A dearth of essential skills among federal employees is plaguing the government’s ability to carry out its work effectively and efficiently, according to a new report.
The “skills gap,” an imbalance between the abilities needed and the abilities possessed by the federal workforce, is caused by budgeting issues, aging personnel and employee dissatisfaction.
“By identifying and closing skills gaps within the federal government, we can maximize the ability of our dedicated federal workforce to address emerging mission challenges, from cybersecurity to medical research,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., who, along with Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, initiated a Government Accountability Office recently reported.
“This report raises significant concerns that federal agencies are now facing profound deficiencies that will only worsen if we stay on this untenable course,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md, the report’s other initiator. Both are members of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform. “With an expected increase in new retirement claims, federal agencies must safeguard to prevent turnover from causing a gap in institutional knowledge and leadership,” Lynch continued.
The GAO, however, found the executive branch needs to improve its efforts.
“The extent, nature, and root causes of skills gaps are complex, and agencies need to do a better job of understanding them if they are to be successful in closing them,” said GAO Director of Strategic Issues Robert Goldenkoff, who led the Jan. 30 report.
Specifically, the report identified improvements the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources wing, needed to make in future efforts to narrow the gaps.
The office declined to comment beyond its response in the report.
A workforce can develop a lack of needed skills when a competent labor pool, for various reasons, isn’t properly distributed across government agencies. Other times, disparity is caused when fields evolve faster than new talents develop, according to Goldenkoff.
“GAO’s work has identified skills gaps in nearly two dozen occupations with significant programmatic impact,” the Accountability Office reported. “In some cases, such as cybersecurity, the skills gaps GAO identified were consistent with the Working Group’s findings. But GAO’s work has also identified additional skills gaps. For example, a decline in telecommunication expertise at multiple agencies contributed to delays and cost overruns of 44 percent when those agencies were transitioning to a new network of telecommunications services.”
Goldenkoff expanded on these findings in comments to the Washington Examiner.
“An agency might have a cadre of [information technology] specialists on its payroll, but they may lack up-to-date cybersecurity skills that meet its current or newly-emerging needs,” Goldenkoff explained.
Regardless of the cause, skill deficiencies “pose a high risk to the nation” because they make the government less cost-effective and less successful, the report said.
The GAO designated addressing the needed skills as a critical mission in 2011. One of the primary challenges is growing workforce attrition.
“Trends in federal workforce retirement threaten to aggravate the problem of skills gaps,” the report said.
In fact, 30 percent of the career permanent employees in 2013 will be eligible to retire in three years.
While this will create “opportunities to bring fresh skills,” an agency’s skill set can deteriorate if turnover isn’t “strategically managed,” the report said.
Other issues include budgeting pressures, limited resources, increasing employee dissatisfaction, and an increasing need for advanced degrees.
“A variety of factors undermine the ability of agencies to identify and address their skills gaps,” Goldenkoff said. “Key among them is the need for agencies to do a better job of workforce planning. … Combined, these hiring problems put the government at a competitive disadvantage when competing for talent.”
Goldenkoff also noted that federal agencies struggle to hire and retain employees with in-demand skills when competing against the private sector.
“What the government does, how it does it, and who it does it with, is constantly in flux, and the skill sets agencies need to meet those demands must adapt accordingly,” Goldenkoff said.
