. 5%) between FYs 2014-2018Resigned 1.6 times more oftenLeft in their first 5 years at higher rates...

Technology, demographics, and attitudes toward work are evolving. But federal government employment policies were designed generations ago. As a result, the government may struggle to compete for talented workers—which is one reason why federal human capital management is on our High Risk list. We testified on talent management strategies. For example, agencies can: Assess skills gaps to ensur...

Technology, demographics, and attitudes toward work are evolving in the private and public sectors. But federal government employment policies were designed decades ago. As a result, the government may struggle to compete for talented workers—which is one reason why federal human capital management is an issue on our High Risk list. We testified about the state of the federal civil service and...

Benefits associated with telework programs include continuity of operations and reduced employee absences, based on GAO's literature review and the experiences of six selected agencies. The benefits most frequently cited by the selected agencies—the Department of Transportation (DOT), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), General Services Administra...

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...

Agencies' use of reemployed annuitants has increased, with the number of on-board retired uniformed and civil service annuitants increasing from over 95,000 in fiscal year 2004 to around 171,000 in fiscal year 2013 (from about 5 percent to 8 percent of the federal workforce). This is inclusive of reemployed annuitants with and without dual compensation waivers. The Department of Defense (DOD) acco...

From 2004 to 2012, the federal non-postal civilian workforce grew by 258,882 employees, from 1.88 million to 2.13 million (14 percent). Permanent career employees accounted for most of the growth, increasing by 256,718 employees, from 1.7 million in 2004 to 1.96 million in 2012 (15 percent). Three agencies--the Departments of Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Veterans Affairs (VA)--accou...

The National Mediation Board (NMB) recently updated its strategic plan but is not meeting some federal strategic planning and performance measurement requirements. NMB missed deadlines for updating its strategic plan and lacks performance measures to assess its progress in meeting its goals, even though an agency's strategic plan should form the basis for everything an agency does.NMB also lacks s...

All seven of the agencies in GAO's review--U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Transportation Security Administration--have written policies supporting an employee's ability to earn and use compensatory time off for r...