While DHS’s human capital plan for IT is largely consistent with relevant guidance, improvements and implementation steps are still needed, GAO has said after comparing DHS’s plan and supporting documentation with 27 practices in OPM’s human capital assessment and accountability framework, as well as examining implementation activities at three component agencies.
It said the plan fully addresses 15 practices. For example, it provides for developing a complete inventory of existing staff skills, identifying skills that will be needed to reach agency goals, determining skill gaps, and developing plans to address them.
However, steps describing how to achieve human capital goals are often missing milestones, according to GAO-07-425.
It said that while the plan and supporting documentation provides for involving key stakeholders such as the CIO and component human capital directors, to carry out skill gap analyses and other planning activities, the documents fall short by not specifically assigning responsibilities.
DHS officials said some of the missing practices GAO cited were a result of uncertainty surrounding resources for implementing the plan and competing IT priorities, such as consolidating component agency data centers.
Officials from the offices of the CIO and CHCO and from the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, and FEMA said DHS has made limited progress implementing the plan, according to the report, but they also said they continue to follow several of the missing practices as a result of having to report to OMB on progress filling mission-critical positions and delivering key IT training, for example.
