[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 107 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-133
THE NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF THE HUMAN CAPITAL CRISIS
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
before the
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
RESTRUCTURING, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CIVIL SERVICE AND AGENCY ORGANIZATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 29, 2001
__________
Serial No. 107-5
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs and the
Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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72-497 WASHINGTON : 2001
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Ranking Member
TED STEVENS, Alaska CARL LEVIN, Michigan
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi MAX CLELAND, Georgia
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri
Hannah S. Sistare, Staff Director and Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Democratic Staff Director and Counsel
Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING, AND
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio, Chairman
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois, Ranking Member
TED STEVENS, Alaska DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri
Kristine I. Simmons, Staff Director
Marianne Clifford Upton, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Julie L. Vincent, Chief Clerk
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
BOB BARR, Georgia ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JIM TURNER, Texas
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DAVE WELDON, Florida WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah ------ ------
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida ------ ------
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho ------
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
------ ------ (Independent)
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on the Civil Service and Agency Organization
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida, Chairman
DAVE WELDON, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Garry Ewing, Staff Director
Miguel Serrano, Counsel
Scott Sadler, Clerk
Tania Shand, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Voinovich............................................ 1
Representative Scarborough................................... 4
Representative Morella....................................... 4
Representative Davis......................................... 5
Representative Norton........................................ 7
Senator Durbin............................................... 13
Senator Akaka................................................ 25
Senator Carper............................................... 29
Prepared statement:
Representative Cummings...................................... 35
WITNESSES
Thursday, March 29, 2001
Hon. James R. Schlesinger, Commissioner, on behalf of the U.S.
Commission on National Security/21st Century, accompanied by
Admiral Harry D. Train, USN, Ret., Commissioner, on behalf of
the U.S. Commisison on National Security/21st Century.......... 8
Henry L. Hinton, Jr., Managing Director, Defense Capabilities and
Management, U.S. General Accounting Office..................... 10
Robert J. Lieberman, Deputy Inspector General, Department of
Defense........................................................ 11
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Hinton, Henry L. Jr.:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Lieberman, Robert J.:
Testimony.................................................... 11
Prepared statement........................................... 61
Schlesinger, Hon. James R.:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 36
Train, Admiral Harry D., USN, Ret.:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 36
THE NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF THE HUMAN CAPITAL CRISIS
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THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2001
U.S. Senate, Oversight of Government Management,
Restructuring, and the District of Columbia
Subcommittee, Committee on Governmental
Affairs, joint with the House of
Representatives, Civil Service and Agency
Organization Subcommittee, Committee on
Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 10:12 a.m.,
in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. George V.
Voinovich, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee, and Hon. Joseph
Scarborough, Chairman of the House Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Voinovich, Durbin, Akaka, and Carper;
Representatives Scarborough, Morella, Davis, Cummings, and
Norton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. The hearing will come to order. I would
like to explain that the Members of the House and Senate will
be going in and out during this hearing because of votes.
Hopefully, we will have a few more Senators here after this
vote is completed.
We thank you all for coming. Today, the Senate Subcommittee
on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring, and the
District of Columbia and the House Subcommittee on Civil
Service and Agency Organization are meeting to examine how the
human capital crisis in the Federal Government is affecting,
and indeed endangering, the national security establishment and
the ability of the Federal Government to defend our Nation and
its interests around the world. This is especially true with
the civilian workforce of the Department of Defense. Today's
hearing is the Senate Subcommittee's eighth on the human
capital crisis.
The fact that Chairman Scarborough and I are co-chairing
this hearing underscores the seriousness of this problem
confronting our country, and Chairman Scarborough, I welcome
you and the Members of your Subcommittee to the Senate. I know
you share my belief that the human capital challenges of the
Federal Government require our attention and I appreciate the
opportunity for this bicameral and bipartisan discussion.
Last year, Chairman Scarborough and I worked on an
amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that provided
critically needed flexibility to the Department of Defense to
restructure its civilian workforce. Specifically, the amendment
gave the Department of Defense expanded authority to offer
voluntary separation incentive payments and voluntary early
retirements to a total of 9,000 new employees through fiscal
year 2003 for the purpose of reducing high-grade supervisory
positions and correcting skills imbalances. The use of these
authorities does not require the elimination of these
positions, but rather allows the Defense Department to hire
9,000 employees with the right skills for the future. This has
given the Department of Defense extra flexibility to manage its
civilian workforce and realign its human capital.
Chairman Scarborough, I look forward to working with you
this year on additional measures to address the challenges
confronting not only defense civilians but the entire Federal
workforce. The country is grateful for your leadership on this
issue.
As some of you may know, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is
currently conducting a comprehensive review of the Department
of Defense strategy and force structure. When his review is
completed, the debate in Congress will most likely revolve
around the wisdom of deploying a national missile defense
system, the militarization of space, and expensive weapons
systems, such as aircraft carriers and fighter jets.
However, a most vital factor in U.S. national security
cannot be overlooked: Human capital, the men and women of the
Federal workforce. It does not make headlines, but the Federal
workforce is in crisis. The average Federal employee is 47
years old. During the Presidential campaign, both candidates
promised to reduce the number of Federal employees. It is going
to be an easy promise to keep. By 2005, over half of the 1.8
million non-postal civil employees will be eligible for early
retirement or regular retirement. An even greater percentage of
the Senior Executive Service, the government's core managers,
will be eligible to leave.
The amount of knowledge and experience that is literally
going to walk out the door by the end of the decade is
unquantifiable. Perhaps even more concerning, government
service is no longer a career path of choice for young
Americans for a variety of reasons. There is no governmentwide
plan to reshape our workforce so that it can respond to the
problems of today and the challenges of tomorrow.
To some, the departure of so many Federal employees is
welcome news. But it could bring paralysis to our government,
and it has ominous implications for our national security.
Current problems with the defense civilian workforce illustrate
the point. Despite their critical role in supporting the Armed
Forces, defense civilian employees are often overlooked.
Throughout the 1990's, the workforce was downsized by 400,000
positions, largely through attrition and retirements.
Unfortunately, the process paid little heed to reshaping
the workforce to meet changing requirements. As a result, the
defense workforce faces serious skills imbalances in areas such
as linguistics, acquisition, research and development. For
example, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio,
conducts vital scientific research for the Air Force, but
workforce reductions threaten its ability to continue to
develop cutting-edge technologies. Last year, Senator Cochran's
Governmental Affairs Subcommittee examined the shortage of
skilled linguists in the Foreign Service, law enforcement, and
international trade agencies. And the Defense Department
already faces a shortage of acquisition personnel, which will
be exacerbated by anticipated retirements over the next few
years. This could severely hinder the ability of the Department
to purchase the equipment and supplies needed for our Armed
Forces.
As national defense is the first responsibility of the
Federal Government, it is my hope that focusing on the human
capital challenges in the national security establishment will
highlight the need for prompt and comprehensive action, because
the requirement for a well-balanced, robust civilian national
security workforce is indisputable. If we fail to respond to
these formidable human capital challenges in our national
security establishment in a thoughtful and deliberate manner,
then our best strategies and billion-dollar weapons systems
will afford us little protection in an uncertain future.
We have a distinguished panel of witnesses to discuss these
issues today. The Hon. James R. Schlesinger was the Secretary
of Defense under Presidents Nixon and Ford and the first
Secretary of Energy under President Carter. Admiral Harry D.
Train, U.S. Navy, Retired, served as Supreme Allied Commander--
Atlantic, Commander of the Sixth Fleet and Director of the
Joint Staff during his 37-year naval career. Both of them
served as Commissioners on the U.S. Commission on National
Security in the 21st Century. The Commission, a bipartisan and
independent group, was chartered by Secretary of Defense Cohen
to provide Congress and the Executive Branch with the most
comprehensive government-sponsored review of U.S. national
security in more than 50 years.
I was gratified to learn that the Commission's final
report, which made dozens of recommendations for restructuring
and revitalizing the national security establishment, includes
the chapter, ``The Human Requirements for National Security.''
It states that, ``The excellence of American public servants is
the foundation upon which an effective national security
strategy must rest, in large part because future success will
require the mastery of advanced technology, from the economy to
combat, as well as leading-edge concepts of governance.'' I
have asked the Commissioners to focus their testimony on this
chapter of the report.
Also joining us is Butch Hinton, the Managing Director of
Defense Capabilities and Management at the U.S. General
Accounting Office. This past January, GAO designated strategic
human capital management across the Federal Government as high-
risk. Comptroller General David Walker has tasked all of GAO's
teams to examine human capital challenges in their specific
areas. Mr. Hinton will discuss GAO's evaluation of the
Departments of Defense and State.
Robert J. Lieberman is the Deputy Inspector General at the
Department of Defense. Over the past 12 months, Mr. Lieberman's
office has published eight reports which address personnel
problems at the Department of Defense, most notably in the
acquisition workforce. He will provide us an overview of the
IG's findings.
We thank you all for coming, and we look forward to your
insights. Now I would like to yield to my Co-Chair for this
hearing, Chairman Scarborough, for his opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE SCARBOROUGH
Mr. Scarborough. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. I
would like to thank you for your leadership in examining human
capital challenges facing the Federal Government today. The
prominent attention human capital issues receive today is due
primarily to the work of two men, Comptroller General David
Walker and Senator Voinovich. Senator, I want to commend you
for bringing this important issue to the forefront, and I also
want to commend you for focusing the first of our series of
hearings on national security.
Like you, I agree that the Federal Government's primary
responsibility is protecting this country, and defending the
Nation from foreign threats is our first responsibility and it
is hard to imagine another area in which the consequences of
failing to meet the challenge of ensuring an appropriately
sized and skilled civilian workforce would be so dire.
In my district in Northwest Florida, we have got NAS
Pensacola, Egland Air Force Base, Hurlburt Field, and several
other military bases. Bob Sikes, in fact, has been accused by
Trent Lott of turning my district into a glorified aircraft
carrier. But I have seen firsthand down there, like you have at
Wright-Patterson and other bases in your State, just how dire
the situation is right now. My colleagues and I are very
pleased to be able to join you, Ranking Member Durbin, and the
other Members of your Subcommittee in examining this important
issue.
