USAID’s five-year workforce plan for fiscal 2009 – 2013 discusses the agency’s challenges and the steps it has taken and plans to take to strengthen its workforce, but the plan lacks key elements critical to strategic workforce planning, GAO has said.
For example, the plan generally excludes the personal services contractors it often relies on abroad, and the plan is not comprehensive in its analysis of workforce and competency gaps, according to GAO-10-496.
It said USAID has not fully met its Foreign Service hiring targets nor developed plans for how it will meet its hiring goals, and that it has not planned the required overseas training assignments for all new hires to help ensure that missions have the necessary resources and mentors.
USAID’s workforce declined 2.7 percent from 2004 – 2009, while the agency has seen its budget increased 92 percent to $17.9 billion and the agency faces workforce gaps and vacancies at the six missions GAO visited.
Mission officials attribute the gaps to recruiting difficulties and the need for staff in priority countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but according to GAO, USAID makes the problem worse by not having a sufficiently reliable and comprehensive system to record the number, location, and occupations of its staff.
Finally, while the processes USAID must use to plan for the placement of its overseas staff require coordination with the State Department, the agency has not consistently developed and shared its plans for the numbers and specific locations for these assignments, said GAO.
