The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has improved its human capital planning, but it needs a strategic view of its contractor workforce, GAO has said after interviewing officials and analyzing agency data and documents.
It said the agency has experienced an expanding workload due to emerging health threats, bio-terrorism among them, and that strategic planning could help sustain a workforce with the necessary education, skills, and competencies.
GAO identified six key challenges CDC faces in its efforts to sustain a skilled workforce to fulfill its mission and goals. However, it said the CDC’s strategic human capital management plan, issued in 2007, is a step in the right direction and could help address five of those challenges.
According to GAO-08-582, those challenges are: the retirement of essential personnel; high demand for public health professionals; a need to increase workforce diversity; the agency’s expanding scope of work and responsibilities; logistical difficulties involved in acquiring and retaining a skilled workforce; and, difficulties presented by managing a workforce with a large and growing number of contractors.
Contractors make up over a third of the CDC workforce, but the strategic plan does not encompass them, GAO said, adding that the plan only partially meets the criteria for strategic alignment, in that the strategies in it are linked with the agency’s mission and goals, but they are not integrated with the documents that serve as the strategic plan, performance plan, or budget.
CDC said it would integrate the documents as part of its annual update of the plan.
GAO praised the agency for involving managers, other employees, and stakeholders in developing, communicating, and implementing the human capital plan, and CDC said it intends to involve other employees in implementing future updates.