The Department of Defense has undergone a significant
downsizing of the civilian workforce, and I have heard from
many of my constituents in my district about the effect of
civilian downsizing and what it has had on their morale. As we
move forward in this process, I hope we will find solutions
that reinforce our commitment to the individual employee while
promoting a performance-based management and creating a
civilian workforce that has the skills and the knowledge to
provide critically important support for our military forces.
To achieve true reform, sustained involvement and
commitment by the administration, by Congress, Federal
employees themselves, and interest groups is critical. I have
enjoyed working with you, Mr. Chairman, on the human capital
issues in the last Congress and I look forward to working with
you and your Subcommittee in this one. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. Mrs. Morella.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CONSTANCE A. MORELLA
Mrs. Morella. Thank you. I want to thank you, Senator
Voinovich, I want to thank you, Chairman Scarborough, and the
Members who are here assembled for what I consider to be a very
important joint hearing that we are having. It is very
important that we come together and attempt to look at the
human capital crisis that may beset many of our Federal
agencies in the very near future.
We are specifically looking today at how human capital
concerns are affecting the national security establishment, but
I think that the issues that we are raising today touch on all
Federal agencies. A significant number of personnel are going
to be eligible to retire in the next 5 years, and if there is
nobody trained to replace them, then the crisis that we speak
of today will become a catastrophe tomorrow.
Before we hear the testimony from these very distinguished
gentlemen, and I applaud you asking them to come and I
particularly applaud them and salute them for coming to share
with us, I wanted to raise another issue, and that is are the
agencies and the President and Congress, for that matter, all
on the same page in regard to the human capital issue?
I know that you are going to discuss a number of issues
here today in the number of personnel that may be leaving in a
few years and the difficulty we are going to have to recruit
and then to retain Federal workers that have the expertise. I
know that you are going to be recommending some very
significant ways to alleviate these problems, and I am just
curious--that we will collectively have the resources to dole
out the medicine that you will be prescribing.
OMB, GAO, DOD, the President, and Congress all have to work
together. But I keep hearing some mixed signals. The Director
of OMB has said that he will be 100 percent faithful to the
President's proposal to reduce middle management jobs in
agencies. I also hear that the Director of OMB wants to have a
very tight relationship with the Comptroller General at GAO,
and from what I have read, GAO's recommendations for civil
service reform differ from the President's. I also know that it
is one thing to reduce the number of personnel, but if there is
no reduction in the workload, then maybe we will exacerbate the
problem.
For example, while DOD reduced its workforce by about 50
percent from 1990 to 1999, workload was not proportionately
reduced. In fact, the number of procurement actions increased
by about 12 percent.
I just raise these concerns because I want to see civil
service reform occur, but I do not want to reform simply to say
good riddance to the Federal workforce that leaves and that
everyone else must shoulder more of the burden. We do have a
crisis on our hands. We do have also some very viable
solutions, and many of which will be discussed today. I hope
that we can honestly implement these solutions instead of
demonizing or dismissing the very workforce that we will depend
upon to ensure our national security.
Those are a few of my very sincere concerns and I look
forward to this discussion. I thank you both for having this
joint hearing.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. Chairman Scarborough, would
you like to introduce your Ranking Member?
Mr. Scarborough. I would like to recognize the Ranking
Member of the Subcommittee in the House, Representative Davis.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DANNY K. DAVIS
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me first
of all compliment and commend you, Senator, on the outstanding
leadership that you have given to this issue. It is also good
to be here with other Members of the Senate and the House. This
is my first hearing as the Ranking Member of the House Civil
Service and Agency Organization Subcommittee and I look forward
to working with you to ensure that the Federal Government has a
thriving and knowledgeable Federal workforce.
As a Member who has a large Postal and Federal civilian
workforce in my district, I am very much concerned about the
human capital crisis facing the Federal Government. The General
Accounting Office added subcommittee workforce planning to its
list of major management challenges confronting government
today. Agencies should factor human resources decisions in
their annual planning processes. Managers must know the number
of people and the skills they will need to execute missions and
goals of their agencies. Such decisionmaking is critical at a
time when 35 percent of the fiscal year 1998 Federal workforce
will be eligible for retirement by 2006. The loss of skilled
and experienced staff will require the Federal Government to
recruit and train new employees, two areas that have been
negatively affected by downsizing and budget cuts.
The Department of Defense is one of numerous agencies
dealing with staff shortages and skill imbalances. NASA, which
aggressively cut its staff in 1994, has a shortage of people
with the technical skills needed to safely conduct space
shuttle missions. At the Energy Department, employees lack the
contract management skills to oversee large projects, such as
the cleanup of radioactive and hazardous waste sites. DOD,
however, is the largest employer of Federal employees, with
over 700,000 civilians, 37 percent of non-postal civilian
Federal employees. How DOD formulates and executes its
workforce planning strategies will set an example for other
Federal agencies.
The witnesses before us today will help us to better
understand the human capital needs as we face this crisis, but
more importantly, their testimony, hopefully, will help us move
aggressively toward finding solutions.
Again, I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and look
forward to hearing from the witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Danny K. Davis follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. DANNY K. DAVIS
Chairman Scarborough, Senator Voinovich, and Senator Durbin, I am
pleased to be with you today. This is my first hearing as Ranking
Member of the House Civil Service and Agency Organization Subcommittee
and I look forward to working with you to ensure that the Federal
Government has a thriving and knowledgeable Federal workforce.
As a Member who has a large Postal and Federal-civilian workforce
in my district, I am very concerned about the human capital crisis
facing the Federal Government.
The General Accounting Office added work-force planning to its list
of major management challenges confronting government today. Agencies
should factor human-resources decisions in their annual planning
processes. Managers must know the number of people and the skills they
will need to execute the missions and goals of their agencies.
Such decision-making is crucial at a time when 35 percent of the
fiscal year 1998 Federal workforce will be eligible for retirement by
2006. The loss of skilled and experienced staff will require the
Federal Government to recruit and train new employees--two areas that
have been negatively affected by downsizing and budget cuts.
The Department of Defense is one of numerous agencies dealing with
staff shortages and skill imbalances. NASA, which aggressively cut its
staff in 1994, has a shortage of people with the technical skills
needed to safely conduct space shuttle missions. At the Energy
Department, employees lack the contract management skills to oversee
large projects, such as the clean up of radioactive and hazardous waste
sites.
DOD, however, is the largest employer of Federal employees. DOD
employs over 700,000 civilians--37 percent of non-postal civilian
Federal employees. How DOD formulates and executes its workforce-
planning strategies will set an example for other Federal agencies.
The witnesses before us today will help us better understand the
human capital crisis facing DOD, but more importantly, their testimony
will help us with the solution.
Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. We have Representative Norton and
Senator Akaka with us. Would you like to make opening
statements?
Representative Norton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON
Ms. Norton. Senator Voinovich, I want to thank you and my
own Chairman, Mr. Scarborough, for the initiative of this
hearing. I regard your own work, Mr. Voinovich, as path-
breaking. The document and the work you have done is nothing
less than a consciousness-raising document that I hope will
become a policymaking document. We have the smallest government
in many decades now, so it is very timely to look at it, even
if we were not considering the kind of problems we are facing
today.
I am very concerned that the Federal Government has allowed
itself to become terribly uncompetitive with the market sector,
with the competitive sector, in a period when that sector has
become increasingly more attractive. In past generations,
people came into the Federal service because it was considered,
and indeed is, a very high-quality workforce, a place to get
training, but also because its wages, while not high, were made
up for by the benefits and the longevity and the pension.
The private sector now more than equals that, much more
than equals that, and it is inherently more attractive to young
people. I mean, it is far more sexy now to go to a dot.com or
to the high-tech part of the economy than to come to the drab
old Federal Government, as it is seen, especially since it is
very uncompetitive. The skills these young people have are just
the kinds of skills that the Defense Department needs.
It is interesting that we are only now waking up to the
importance of continuing to recruit for our volunteer service,
as we see more and more of those young people, not the most
highly-trained people in our country, shying away from service.
We have not given the same kind of attention to the civilian
side of the Department of Defense.
Government has invested in a very high-quality workforce.
We spent the last few years downsizing that workforce through
buy-outs during the last administration. I supported that
downsizing because there were many supervisors and others who,
over time, had become, it seemed to me, a part of an excessive
number of employees. We saved billions of dollars. Now we have
got to face whether this is the time to not build up, but to
learn how to retain and rebuild. That does not necessarily mean
that we pile on more people. It does mean that we become very
strategic in how we rebuild the workforce of the Federal
Government. This is not the same government that we have had
over the years. It is a government that must be rebuilt in a
very competitive environment and with a radically changing
workforce reality. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
We have a custom in this Subcommittee of swearing in our
witnesses, and if you will all rise, we will swear you in.
Do you swear that the testimony that you are about to give
is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Mr. Schlesinger. I do.
Admiral Train. I do.
Mr. Hinton. I do.
Mr. Lieberman. I do.
Senator Voinovich. The record will show that all four of
our witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Dr. Schlesinger, we appreciate your being here today and
appreciate the time that you spent on the Commission and we are
eager to hear your testimony. I think you are familiar with the
tradition that we have here, that we will submit your testimony
for the record and we would hope that the witnesses, to the
best of their ability, would hold their testimony to no more
than 5-minutes. Dr. Schlesinger.
TESTIMONY OF HON. JAMES R. SCHLESINGER,\1\ COMMISSIONER, ON
BEHALF OF THE U.S. COMMISSION ON NATIONAL SECURITY/21ST
CENTURY, ACCOMPANIED BY ADMIRAL HARRY D. TRAIN,\1\ USN, RET.,
COMMISSIONER, ON BEHALF OF THE U.S. COMMISSION ON NATIONAL
SECURITY/21ST CENTURY
Mr. Schlesinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Admiral Train and
I are here on behalf of the Commission on National Security/
21st Century. The work that we did points to the personnel
problem of the U.S. Government as at least amongst the most
formidable facing national security, and in the judgment of
some of the Commissioners, the single most important problem
facing the United States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The combined prepared statement of Mr. Schlesinger and Admiral
Train appears in the Appendix on page 36.
