The National Academy of Public Administration has called on NASA to adopt a knowledge-based, data-driven strategy to better align its multi-sector workforce of civil servants and contractors.
The panel said such a workforce could demonstrate the public sector’s agility to adapt quickly to changing mission requirements, and the panel’s 200-plus page report includes tools to help the agency to determine how best to adjust the size and skill level of its workforce.
The report recommends using a comprehensive framework to assess NASA field centers annually, integrating acquisition and workforce planning at the highest levels, formalizing processes and metrics for workforce decisions, maximizing existing human capital flexibilities as well as looking for new ones.
Given budget constraints, changed priorities and ongoing scientific advances, NASA’s senior managers must have the early opportunity to shape decisions, which will contribute to an integrated process and analytic rigor for a strategic approach, according to the report.
It said the agency also needs a consistent, formal and transparent process for deciding when to hire a civil servant or buy a contractor’s services, the lack of which works against efforts to reshape the workforce strategically, and a lack of transparency also harms the agency’s credibility.
The panel concluded that the contractor workforce must be taken into account along with the civil service workforce, and that there are currently few links between acquisition planning and civil service workforce planning.
However, it called a new approach proposed by the agency’s human capital office to strengthen workforce development a positive move, noting that the governance structure would include leaders from Institutions and Management, to which OHCM and Procurement both report.
