GAO Raps DoD Performance in Drawdown

The reduction of Defense Department civilian employees between 1989 and 2002 was done “without proactively shaping the civilian workforce to ensure that it had the specific skills and competencies needed to accomplish future DoD missions,” the General Accounting Office has reported (GAO-04-753). DoD reduced its workforce by about 38 percent during that time, due mainly to downsizing, base closings, contracting out and mission changes, GAO said. The current DoD workforce is older and more experienced than at the outset-due largely to hiring restrictions and layoff protections for older workers-but 57 percent of the workforce will be eligible for regular or early retirement in the next five years. However, the military services and DoD agencies still lack information about the competencies of their workers and without that information it will not be able to shape its workforce to accomplish future missions, GAO said. DoD officials told GAO that they recognize the problem and are taking steps to address it, but GAO noted that it and other organizations have pointed out the same issue in the past.