Dhs Strategic Workforce Planning: Oversight of Departmentwide Efforts Should Be Strengthened: Gao-13-65 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781287202691)

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken some relatively recent steps to enhance strategic workforce planning across the department. These steps are generally consistent with leading principles, but the department has not yet implemented an effective oversight approach for monitoring and evaluating components' progress. Specifically, recent steps DHS has taken to develop and implement strategic workforce planning efforts are consistent with the leading principles GAO has reported that include involving management and stakeholders, identifying skills and competencies, developing strategies to fill gaps, and building capability through training. For example, the department demonstrated stakeholder involvement by including component-level stakeholders in the development of the DHS Workforce Strategy. Though DHS has taken steps to implement strategic workforce planning, recent internal audits, as well as GAO's previous work, identified challenges related to workforce planning at the component level that could impair the continued implementation of recently initiated strategic workforce planning efforts. For example, GAO reported in July 2009 that the Federal Protective Service's (FPS) workforce planning was limited because FPS headquarters did not collect data on its workforce's knowledge, skills, and abilities and subsequently could not determine optimal staffing levels or determine how to modify its workforce planning strategies accordingly, amongst others. GAO recommended that FPS take steps to address these issues. FPS officials agreed with our recommendations, and in June 2010 drafted a staffing plan consistent with our recommendation, but as of November 2012, FPS has not gained approval of its staffing plan.

Author: U. S. Government Accountability Office (
ISBN-10: 1287202691
ISBN-13: 9781287202691
Publisher: Bibliogov
Language: English
Published: 05/16/2013
Pages: 38
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.19lbs
Size: 9.69h x 7.44w x 0.08d