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The United States today is the dominant power in the world
and, therefore, it is expected that its representatives
overseas, its government officials here in the United States,
and its military forces show high quality performance. In the
absence of that, our position as international leader will
deteriorate. It is, therefore, our concern that we have seen a
steady deterioration in the ability of the government to
attract the necessary personnel.
The Commission first looked at the problem of political
appointees, and while I do not want to go in any depth because
that is not the focus of this particular panel, I should point
out that The Brookings Institution has just published a new
issue on the state of the Presidential appointment process and
the bureaucracy, and the lead article--I read the first
paragraph.
``The Presidential appointment process is a national
disgrace. It encourages bullies and emboldens demagogues,
silences the voices of responsibility, and nourishes the lowest
form of partisan combat. It uses innocent citizens as pawns in
politicians' petty games and stains the reputations of good
people. It routinely violates fundamental democratic
principles, undermines the quality and consistency of public
management.''
Mr. Chairman, the period taken to confirm a Presidential
appointee has increased to 8\1/2\ months, and those who are
required to spend that time are 1 in 3 Presidential appointees
as opposed to 1 in 15 or thereabouts at the start of the
Kennedy Administration.
I turn now to the permanent government staff and our
concern about the talent and the training of that staff. In the
first instance, we look at the Foreign Service. The Foreign
Service has seen a decline of 25 percent in applicants, and
when it offers positions in the Foreign Service to potential
new appointees, less than 10 percent now accept those jobs. It
takes 18 months to 20 months for an individual to be approved
as a potential recruit, and by that time, as Ms. Norton has
indicated, they have moved on to other jobs in the private
sector that are more competitive.
With respect to the military forces of the United States,
we see a steady decline in our ability to recruit and retain
the necessary capabilities. For example, the U.S. Army in 1999
lost 13.6 percent of its captains, who retired voluntarily.
That hemorrhaging continues today, and one can simply
extrapolate the impact on our ability to perform well
militarily and to represent the country overseas when one sees
a continued drain of talent of younger officers. That is
perhaps the most glaring example, but it is typical of what is
going on. The shortage of pilots and technicians is a growing
problem for the Armed Forces.
Finally, with respect to the civil service itself, we see a
growing inability to attract the necessary talent to the civil
service. As you have pointed out, Mr. Chairman, in the next 4
or 5 years, we will see a departure of a very large percentage
of the existing civil servants and of the senior membership of
the service. That represents a pool of talent that was
accumulated in past years. Our ability to replace it is
diminishing at this time and we are in a position in which we
will see fewer and fewer people that are available unless we
change our ways.
The Commission has strongly recommended that we look upon
the recruitment and retention of talented people as a principal
problem of the Federal Government, and we recommend three
things. First, changes in the form of compensation;
flexibility, second, and flexibility goes with compensation. We
recommend education and training. That is a form of
compensation. Happily, the U.S. military, one spends years in
advanced education. We contrasted this with the Foreign
Service, which Foreign Service officers told us was broken, and
one of the things that is necessary to achieve an improvement
in the Foreign Service, Mr. Chairman, is that we allow ample
time for education so that it is competitive with other
elements of the government.
Let me pause there and turn to Admiral Train.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much, Mr. Schlesinger.
Admiral Train.
Admiral Train. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity
to appear with you and share with you, share with this
distinguished Joint Committee the work that we have done over
the past 2-plus years. And in those 2-plus years of studying
all aspects of U.S. national security, it became clear that it
was crucial for us to address our human capital needs as part
of our work.
Human capital, as has been mentioned here many times this
morning, is the bedrock of all elements of our national
security. Our personnel design, they build, operate, and
maintain our weapons systems. Our personnel design and execute
national security policies and our foreign policies. Meanwhile,
the end of the Cold War, the recent economic surge, and the
demographics of the baby boom are creating severe personnel
strains on our national security structure. We are losing our
ability to recruit and retain the high-quality personnel we
require.
It will do us precious little good to enjoy the finest
warships the world has ever seen--and we do--if we cannot
recruit and retain the top-quality personnel necessary to
operate them. It will do us precious little good to enjoy the
status of the world's only superpower if we cannot find the
Presidential appointees, Foreign Service officers, civil
servants, soldiers, airmen, marines, and sailors to keep our
national security apparatus functioning effectively. And if our
superpower structure must depend upon non-U.S. nationals for
its scientific and technical brainpower, we clearly have an
educational problem which needs addressing.
These are the challenges which the Commission on National
Security/21st Century addressed over the past several years.
Our Phase III report provides our recommendations for dealing
with these challenges. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. Mr. Hinton.
TESTIMONY OF HENRY L. HINTON, JR.,\1\ MANAGING DIRECTOR,
DEFENSE CAPABILITIES AND MANAGEMENT, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING
OFFICE
Mr. Hinton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having us over to
participate in this important hearing. As you have recognized,
human capital is a pervasive problem across the Federal
Government and has recently been designated by GAO as a
governmentwide high risk area. Mrs. Morella, I want you to know
that the Comptroller General and others of us in GAO are making
every effort we can through our testimonies and discussions up
on the Hill to get everybody on the same page, as well as the
Comptroller General's outreach to the new members of the Bush
Administration to make this issue apparent to them.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hinton appears in the Appendix on
page 43.
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The human capital issues facing Defense and State are not
fundamentally different from those facing other Federal
agencies, but I have got to tell you, I think they rise, Mr.
Chairman, up on the scale. Threat does not wait, and the
preparedness of our country rests with State and the Department
of Defense. As Mr. Schlesinger just pointed out, it is very
critical that we address them.
Although the specific problems in each of these agencies
are somewhat different, they all have a common origin, the lack
of an overall strategic approach to the management of the
workforce. A key problem at Defense, and it is very evident in
the Defense Science Board's report, is the absence of an
overarching framework within which the future DOD workforce is
being planned. DOD needs to link its requirements for all
elements of the total force, that is, the active, the reserves,
the Federal civilians, and the contractors, to its long-term
strategy.
Primary human capital challenges on the military side
include recruitment shortfalls, continued high first-term
attrition, retention problems in certain occupational areas and
skill levels--that would be mechanics, pilots, communications
analysts, and the like--and the quality of life issues, from
high personnel tempo to military housing and health care.
On the civilian side, they include a workforce profile
skewed toward high years in service with too few younger
workers in the pipeline, insufficient professional development
and training for civilian employees, and the need to consider
the long-term shift to a greater reliance on private sector
contractors as a larger component of the total force.
I also want to add, Mr. Chairman, that these challenges are
involved to some extent in each of the six high risk areas that
we see in Defense on the business side--that is, financial
management, information technology, acquisition, contracting,
support infrastructure, and logistics.
At State, several recent studies and our own work have
identified a range of challenges: Recruiting new entrants into
the Foreign Service, retention of Foreign Service and civil
service personnel, career advancement opportunities, providing
adequate staff training and development, and quality of life
concerns at the overseas postings.
In sum, our work and the many studies that have been done
point to the same conclusion: Action is needed. It begins with
strategic planning. Human capital needs to be viewed from a
strategic standpoint across the government. While Defense and
State have taken action, a lot more needs to be done, and we
are willing to work with you, Mr. Chairman, to get on a path
for a solution to addressing those problems.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Hinton, and I sincerely
appreciate the hard work that Comptroller General Walker, you
and the other members of your team have done to address this
issue.
Mr. Lieberman.
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT J. LIEBERMAN,\1\ DEPUTY INSPECTOR GENERAL,
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. Lieberman. Thank you. I guess I am the personification
of the aging defense career civil servant. [Laughter.]
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Lieberman appears in the Appendix
on page 61.
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The condition of the Department of Defense workforce is of
particular concern to the Office of the Inspector General
because our auditing and investigative work constantly
reinforces awareness that a properly sized, well trained, and
highly motivated workforce is by far the best defense against
fraud, waste, and mismanagement.
For DOD, of course, human capital issues extend beyond the
civil service, affecting both active and reserve military
personnel and many parts of the private sector on which we
depend for national defense materiel and services. My office's
recent work has focused, however, on problems caused mostly by
DOD civilian workforce issues.
The seven audit reports discussed in my written statement
have a common theme, which is that 11 years of civilian
workforce downsizing, without proportionate workload reductions
or productivity increases, have created or exacerbated mission
performance problems across a wide spectrum of DOD
organizations and civilian personnel specialties. These seven
reports contain several dozen specific descriptions of such
performance problems.
In an age when organizational agility is the watchword for
successful businesses, DOD has been anything but agile when it
comes to managing human capital. This is partially true to
restrictive personnel management laws and regulations, although
most DOD managers seem to underestimate the authority and
flexibility that DOD already has. In my opinion, there has been
a particularly marked reluctance to innovate, to spend money to
improve the civilian workforce, and most of all, as Mr. Hinton
says, a lack of strategic planning.
Throughout the 1990's, the only strategic departmental goal
related to the civilian workforce was to cut it. Four of our
seven reports reflect the problems caused by reducing the
acquisition workforce by over half without an understanding of
workload trends or risks. Those performance problems cut across
the full spectrum of DOD contracting and contract oversight
functions.
Another one of these reports pertains to the loss of
inventory management control caused by inadequate staff and
excessive workload at two supply depots. The other two reports
discuss serious delays in the processes for granting initial
security clearances or updating existing clearances, which a
few days ago Chairman Goss of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence termed ``an open wound'' from a
national security standpoint.
I would like to make two general observations. First,
significant downsizing obviously was necessary to conform to
post-Cold War budget realities. But it seems to me that the
Department's performance in providing better tools to enhance
employee productivity and in genuinely streamlining
administrative processes to cut workload has fallen far short
of the mark. Those failures to offset the impact of staffing
cuts are widely evident. In my view, the Department needs to
step back and reassess what is actually happening in terms of
process changes, productivity improvements, and workload
trends. Only then can meaningful strategic workforce planning
be done. Such planning must apply to all segments of the
Department, not just the acquisition corps.
