GAO has identified three broad recurring human capital challenges and strategies to address them after convening a forum of CHCOs asked about difficulties they face trying to maintain workforce capacity, especially in the face of tight budgets.
For example, GAO found that the federal human capital community is highly fragmented with multiple actors inside government informing and executing personnel policies and initiatives in ways that are not always aligned with broader, government-wide human capital efforts. CHCOs said the CHCO Council was not carrying out its responsibility to improve coordination across federal agencies on personnel issues as effectively as it could.
Human capital decisions are often made in an uncoordinated manner, and within agencies, CHCOs and the human capital staff are sometimes excluded from key agency decisions, according to GAO-14-168.
It said another consensus that emerged was that enterprise solutions could be leveraged more than they are to address shared challenges. The CHCOs highlighted HR IT and strategic workforce planning as two areas that are ripe for government-wide collaboration.
