Improved oversight and controls could help the Department of Education manage expanded responsibilities and evolving program priorities, GAO has said.
It said the department in recent years has faced a large increase in the amount of grant funding – up 36 percent from 2000 to 2008 – and programs that it is responsible for managing.
It also has to administer new programs under the Recovery Act, and a new emphasis on competitive programs may change job requirements for grants managers and increase demands on staff to monitor these programs, according to GAO-11-194.
It said that while Education has improved its strategic workforce planning and performance management systems, it lacks workload data and sufficient oversight of performance standards and appraisals.
Further, Education has addressed many key elements of effective strategic workforce planning but a lack of reliable data on workload has limited the ability of the agency to accurately estimate resource needs and inform workforce-planning efforts, said GAO.
It called on the department to take steps to better estimate workloads, strengthen safeguards over its performance management system, properly implement established contract monitoring guidelines, and improve its management controls over IT resources, all of which Education reportedly agreed to do.