Second, the Department as a whole also lacks a
comprehensive strategy in place for dealing with pending mass
retirements of experienced managers and workers. Although some
organizations, such as the Air Force, have begun moving
aggressively over the past year, ways must be found across the
DOD and in all disciplines to accelerate the normal on-the-job
accumulation of experience and replace it with well crafted,
just-in-time training.
The Defense Leadership and Management Program is an
excellent first start along those lines, as is the rapidly
expanding use of Web-based technology for getting information
to our knowledge workers. In addition, we need sustained
executive level interest in retaining the best and brightest
middle managers who will be tomorrow's senior managers, and
skilled junior personnel with managerial potential. Otherwise,
there will be a general drop-off in efficiency and productivity
in many organizations toward the middle of this decade.
One of the many statistics that has been brought to light
over the past few months about the DOD workforce that I find
most compelling is that the most common age of a DOD civilian
worker right now is 54. I think that sums up the pending
crisis.
That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much, Mr. Lieberman.
The Ranking Member of our Subcommittee, Senator Durbin has
joined us. Senator Durbin, would you like to make any statement
or comments before we ask questions.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this continuing
series of hearings on this problem that faces us. I think that
some of the recommendations we are going to consider today are
extraordinarily good, and I would like to follow up in the
question period with specifics.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Dr. Schlesinger and Admiral Train, both of you were
national security practitioners and the demands on your time, I
am sure, were formidable. Given all of his other
responsibilities, what recommendations would you offer to
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to ensure that the human capital
issues are addressed in the Department of Defense?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, those recommendations, Mr. Chairman,
are included in the report. We recommend that we broaden the
activities of the people in the national security area by
establishing the National Security Service Corps, which would
permit people from the Department of Defense to move
temporarily to the Department of State or to CIA and
alternative movements, which gives a greater breadth of
understanding of the overall national security problem as well
as an understanding of the other departments or agencies that
are working in this area.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we look upon the
training by the Department of Defense as a model that should be
emulated by the Foreign Service. We recommend that the National
Security Education Act be broadened to provide financial
support for those who are prepared to enter into the civilian
service or the military service, and particularly for those, as
you indicated in your article of yesterday, who have expertise
in foreign languages or in the sciences.
Senator Voinovich. Admiral Train.
Admiral Train. Another part of our work, and Secretary
Schlesinger has mentioned all our recommendations are in the
report, and they have been briefed to Secretary Rumsfeld. We
were privileged to spend over an hour--the Commission was--with
Secretary Rumsfeld and we shared our recommendations with him.
That covered much more than the human capital piece of the
Commission's work.
But one of the specific objectives that we strive to
achieve is to persuade the accountable authorities, such as
Secretary Rumsfeld, to do for the civilian component of the
Defense workforce the same thing that Goldwater-Nickles did for
the military side and allow, or demand, that senior personnel
in the civil workforce move between departments to enhance and
broaden their experience base. If a civil servant, whether he
be a low-ranking civil servant or an SES, has spent his entire
career just inside the perimeter of the Department of Defense,
then he is limited in his comprehension of the whole national
security apparatus, which includes much more than the
Department of Defense. It includes the Treasury, it includes
State, it includes Commerce, and if they enact the legislation
which will create the National Homeland Security Agency, it
also will include that.
We believe that civilians should be forced to move between
departments as a condition of their promotion when they get to
be of the point where they are aspiring to be a flag officer
equivalent, namely SES employees. I think that very strongly.
I was privileged to be a part of the proceedings that
resulted in Goldwater-Nickles. I am very proud of the result of
that. It has caused the subsequent directors of the Joint Staff
after I left to enjoy much more talented personnel than I
enjoyed when I was a director, because people have been forced
to work outside their own service and in the joint arena. I
think we can do that and should do that for civilian personnel,
also.
Senator Voinovich. There are many problems there. The issue
is you get a new Secretary of Defense, and we have had some
good Secretaries of Defense who have been interested in doing
the best job that they can, but somehow, somewhere along the
line, they have not identified the right mechanism to give this
issue of human capital the attention that it deserves. I would
really be interested in finding out how to make that happen.
People often ask me, how can we get this to be a priority?
And I have said, well, it has to start with the Office of
Management and Budget. We need to have a good Office of
Personnel Management. We need to upgrade the folks in the
various departments that are involved with human capital
managements.
But what is the recommendation to Rumsfeld? You know the
Department of Defense as well as anybody. How would you
reorganize it or create something different that would
guarantee that this very important issue gets the attention it
deserves?
Mr. Schlesinger. Mr. Chairman, there are no guarantees in
this world. We simply have to continue to assert what the
problem is, and in the absence of such assertions fertilizing,
as it were, the minds of those who are currently in authority,
there will not be improvement. But we cannot guarantee it.
When you ran down that list, there is one element I want to
bring to your attention that was included in the report of the
Commission and that is the responsibility of the Congress to
make adaptation in terms of these new requirements for
recruiting technical people and the like. The responsibility is
not only in the Executive Branch. The problem, as you hint, is
that a head of a department is only in office for 4 years or
thereabouts. He is concerned with his immediate problems. Few
of them take the long view, and as a consequence, few of them
have been willing to tackle what is becoming increasingly
obvious, the slow deterioration of the capacity of the Federal
Government to attract the talent and the skills that are
necessary to our effective performance internationally.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Hinton.
Mr. Hinton. Yes, sir. One of the things that I think is
very important to this is to have a commitment that you are
going to adopt the strategic view of human capital, seeing it
not just as a cost but as an investment, and that will take
priority in establishing what you set out for the department to
do.
No question, workforce planning is very key and we have got
to marshal the right people together that can go through and
take stock of what we need for the future and the 21st Century
of the national security environment that we are looking at and
see what the requirements and the knowledge, the skills, the
abilities that we are going to need to face that, and then
compare that to what we have in place and then start looking at
what the gap is.
I think one of the first things that should be done is that
he directs his team to go out and really do the research,
looking into all of the personnel legislation there, to seek
out the flexibilities that are within that legislation. If they
run into barriers and fully understand the barriers and
legislation, they need to think about good business cases as to
what we can do to overcome those barriers.
I am really encouraged. GAO is encouraged from OMB's latest
circular on what they are asking in the performance plans for
2002, that they ask all the agencies to go through and identify
recruitment, retention, training, appraisal that is linked to
program performance as part of its goals. I think then, Mr.
Chairman, if you have the commitment and we have that response
to that expectation that sets out for the Congress, to include
this Subcommittee and all of the committees of jurisdiction
over Defense and State, as a good oversight tool to make sure
that the dollars that we are allocating to the Department go
after some of those key issues that we have.
I think that is a good management framework, but it begins
right at the top. That commitment has got to be there to
marshal this, because if not, there is going to be a lot of
competing policy issues, as Dr. Schlesinger just said, to
decide, and I do not think that is intentional in any way, but
we have got to get a framework going and then come back and
revisit our progress against that framework.
Senator Voinovich. You were saying that OMB has put out a
circular on that?
Mr. Hinton. Yes, sir, A-11.
Mr. Schlesinger. Mr. Chairman, could I add something more?
A critical point has not been addressed, and that is for the
last 30 years or more, politics in this country has heaped
scorn on the Federal service, on the bureaucracy. The
Dictionary of Quotable Quotes says that the bureaucracy is a
giant mechanism operated by pygmies. It reflects not only a
widespread public attitude of declining respect and honor for
those who serve in the Federal service, but it is something
that we will have to cure if we are to begin to turn around
what has been this deteriorating situation. It must start with
the President, but it must be not just the Secretary of
Defense, not just the Secretary of State, but the entire
elected officialdom of the United States that points to the
necessity and the good job that can be done for the country in
this emerging era.
Senator Voinovich. I agree with you. One of the things that
I have resented during my career as a county commissioner,
mayor, and governor is the negative way that some have
characterized our workforce. I want to tell you, I would take
our public workforce and put it up against any private sector
workforce when those people have been empowered, trained, and
given the tools to get the job done. And I really believe that
this negative carping and criticism of the Federal workforce
has had a substantial impact on the fact that so many young
people today are no longer interested in working in the Federal
Government.
Mr. Schlesinger. Reinforced by what Representative Norton
said, the enormous growth of the attractiveness of the private
sector as compared to 20 and 30 years ago.
Mr. Hinton. Mr. Chairman, if I might add, it is not the
employees being the problem. The basic problem here is the lack
of a strategic approach to this whole area that really puts
that priority out there, and we need to put the resources
behind it, and as Dr. Schlesinger says, we need to have a
governmentwide approach to this so it is clear to everybody.
Admiral Train. As we recruit people to replace those who
will be leaving in large numbers in the next few years, we have
a specific problem which has to be borne in mind by such
accountable authorities as Secretary Rumsfeld, which is that
our military today is in a situation where combat has become
more agile, faster, more lethal than at any time in history and
will continue to ride that vector up. We need to ensure that
our hiring practices are agile enough to keep pace with their
increases in technology, lethality, agility, and speed with
which the military must fight, because that is what defense is
all about. That is what national security is all about. If not
fighting, the readiness to fight and the perceived capability
to fight.
So if we have arcane hiring practices in our civil service,
for example, that were designed to mobilize a Nation in World
War II and have not changed much since then, we have a problem,
and somehow, through legislation and other methods, we have to
ensure that we can hire people when they are available, when
they come out of college at the full height of their
intellectual powers, put them into jobs in the government and
keep them there, and keep them there because they are satisfied
with the work environment in which we place them.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Durbin.
Senator Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I believe the year was 1958 when the Russians launched
Sputnik.
Mr. Schlesinger. In 1957.
Senator Durbin. In 1957, thank you. I stand corrected. It
was a galvanizing event, striking fear in the hearts of many,
including the American people, about America's loss of
superiority and our vulnerability.
