The dashboard “is not meeting its intended purpose” for six key agencies reviewed—Justice, State, Treasury, GSA, NSF and SBA—since only GSA was using it, primarily for workforce planning, the GAO said. Image: T. Schneider/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe Cyber Workforce Dashboard, launched in 2023 by OPM to give a government-wide view of federal cyber workforce data and to allow agencies to benchmark their workforce data against other agencies is not much used by agencies, says a GAO report.
The dashboard “is not meeting its intended purpose” for six key agencies reviewed—Justice, State, Treasury, GSA, NSF and SBA—since only GSA was using it, primarily for workforce planning, the GAO said. The others used internally developed reports and applications instead in their cyber workforce planning.
“All six selected agencies reported limitations with the Dashboard, including communications with OPM, access, functionality, and use of data. OPM reported many of the same types of limitations in managing the effort,” the GAO said.
“Further, OPM does not know the extent of non-use by the almost 20 other federal agencies that have access to the Dashboard. Additionally, OPM has not solicited feedback on it . . . Without information on the extent of use among the more than 20 federal agencies, OPM is limited in knowing whether it should continue or terminate the effort,” it said.
GAO pointed to its prior reports showing that the “federal government faces a persistent shortage of cyber and IT professionals” and that its most recent high-risk report “identified four major cybersecurity challenges and 10 critical actions that federal agencies need to take to address them. One of these actions was to address cyber workforce management challenges.” The issue also has been the subject of several laws and numerous sets of guidance from OPM, the White House and NIST over the last decade, it noted.
In response to a recommendation to collect and analyze information on use of the dashboard and decide to either abolish it or continue offering it to agencies with improvements, OPM said it would reevaluate it in light of the recent launch of a revised site of overall federal workforce data.
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