The Defense Department has taken steps to develop better information about the skill sets possessed and needed within the department’s military, civilian, and contractor workforces, “but needs to take further actions to complete a workforce mix assessment, improve the methodology for estimating workforce costs, and address skill gaps in critical workforces,” GAO has said.
Those personnel challenges were among the five major challenges facing DoD identified in a report. The others are rebalancing the fighting forces and rebuilding readiness; mitigating threats to cyberspace and expanding cyber capabilities; controlling costs and managing finances; and achieving efficiencies in business operations.
GAO said that DoD will spend nearly $70 billion for its civilian employees in the current fiscal year, along with about $115 billion on contractor-provided services—”although we have raised questions regarding the reliability of DOD’s information on its contractor workforce,” it added.
“As with other large organizations, DoD must compete for talent in the 21st Century, and recruit, develop, promote, and retain a skilled and diverse workforce of service members and civilians. However, DoD, as other federal agencies, faces mission-critical skill gaps that pose a risk to national security and impede the department from cost-effectively serving the public and achieving results. For example, the need for some skill sets, such as cyber, intelligence, maintenance, engineering, disability evaluation, and auditing has increased while the need for other skill sets may decrease over time. Moreover, the changing nature of federal work and a potential wave of employee retirements could produce gaps in leadership and institutional knowledge, which may aggravate the problems created by existing skill gaps,” it said.
It credited DoD with taking steps including: launching a revised performance management program that eventually will apply to the large majority of its civilian employees; guidance that established a common structure for managing and evaluating workforce competency gaps; and an updated cybersecurity workforce plan including steps to address gaps.