I guess the most important part of this galvanizing event
is it galvanized Congress and the President, and as a result of
it, many things were done, but one had a personal impact on me,
the creation of something known as the National Defense
Education Act. This was a low-cost, low-interest loan program
available to young men and women like myself to go to college.
I do not know that I ever could have attended the college that
I attended, I am not sure I ever would have graduated, without
that National Defense Education Act, and I am sure that there
are thousands and thousands of stories just like my own.
The decision was made by this Congress and this government
that if we were going to compete, we had to have the people
ready to compete and we needed more college graduates. What
happened, of course, in the next few years is we saw a
revolution in higher education. It was no longer just the
province of the elite. Everybody had a chance, including kids
from East St. Louis like me. And I sit here today because of
that satellite, the response by Congress, the creation of that
loan program, and the chance it gave me to go to school.
I think about that in the context of our discussion today,
because part of the recommendations that come from the
Commission we are considering suggest that we need to talk
about education in this country anew and how we increase the
workforce of America in critical areas, not just obviously to
serve the government needs--that is the nature of this
hearing--but to serve our Nation.
I think, frankly, that some of the recommendations are
exceptional. In fact, I have gone so far as to incorporate them
in proposed legislation that parallels the National Defense
Education Act, known as the National Security Education Act. It
goes particularly in the area of math and sciences, but beyond,
to try to find ways to help young people move in the right
direction, toward careers that are not only fulfilling to them
but that we can help them attain.
I would also say that if we are going to look to the here
and now, that many of the young men and women, recent college
graduates or about to be, have a lot of things on their mind as
they finish school. But one of the things which most of them
have on their mind is: ``How am I ever going to pay off that
student loan?'' It is huge. It is not like the days when I went
to school, where you could finish 7 years of education and have
a student loan of less than $10,000. Kids all laugh at me when
I tell them that on college campuses, but that was the fact in
the early 1960's.
These kids come out of school with $10,000, $20,000,
$30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, and $80,000 in loans, and
when they think about their career choices and whether they
want to work for the Federal Government, I am sure one of the
first things they say is, how in the world could I afford it?
If I have to pay $1,000 a month for a student loan, I cannot
take this job at a GS-7. It just does not work.
We have programs already in place in the Federal Government
that allow us to forgive student loans for those who will make
commitments to service, Federal civil service, but Congress
will not fund them. And the agencies, as a result, cannot use
this valuable tool to bring good people in and say, give us
your skills and we will help you pay your loans. We know the
salary is not as great as the private sector, but you do not
have to worry about your loans. We are going to help you pay
them back. I think that would be an enormous incentive for
recruiters out on college campuses, trying to attract people to
the Department of Defense and to other critical agencies. And
it is another area that I hope to work with the Chairman on in
promoting more and more of these loans.
It took Sputnik in the 1950's to finally move us as a
Nation to realize this was a priority. Now post-Cold War, what
is the galvanizing event? What is it going to take to trigger--
what is the catalyst that is going to bring us to the point
where we not only agree with your findings, but have the
political will to push them forward? Is there one? Mr.
Schlesinger.
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, you ask a very difficult question.
The Japanese no doubt regret Pearl Harbor, that it awakened the
United States. Sputnik was the momentary achievement of the
Soviet Union which elicited a response that was overwhelming,
and we do not have that anymore, given the fact that, at the
moment, the United States is so formidable.
The Commission points to the fact that other groups in the
world, other nations are becoming more resentful of the United
States because of our dominant position and sometimes our
tendency to preach and that they are looking for asymmetric
ways to attack us. That includes the use of possible biological
or chemical attacks on the United States. We were concerned
that over the next quarter-century, this country would be
submitted to such attack. Regrettably, that would turn around
attitudes immediately. There is also cyber warfare, which can
attack our computer systems and affect our civilian economy. It
can attack the computers that control electric power in this
country. And those things would wake us up.
Do we have, as your question suggests, the fortitude to
anticipate that, and by taking prompt and corrective action now
to avoid having the dramatic effect of a Pearl Harbor or a
terrorist attack, massive terrorist attack in this country? It
is a good question. I hope we have the answer.
Admiral Train. One of the greatest threats to the American
people today is the fact that the American people see no
threat. That in itself is the greatest threat. I sincerely hope
we do not have to experience an event such as Secretary
Schlesinger has postulated to galvanize us into action. I would
hope that we are bright enough to foresee the potential for
these type of disasters and do those things that are necessary
to deter those disasters from happening.
Senator Durbin. Could I ask, Mr. Chairman, if I might, one
last question of Mr. Hinton and Mr. Lieberman. I would like to
have your thoughts on the forgiveness of student loans. Is this
a fertile area for us to look to to attract the kind of people
we need?
Mr. Hinton. Yes, sir. In fact, I think that there is, as
you mentioned some authorities that are already out there. I
think it is up to the individual agencies to look and put the
money there. I mean, it is up to the agencies, I think, to make
some of that money available to help in that regard, and I
think that is a tool. That is one of the tools we have got to
really look at and give consideration to.
Mr. Lieberman. I totally agree. We are, in fact, in the
Office of the Inspector General, going to utilize the authority
to help people pay off these loans. This is a painful choice,
because the top line is fixed where it is, so we have to give
up work-years in order to make that kind of choice. But it is
definitely worth it.
The same thing applies to up-front cash bonuses to
recruits. When we hire entry-level auditors, we are giving them
a $6,700 up-front bonus, which is the only way we can compete
with private industry, because the industry entry salaries are
higher. We have to be willing to spend money to improve the
workforce, and I do think that is a problem, particularly
because senior leadership has not made it a priority.
I would like to go back to the question of, will there be a
galvanizing event? Having just been through the Y2K crisis, I
saw how all the wheels spun until there was a date certain, and
then Congress and the Executive Branch and the private sector
really did get in sync and do a marvelous job on a very
difficult problem.
There is not going to be anything like that involving the
civilian workforce, unfortunately. The closest thing we are
going to have to it, I think, is a constant stream of reports
from the General Accounting Office and Inspectors General and
committee oversight here on the Hill identifying management
problems in the Federal Government. If one looks closely at all
at those reports, you are going to find an overwhelming
majority of the management problems relate back to workforce
problems, either skills, deployment, motivation, numbers, or
whatever.
So the handwriting is there all over the wall, but
unfortunately, I do not think there is going to be any defining
moment.
Senator Durbin. Thank you very much.
Mr. Schlesinger. Senator, there is such a thing in
appropriations bills called a line item.
Senator Durbin. Yes. I am on the Appropriations Committee
and familiar with the term.
Senator Voinovich. When Comptroller General Walker
testified before the Subcommittee, he said that the incentives
that we have under existing legislative authority could take
care of 80 to 90 percent of the problem, but the fact of the
matter is that the agencies are not utilizing the incentives
that they have. It might be helpful, Mr. Hinton, if you and Mr.
Lieberman could provide a list of the current incentives so
that we could see that and then perhaps another list of things
that you think might be helpful in addition to that.
Mr. Hinton. I would be happy to provide that for the
record, if that will do.
Senator Voinovich. Great.
Senator Durbin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you to the panel, too.
Senator Voinovich. This is the first time I have chaired a
joint Senate-House hearing, but I would like to turn at this
point to Representative Davis, the Ranking Member of the House
Subcommittee.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Senator. Let me apologize
for having to miss some of the testimony, but I would like to
pose a general question and ask if each one of you might be
able to respond. It seems to me that we have been on a pattern
for the last several years of privatizing, downsizing, and
outsourcing in terms of Federal Government operation. I guess
my question is, how impactful might we think this pattern has
been on creating the crisis or the situation that we currently
face, and can we turn it around if that is the case? Why do we
not start with you, Mr. Lieberman?
Mr. Lieberman. Well, I was always taught to defer to
Secretaries of Defense, so I feel a little funny going first.
[Laughter.]
Certainly, there is a place for utilization of the private
sector's vast talents, so outsourcing is often the most
efficient way to get the job done and there is a place for
that.
I do think, though, that has to be done in the context of
overall strategic planning in terms of what is the workload and
what resources need to be applied against that workload. Some
of those resources can be in-house and some of them can be
contractor, but you have to go through a logical planning
process. I think that kind of logical planning process has
largely been lacking for the last 10 years. We have outsourcing
goals for the sake of outsourcing goals as opposed to being
part of a logical thought process. So I do think there are
disconnects and things that need to be revisited in terms of
what is being outsourced and what is not.
Another problem that arises when we do a lot of outsourcing
is that if we cut the in-house capability to control those
contracts, we are creating vulnerabilities and risks. I do
think that the acquisition workforce has been cut to the point
where its ability to oversee these outsourced functions has
declined past the point where anyone should be comfortable. I
do not think we are doing a very good job of contractor
oversight and we are not necessarily getting our money's worth
when we contract out for some of those services and we do not
know it. So I do think there is more work to be done along
those lines.
Can these problems be fixed? Yes. It is a matter of will to
do so, good planning, and applying resources where they are
really needed.
Mr. Davis. Would anyone else care to respond to that?
Mr. Hinton. Mr. Davis, I would agree wholeheartedly with
what Mr. Lieberman is saying on the need on the strategic
planning. It has got to be considered a part of the force that
we are looking at and the use of contractors and how it fits
into the big picture. At GAO, that has been one of the things
that we have seen lacking throughout the government, not just
at Departments of Defense and State.
I will point out that during the 1990's, the acquisition
workforce was reduced by about 47 percent, compared to about a
37 percent decrease in the total DOD civilian workforce, and
that compares to about 17 percent reduction governmentwide on
the civilian workforce.
But the concern is not necessarily the numbers, but really
whether the resident skills remain in that workforce for
getting the job done, and that is where we really have not
focused to take stock of what we need for the future and what
we have got today and what we need to fill that gap in, because
we are moving to high-tech, a different type of skill needs,
and we have not seen that plan coming forward as to what those
real requirements are and what the approach for the government
is going to be, particularly in Defense and State.
