Progress is still hampered by OPM’s own skills gaps in positions needed to aid other agencies on the issue. Image: Rob Wilson/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffPersistent shortages of federal employees with needed skills in areas such as HR, STEM, cybersecurity and acquisition once again kept what the GAO calls strategic human capital management on its high-risk list, continuing an unbroken string in those biennial reports that started in 2001.
“Agencies often experience skills gaps because of a shortfall in a talent management activity, such as workforce planning or training . . . For more than two decades, we have designated strategic human capital management as a government-wide high-risk area in part because of the need to address current and emerging skills gaps that are undermining agencies’ abilities to meet their missions,” the report says.
“Our prior work indicates that progress to close skills gaps will require demonstrated improvements in agencies’ capacity to perform workforce planning, foster employee engagement, train staff effectively, and recruit and retain the appropriate number of staff with the necessary skills,” it says, adding that those problems contribute to 22 of the other 36 areas on the high-risk list.
GAO said there was some improvement in one aspect of the skills gaps issue, leadership commitment, because since the prior report an OPM director was confirmed after five years of only acting leaders and the Biden administration included strengthening and empowering the federal workforce in its President’s Management Agenda.
However, it said progress is still hampered by OPM’s own skills gaps in positions needed to aid other agencies on the issue and a lack of an action plan to address them.
The report added that 138 recommendations it has made involving skills gaps—28 of them to OPM and the rest to individual agencies—remain open.
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