Chapter 2 Background
United States Government Accountability Office
High-performing public organizations have found that maintaining a quality workforce requires them to systematically assess current and future workforce needs and formulate a long-term strategy to attract, retain, develop, and motivate employees.
While simple in theory, strategic planning can be difficult to carry out. Managers must, for example, acquire accurate information on the workforce, set goals for employee performance, and develop ways to measure that performance. According to our previous work, strategic workforce planning should involve certain key principles. Among these principles is the need to involve top management, employees, and other stakeholders in developing, communicating, and implementing a strategic workforce plan. Other principles include determining the critical skills that will be needed, developing strategies to address any gaps in these skills, building the capability needed to address educational and other requirements important to support workforce planning strategies, and monitoring and evaluating progress toward workforce goals.1 However, federal agencies have for years lacked a strategic approach to workforce management. Consequently, since 2001, we have identified human capital management as a high-risk area needing urgent attention and transformation.2OPM provides information and guidance on a wide range of strategies that departments and agencies can use to help strategically plan for and maintain a workforce sufficient to accomplish their missions. This includes standard retention and recruitment payments, such as recruitment incentives and student loan repayments. OPM can also authorize departments to use additional strategies to address workforce shortage situations should standard strategies prove insufficient. For example, OPM can approve higher salaries for individual positions in an occupation if the agency has difficulty staffing a position requiring an extremely high level of expertise that is critical to the agency's successful accomplishment of an important mission.
In addition to maintaining a workforce sufficient for routine functions, departments and agencies are directed by the President to ensure they can carry out essential functions during a “catastrophic event.” Such a catastrophic event is any natural or man-made incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions. To do so, agencies must develop continuity of operation plans for emergencies that disrupt normal operations. Continuity planning includes identifying and establishing procedures to ensure vital resources are safeguarded, available, and accessible to support continuity operations. Vital resources are personnel, equipment, systems, infrastructures, supplies, and other assets required to perform an agency's essential functions. DHS's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides direction to the federal executive branch for developing continuity plans and programs, including pandemic plans.
For one type of catastrophic event, a pandemic that severely reduces the workforce, DHS has developed guidance that identifies specific elements agencies should consider as they plan to maintain essential services and functions. FEMA concluded that planning for a pandemic requires a state of preparedness that goes beyond normal continuity of operations planning. On March 1, 2006, FEMA first issued guidance to assist departments and agencies in identifying special considerations for protecting the health and safety of employees and maintaining essential functions and services during a pandemic. The Implementation Plan for the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza recommends that organizations plan for a 40 percent absenteeism rate at the height of a pandemic. In addition, it called for department and agency pandemic plans to be completed by March 31, 2006.
Departments and agencies must also plan for other events that could place extraordinary demands on their workforce, such as a catastrophic outbreak of a foreign animal disease.
In December 2003, the President issued a Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD-8) to establish national policy to strengthen the preparedness of the United States to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies. As part of its efforts to meet HSPD-8, a White House Homeland Security Council working group developed National Planning Scenarios for 15 major events, including a biological attack with a foreign animal disease, foot-and-mouth disease. According to the scenario, terrorists introduce the disease in several locations and states simultaneously. The transportation of livestock spreads the contagious virus to surrounding states and, within 10 days of the attack, more than half of the states may be affected. Ultimately, almost half the nation's beef, dairy, and swine would be affected. These scenarios serve as the basis for assessing the nation's preparedness for such an event by defining tasks that may be required and the capabilities needed governmentwide to perform these tasks. Although not a prescription for the resources needed to achieve these capabilities, they are intended to help identify such resource needs and guide planning efforts. No single jurisdiction or agency will be expected to perform every task, so the response to a catastrophic event will require coordination among all levels of government. State and local agencies are typically the first to respond, but federal agencies become involved if state resources are overwhelmed. In certain catastrophic events, it becomes the responsibility of DHS to coordinate the federal response.End Notes
1 See GAO-04-39 ; GAO, Human Capital: Insights for U.S. Agencies from Other Countries’
Succession Planning and Management Initiatives, GAO-03-914 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 15, 2003).
2 See GAO-09-271.