Mr. Davis. Delegate Norton mentioned the inability of the
Federal Government to compete. I wonder if any of you might
think--yes, Mr. Secretary?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, Mr. Davis, the first point I would
like to make is it is a lot easier to make the Federal
workforce more attractive when the government is expanding, as
it did after the Korean War, than when it is shrinking, and so
downsizing and outsourcing has an impact. It is part of a
broader impact of that decline in the respect for the Federal
workforce.
But there is another aspect that one must keep in mind, and
I agree with what has just been said about outsourcing. It is
important for the civil service to react competitively. One of
the reasons that we have been driven to outsourcing is the
feeling that the civil service has not reacted competitively
compared to the private sector, and, therefore, the kinds of
flexibility that the Chairman has referred to earlier will make
in-house government service more effective and thus reduce the
attractiveness of outsourcing. This is a problem that can feed
on itself, or, hopefully, be reversed.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. I think I will pursue the
other question perhaps after others have had a chance.
Senator Voinovich. Congresswoman Morella.
Mrs. Morella. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
On the outsourcing, I am glad that the point was raised. I
think we have a challenge in making sure that we have
appropriate accountability built into it, too, because you
sometimes remove--you are tiers removed from the person who
understands fully the total mission and our own opportunity to
do that. I think we have to be very cautious about resorting to
outsourcing when we have people who have the commitment and
understand the mission internally.
I get very troubled, as I know my colleagues do, about the
length of time, and I think you have addressed that in your
written statement, about the long and complex application
process for civil service applicants compared to the private
sector and the non-profit sector. Would you like to comment on
that? I am looking at it in terms of what the solution would
be. I have had constituents who have said, ``I had my
application in, and boy, going through the security clearance,
I am going to have to continue to have a livelihood. And if the
people for whom I work know that I am being considered, then I
am treated differently on the current job that I have now that
I need for my revenue.'' I just wondered if you might comment
on what it is we can do and what you have found from your
experience.
Mr. Schlesinger. If the Federal Government cannot make
decisions on personnel, and particularly critical personnel,
those with technical skills, in, let us say, 60 days, it is
inevitably going to suffer from a great disadvantage in dealing
with others when you have a whole range of applicants.
I mentioned earlier that in the Foreign Service, that by
the time you get through that 18 months of consideration and
the offers are made, that less than 10 percent were accepted.
That strikes me as unacceptable. We must be able to move more
rapidly just to compete with the private sector.
Mrs. Morella. How do we do it?
Admiral Train. We probably have too many people in jobs
that require security clearances. Let me rephrase that. We
probably have too many requirements for security clearances as
opposed to the actual necessity for those clearances. The
security clearance process certainly does slow down the hiring
process, and if we can, in an enlightened way, decide certain
jobs do not require that or they may ultimately require that in
2, 3, or 4 years, then we can improve the rapidity with which
we hire people. But as long as that security clearance is
hanging out there, it is going to slow things down, plus which
we are still using those World War II hiring practices, which
do not necessarily apply in this high-tech world that we are
living in today.
Mr. Schlesinger. Congresswoman Morella, the former Speaker
of the House of Representatives, Tom Foley, took almost a year
in getting cleared. He was asked by various people whether his
name had ever been in the newspaper--it had been, whether he
had ever been referred to critically and questions of that
sort. If Tom Foley takes a year to get clearance, it tells you
something about what is now the congested process that we now
enjoy.
Mrs. Morella. I really want to be part of that solution
with you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Scarborough. I think it is
important for the security positions. I think it is important
for the other civil service positions, too. I think that it
also has something to do with the difficulty of recruiting. It
is like a lack of patience that is inordinately demanded.
Do you want to comment on it, Mr. Lieberman?
Mr. Lieberman. Yes, ma'am. We hire 100 to 150 people a year
in my office and we have suffered all the frustrations of
managers making offers to good people and then watching them
lose patience with us after it takes months and months for them
to get on board. We are doing better now than we used to, but
it is a brute force-type effort to try to push personnel
actions through a system that is not particularly responsive.
There are a lot of nuts and bolts problems here, and
ironically, we were talking about problems feeding upon
themselves. One of our difficulties is we get very poor
responsiveness out of the personnel office, which we do not
own, because it is under-staffed, because its workforce was cut
arbitrarily and the workload did not go down. They have as much
workload as they ever did, and, therefore, their productivity
output is far below what is needed to support us properly. We
lose at least a month in the personnel process. That is the
part of the chain that we do not control.
I do not agree that there are too many positions that
require security clearances. It is true that there is a
terrible problem when you are talking about top secret
clearances, because the Department's ability to process initial
top secret clearance investigations quickly has basically
collapsed and it is taking well over a year now.
For secrets, though, you can waive the main part of the
preemployment investigative process and bring the person in if
you are willing to take that risk. If they can pass a credit
check and if their security form does not indicate anything
would be a red flag to investigators, you can waive that. We
have done so, for instance, for virtually all of our entry-
level auditors, and that has saved us several months in the
process.
So if you are aggressive about it, you can cut the process
delays down to tolerable levels, but they still do not match
the private sector, and anything that could be done to help us
speed up certainly would help us recruit.
Mrs. Morella. We would look forward to working with all of
you in trying to come up with a solution of that nature. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Chairman Scarborough.
Mr. Scarborough. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to ask Mr. Secretary and Admiral Train, you all
present a portrait of a very bureaucratic process when it comes
to the civilian workforce as far as recruitment and hiring and
promotion, and I trust that I have probably already missed the
part about recruiting. I want to talk about promotion, though,
because we all hear constantly that we have to make the Federal
workforce more competitive with the private sector.
Well, in the private sector, if somebody that is 22 or 23
years old goes into the private sector, there is a general
belief that if you go in there and you are a rising star or a
hotshot, you are going to be rewarded, and if you do not carry
through, there is going to be a failure. Now, there is a
general perception that that is not the case in the Federal
Government, that somehow there is not this same reward and
failure system, and that may not be--maybe that is a
misperception, but I will guarantee you that 99 percent of
those people that are applying for jobs in the Federal
Government have that perception, that the market is a bit more
aggressive in rewarding success and punishing failure in the
private sector than it is in the Federal Government.
Does the Federal Government, from what you all have seen,
have a way to reward success? Do they have a rising stars
program that I am sure most of the Fortune 500 has, from what
you all have seen?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, it depends on the time period. One
of the reasons the Federal service was so attractive, let us
say, in the period of the Cold War right after World War II was
that it was exciting to be in the center of the fray and to be
able to participate in making important decisions. Many people
who were at the junior level felt that they had as much
influence as the CEO of a medium-sized company.
We have lost some of that in recent years and it is partly
a result of much greater limitations placed upon the latitude
given to junior officers in various departments, and we can
restore that, I think, if we work at it.
Mr. Scarborough. I was going to ask, Mr. Secretary, if that
would appear to be the case over most departments you have
looked at, or if there are some departments specifically----
Mr. Schlesinger. No, we are talking about the national
security departments, Office of Management and Budget. I cannot
speak to other departments of the Federal Government with which
I am less familiar. But it is important, it seems to me, for us
to recognize the excitement that used to come and which has
diminished, but in the perception of those out there that we
are trying to recruit has diminished even more.
I recommend an article that was in the Naval Institute
Proceedings just a year-and-a-half ago by Admiral Natter who
interviewed junior officers in the Navy, surface officers, and
10 or 12 percent of them then aspired to higher commands. If
you go back 25 or 30 years ago, it is a shocking number; 40,
50, or 60 percent would certainly have aspired to higher
command. They looked at the commander of the ship and they
discovered that he did not seem to be very happy in his job,
that he had this long chain of command above him that nitpicked
any decision that he made and so forth. He had greater
responsibility and less authority.
And these men are now married, by and large, on board ship.
Seventy percent of our young officers are married. They are
under pressure from their wives not to be at sea 180 days a
year or whatever it is, and so they were getting out. They were
not going to re-up. And it was not simply a question of salary,
it was a question of all of the amenities, including how their
families were treated, medical care, family housing, and I
commend that article to you.
Mr. Scarborough. And Admiral Natter would be an excellent
person who obviously was with the Seventh Fleet, and I think he
is running the Atlantic Fleet now----
Admiral Train. He is.
Mr. Scarborough [continuing]. And he would be an excellent
man to do that.
Let me ask you this, in followup to that, and then,
Admiral, I would like your response to it. Is it possible,
though? Are we being realistic? You talked about 20, 30, and 40
years ago that people felt like they had more of an investment
and more of a say so. Is it possible, though, that, say, in
2001 compared to 1958, 1959, or 1960, after Sputnik and after a
series of crises, is it possible for us to get that message to
recruits?
Mr. Schlesinger. The answer is yes. You may not restore the
same degree of attractiveness of the Federal service in 1960 or
1961, but you can certainly raise it very sharply from the
level that it has been pushed down to by the attitudes that
have been taken, elections, kind of the contempt of late-night
humor that denigrates the Federal service.
Mr. Scarborough. Admiral Train.
Admiral Train. As we downsized over the past 10 years,
there was a tendency on the civilian side for the people with
seniority to stay in their jobs while the attrition went to the
younger people. The other part of this equation was that the
younger people had the opportunity to gain employment in
corporate America, whereas the older folks did not. So now we
have this old, aging civilian workforce which is going to
disappear over the next few years and create a crisis that we
have to deal with by attempting to attract people at the
bottom. We have very, very few younger folks among our civil
servants, at least in the Department of Defense with which I am
familiar.
We also have the problem of the dual-income families.
Admiral Natter, when he was interviewing people and writing
this article, was probably talking to officers whose wives also
worked and they were not as mobile, and because they were not
as mobile as their predecessors had been, they had less job
satisfaction. They could not move, they could not be
transferred from San Diego to Norfolk because the wife had a
job in San Diego. Of course, there are other officers that are
married to officers. My daughter is a commander married to a
commander, and that creates another type of problem.
So these are situations we did not have to deal with 10 or
15 years ago. They are new. We have to adapt to them. We have
to create a recruiting climate where we can offer a job to a
civilian, if it is a civilian job we are trying to fill, that
gives him job satisfaction, that allows him to deal with
questions like dual-income families, and is not so bureaucratic
that he has to wait around a year before he knows whether he
has actually gotten that job or not. We are competing with
industry, no question about it.
Mr. Scarborough. Thank you, gentlemen. And let me just say
in closing this round, I will tell you another thing that does
not help an awful lot, and I have seen it firsthand in my
district, is when you have BRAC 1989, BRAC 1991, BRAC 1993,
BRAC 1995, and then the administration asking for BRAC 1997,
1999, now we are hearing 2001. There are an awful lot of people
that are displaced by processes like that, also. I mean, I
certainly understand the purpose of it, but it is something
that somebody in the private sector does not have to worry
about every 2 years, about whether they are going to lose their
jobs, about whether they are going to be shipped across to the
other side of the country. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. We have an early bird rule
here in the Senate. According to my list, it is Senator Akaka,
Representative Norton, and Senator Carper are the next in line
to ask questions. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank our distinguished panel for your
statements. It has been invigorating. As a matter of fact, I
looked upon you as a quartet, singing the same song. That song,
unfortunately, as our two Chairmen stated, who have devoted
their political careers to ensuring the human capital side of
government is not lost during debates on institutional reform,
the song you sing is that there has been a collective failure
in assuring that human capital is not at risk.
As has been mentioned here, it is a complex problem. We are
looking for answers. I do not know whether to start from the
top or the bottom. We talk about promotions. When you think of
a janitor who has become a good janitor, where does he go from
there? How do you keep ensuring good people are joining
government at the entry level and retaining good people at the
senior level?
And so these questions make it very complex, but we all
agree that the personnel that we seek is very important to our
system whether we are talking about space, or about defense
personnel at Pearl Harbor. Our problems relate to money. I just
hope the next crisis will not be financial, such as a
depression.
Because I am on the committee that deals with these issues,
let me start off by asking a question to Robert Lieberman. In a
recent interview, Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's last Director of
Operational Tests and Evaluation, stated that it was penny-wise
and pound-foolish for the armed services to cut their testing
personnel by 30 percent and their testing facilities by 32
percent over the past decade. That was a quote. The failure to
test weapons properly resulted in flaws that often led to fatal
accidents, and I have heard the Secretary mention some of those
types of incidents in the past.
My question is, do you agree that a thorough early testing
of a weapons system is essential and do you have any comment on
Mr. Coyle's statement concerning the cuts to testing personnel
and whether his figures were accurate?
Mr. Lieberman. I am not familiar with his figures, other
than what I have read, but I presume they are supported. You
asked me several questions there. Let me see if I can capture
them.
Should there be sufficient up-front testing? Yes,
absolutely. It is critically important. I believe that Mr.
Coyle's last annual report to the Congress, which was made
recently, before he left the Department, pointed out that a
very large percentage of weapons systems are failing their
operational test and evaluations, which is testing that occurs
sort of in the middle of the program as opposed to up front,
and that it was very costly to go back and change system
designs at that point. Had better up-front testing been done,
it would have been much cheaper.
I agree with that. I found the report that he produced
quite troubling. I have actually used the example of the cut-
back in the testing workforce as one of the examples of a
functional area that has been adversely impacted by downsizing.
So I also agree with him that there has been too much cutting,
that the cutting was not well thought out in that particular
area.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. I would like to come back to the
human capital issue that we have been talking about and reflect
on employee organizations. This question is to any one of you.
As Federal agencies seek and implement personnel flexibilities,
what steps do you believe agencies should take to ensure
consultation with Federal employee organizations and collective
bargaining units?
Mr. Hinton. Senator Akaka, I think that they are a
stakeholder in the process, and I think as the leaders of the
agencies go through a strategic planning process where they
look to the future workforce requirements and they do the
necessary analysis to identify gaps in the skills that they
need, they also need to consult all the stakeholders in the
process, one of which is the group that you are considering.
I found through all of my work that we have done that there
are a lot of good ideas out in the workforce that can help us
get to certain objectives when we work them, and I also think
they can have some good ideas to help solve some of the
workforce issues we see.
But I think key to where GAO has been coming from in
declaring the human capital area a governmentwide high risk
area, it goes to skills, knowledge, and the abilities that we
need in the future, and we just have not paid the level of
attention to that whole area and we need to start focusing on
that. We need to find champions who want to work the cause and
make smart judgments in proceeding on how we will fill some of
the real critical skills that we are going to need in the
future. Naturally, that will have some impact, but they are
also important stakeholders to consult in that process.
Senator Akaka. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time is up and I
thank you for the opportunity.
Senator Voinovich. Representative Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
all of these witnesses for the very important work you do,
beginning with the Congress. I think that the work that Senator
Voinovich has initiated and you have spoken to this morning
really is a wake-up call for the Congress, except I think the
Congress is asleep on it, and how to set off an alarm clock
here becomes a major challenge for us all.
You have described what politely speaking could be called a
crisis, everything from recruitment to an aging workforce. I
have read your recommendations. Many of them are very good
recommendations. I have real concerns about the short term,
however.
First, I would like to ask a question that really befuddles
me. I am aware what happens as young people get out of college.
They often get out of college with quite good technology
skills, just by having gotten a higher education. We know good
and well that these folks do not run to their nearest OPM
office to get hired by the Federal Government or to the nearest
military station. We also know that civil service cannot, as I
recall, hire foreign nationals. So both our military and our
civil service are dependent upon our native-born workforce, or
at least our native-born and naturalized workforce.
With respect to the high-technology workforce, any time
when private employers are having to throw money at people with
technology skills, where they find themselves competing against
one another and, therefore, going to foreign nationals, how is
the Federal Government hiring people with advanced technology
skills? Are we training them, and if so, are we simply
investing in them and then they get hired away where they can
get more money? How do we get a pool? How have we gotten a
pool, assuming we have one, of people who can, especially in
the DOD area, work the advanced technology economy?
Admiral Train. One way is to use loan forgiveness----
Ms. Norton. No, no, I am asking a here and now question.
Admiral Train. This can be a here and now question.
Ms. Norton. I am asking not how can we attract them, I am
saying, do we have them? This government, and especially the
DOD, has to have instantly people with certain very advanced
technology skills. You describe a situation that says to me
that those people would be out of their minds to come to the
government. So I am trying to find out how the high-technology
part of the Federal Government is being run now. Are we on the
spot taking what employees we have and training them? I then
have a follow-up question. When they get this training, what in
the world is to keep them here, since the high-technology
sector wants them? I am trying to find out where we are now
with respect to the most advanced workers, how we are able to
run this government, assuming that these workers, certainly in
the DOD sector, would be as much a requirement as they are in
the private sector.
Admiral Train. We do not train our--the existing employees,
we do not send through training. We do not give them----
Ms. Norton. Well, where do we get them from?
Admiral Train [continuing]. Scientific and technical
education. We have to hire people with scientific and technical
education and they are in short supply because the typical
American college student, the typical American high school
student does not go into science and technology. They go into
other things. They are difficult to find. The industry depends
upon, as you have already indicated, Ms. Norton, the non-U.S.
national source for their science and technology needs. But if
we can devise a system, and it has been indicated here today
already that the authority is there, but to start funding the
means of forgiving student loans for those that come out of the
science and technology education process and hiring them to
meet our needs, then perhaps we can do so in the very near
future.
Mr. Schlesinger. We are not grappling with the problem. The
Federal Government does not have the requisite scientific and
technical personnel and it is losing many of the people that it
already has.
Ms. Norton. Do we outsource when we need folks?
Mr. Schlesinger. We have become dependent upon contractors,
or in the case of the Department of Energy, we depend upon the
ability of the DOE labs to hire people outside, and for a
number of reasons, their ability to attract has diminished.
Ms. Norton. Your recommendations are very important. If we
were to start on them tomorrow, you yourself say that they
would require some time to, of course, show results. Could I
ask you whether or not, for example, government pensions still
keep people working? I mean, what is there that we can do to
keep people from retiring early, from simply giving up their
pension because they get such a good deal, as it were, in the
private sector? The government pension used to be part of that.
So did health care, except we are way behind the private sector
when it comes to the percentage we pay in health care.
So I am trying to find out whether there are at hand, with
the existing workforce, which, as the Chairman says, half of it
could retire virtually within the next 3 or 4 years, with the
existing workforce, what could we do pending the time that we
can draw more people to rebuild our workforce to keep the
people in whom we have invested working longer?
Mr. Lieberman. Could I tackle that one?
Ms. Norton. Yes, please.
Mr. Lieberman. I could have retired last August. I am still
here.
Ms. Norton. Why?
Mr. Lieberman. The main reason is, I love my job and I
think it is really interesting. When we go out to recruit or we
talk to our employees trying to retain them, on a strict dollar
basis, everybody is absolutely right; we just cannot compete
with the private sector. Certainly, we need the ability to pay
people with critical skills more. I was monumentally
disappointed with the very modest specialty pay increases that
OPM came up with for the information technology work series
last year. I think that was a pittance and really will not have
much of any effect.
The Federal Government has things going for it, however,
that sometimes have enabled us to retain highly skilled people
who could be making a lot more on the outside. We are a humane
employer. We do not require people to work ridiculous hours. In
my office, we have adapted the casual dress policy, which to
young people is a very big deal, every day. I feel silly
without a tie, but they like that.
A lot of our work is inherently interesting. We have
criminal investigators who are experts in computer crime
forensics, very esoteric matters, very highly skilled agents,
tremendous demand for them in both the public and private
sectors. We can keep many of them because they are really
interested in the cases they are working in, like catching
hackers hacking into national security systems, and they really
enjoy the work.
So the stereotype of government bureaucrats doing nothing
but pushing paper and being bored out of their minds really
does not hold true. We have done a very poor job of advertising
ourselves and explaining that to people. We have let the
stereotype hold true, which is unfortunate. So I think we could
do more immediately there. We put a lot of time, effort, and
money hiring the best advertising firms for military recruiting
and we have great looking ads on television. Nobody recruits
for the civil service like that. Nobody recruits for the civil
service at all, except with some print advertisement that is
rather boring.
So I think certainly more compensation would help, but we
do have some strengths that we probably do not emphasize
enough.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say, the
recommendation of the panel for a National Security Service
Corps rather much imitates the notion of an honors program in
the Justice Department. The notion of creating an elite corps
early on, so that if you join this corps, you feel very special
and you have been hired for very special reasons, is one I
would want to heartily endorse.
Mr. Hinton. Ms. Norton, can I just add one thing here, and
I think that it goes across the government, is that we need to
better understand the expectation folks coming out of school
have for their work environment. I think the government can do
a much better job and look in its tool bag to find ways to
match up better with their expectations. The casual dress is
one area, but there are other incentives that are out there
that we can use, and I think there are a lot of those tools for
which we do not fully understand the flexibilities across
government, flexibilities that can be useful in drawing in new
people and keeping some of the people that we have, in addition
to the others that Mr. Lieberman just mentioned to you.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. To our witnesses
today, welcome. We are delighted that you are here. We thank
you for your testimony and for your service to our country. I
want to thank the Chairman for inviting our friends from the
other end of the Capitol to join us here today and give me a
chance to hook up with Connie Morella, Representative Morella,
who my wife and I met 15 years ago this year on our honeymoon
in Jamaica. So it was nice to have that little reunion here, as
well.
I apologize for missing your testimonies. I have a couple
of other hearings going on this morning and I am trying to
attend all of them. I missed what you said. If you have already
addressed this, I am going to ask you, just for me, to repeat
it.
Governor Voinovich and I used to be governors before we
were Senators, and we are people who believe in the States as
laboratories of democracy and the idea that we are actually
interested in devolving some things back down to the States and
figure the States can do better some things that we actually do
here at the Federal Government.
What I would ask, just to start off with, are you aware of
some practices that some of the States are following with
respect to attracting and retaining exemplary employees,
whether it is in the technology fields that Ms. Norton was
touching on or some others? Are you aware of any best practices
out there in the States where we could look to those States as
models that we might emulate? Any one of you?
Admiral Train. It does not come to mind in our work.
Senator Carper. All right.
Mr. Hinton. Senator, I think that is part of the solution
to the strategic planning process. I think part of that goes to
once you know your requirements and your gaps, you need to
learn the experiences of others and how they are tackling
similar problems, and if they are having success, we in the
government need to find ways to replicate that success across
the different agencies, from a lessons learned standpoint, and
I think probably the government has got some good lessons to
share, the States too, and the local counties. We do not yet
have a pretty good inventory of what those successes are. I
think that effort is a positive. That is a good step that we
need to be really conscious of.
Senator Carper. Thank you. In the National Governors
Association, we had a number of entities. The Governors
Association existed in part to lobby the Congress and the
President on behalf of the States. We also had a Center for
Best Practices which we used to gather the best practices from
the various States, whether it is dealing with increasing home
ownership or whether the issue is trying to reduce recidivism
or to encourage people to move off of welfare, to raise student
achievement. We had our Center for Best Practices and gathered
those good ideas and tried to make them available to the other
States on a user-friendly basis.
Do we have the ability--are you aware if we have the
ability, whether it is in the Department of Defense or in the
Federal Government, where we are able to gather best practices
within not the States necessarily but within Federal agencies?
Mr. Hinton. Yes, sir. In the----
Senator Carper. And to share in a user-friendly way those
best practices?
Mr. Hinton. Yes, sir. In GAO, we have done that across a
lot of our audit teams. An area that comes to mind is the
acquisition of major systems, where we have gone out as part of
our research and looked for those best practices, and then once
we have those, go back into the executive agencies and compare
them to their practices, and where we can see that there is
merit in following the best practices, we have adopted some of
those recommendations.
In DOD's case, we think there are some good practices out
there that they could use in acquiring weapons systems that
they ought to follow unless there is a compelling national
security reason not to do so. It will save money, it will get
the job quicker, and I think that it will also let them know if
the path they are going down will get them where they need to
go. And we have used that technique widely in GAO.
Admiral Train. We have a database that is called a Joint
Unified Lessons Learned database where--but they are mostly
operational and do not deal with administrative or policy
matters. But yes, there is such a database. Whether or not that
branches off into such matters as we are discussing today, how
to better hire better civilians into the Department of Defense
civilian structure, I am not sure whether that is covered. But
there is a database for other things. It could be adapted to
that, I suppose.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Yes, sir?
Mr. Lieberman. I believe a lot of that is done in clusters
of organizations and managers who are in the same business
area. For instance, the audit community within Defense shares
ideas on recruiting and personnel management things, as does
the Federal law enforcement community. But I do think more of
that can be done in this specific area. We were talking in
terms of people not understanding what authorities they already
have. There has been an awful lot of duplicate research to
figure out what those authorities are all over the Department.
So we probably could do better if we could make that more
systematic.
Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, my pager is going off here.
It is trying to tell me something. Do we have a vote in
progress?
Senator Voinovich. Mine has not gone off yet.
Senator Carper. My wife is saying, do not forget that bread
and milk tonight coming home. [Laughter.]
Can I ask one more question, just a quick one?
Senator Voinovich. Certainly.
Senator Carper. Thanks. One of the great values I found
over the years in a hearing like this is to find where our
speakers, our witnesses agree, and let me just ask if you would
each just give me one idea where you think you agree on
something we ought to do this year--this year--to address the
problems that we have talked about today, just one idea where
you think you agree. Each of you give me one idea, if you
would, on an approach to help us address these problems this
year.
Mr. Hinton. I think that there is agreement that the human
capital issue has gone unattended for many years in the
government right now and I think there is agreement amongst the
work that we have done, the Commission has done and other
studies, is that it needs to be a priority within the Executive
Branch to start addressing it, and from GAO's point of view,
that begins with strategic planning as you look to your future
needs, and I think that is a very key, fundamental point that
needs to occur.
But it cannot occur unless you have got the commitment that
starts with the President down through the secretaries, and
that they are on board and are going to move in that direction.
Because what happens is sometimes there are competing policy
issues that move things to the side, though not intentionally,
but they lose that sense of priority that needs to be done, and
I do not think that we can wait any longer.
I think all the studies point in one direction. Enough of
this has been studied. It is time to act. To use the term from
the McKinsey study that was done at the Department of State,
there is a war on for talent and that talent is the folks that
we need to bring into the workforce, particularly into State
and DOD. It is our front-line defense and we have got to be
prepared for what the future brings and we cannot wait much
longer for that to be left unattended.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Our other witnesses, one idea
that you agree on.
Admiral Train. The President should propose and Congress
should pass a National Security Science and Technology
Education Act with four sections: Reduced interest loans and
scholarships for students to pursue degrees in science,
mathematics, and engineering; loan forgiveness and scholarships
for those in these fields entering government or military
service; a national security teaching program to foster science
and math teaching at the K through 12 level; and increased
funding for professional development for science and math
teachers.
Senator Carper. Terrific. Thank you. The last word?
Mr. Lieberman. I think both the White House and the
Congress should demand that senior managers in the Executive
Branch use whatever flexibilities they have now or whatever
additional flexibilities are authorized and be accountable for
getting on top of this civilian workforce problem.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. I want to thank the witnesses. I would
like to acknowledge that Representative Cummings has arrived
today, and Representative Cummings, we apologize to you, but we
are going to wrap up.\1\
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Cummings appears in the Appendix
on page 35.
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I would like to say that, from my perspective, one of our
biggest jobs is to prioritize the things that we need to do to
address this human capital crisis, and you have been discussing
many of them here today.
Second of all, I would think that given the problems that
the Commission's report addresses, we need to share that
information with the chairman of the Armed Services Committee,
the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and the chairman of
the Foreign Relations Committee and try to get them to focus
their attention on this particular problem that has been
ignored for so many years. Too often, it seems to me, they get
distracted with other subjects. We have to get this onto their
high priority list and also make sure that they come up with
the money to fund some of the existing incentives and start
looking at some of the additional things that we need to
recruit and retain employees.
We never did get into the issue of training, for example,
which I have mentioned on several occasions. When I inquired of
the last administration how much money they spent on training,
the Office of Management and Budget, responded, ``We do not
know.'' I think any organization that is going to keep people
and be vital and attractive must provide money to train those
individuals, upgrade their skills and make it an exciting place
for them to be.
I cannot help but think about this attrition issue that we
have, and Admiral, you are talking about the changed nature of
our armed services today. I will never forget as long as I live
when I was in Tirana, Albania, and visiting with the crew of
several Apache helicopters and talking to them after one of
their comrades had died in the training missions. After the
brass left, I asked them, what is the problem? And one of them
told me, ``Senator, do you not understand that this is a family
Army?'' And when I went to Arlington Cemetery and visited with
David Gibbs' widow, the first thing she said was, ``Do you not
understand that this is a family Army and we never see our
husbands?''
I think that is a very, very important thing that has been
overlooked, and I know the services are starting to give some
consideration to it. But I think it is fundamental if we expect
to retain the people that we have and attract more people to
the services.
Mr. Scarborough.
Mr. Scarborough. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I have enjoyed
this first hearing. It has been very informative and important.
I am honored to be sitting next to you. I have heard you called
Governor and Senator, Mr. Chairman, and, of course----
Senator Carper. Mayor.
Mr. Scarborough. I was going to say, one of his great
accomplishments was becoming mayor and just stopping the river
from catching on fire. [Laughter.]
I mean, that was awe inspiring for all of us. But you are
emminently qualified because you have done it on the municipal
level, you have done it on the State level, and now you are
looking at the situation up here.
It has been a great first hearing and I look forward to
working alongside you in the coming hearings.
I would like to also submit for the record, and we have not
had time to answer all these questions, I would like to submit
a question for all of you to answer in the coming weeks just on
something that I got off of Government Executive magazine. It
is March 23, 2001. The headline says, ``Better Pay Will Not
Solve Tech Worker Shortage,'' and it says the top five reasons
reasonably paid techies stay at jobs are, (1) good management,
(2) good work environment, (3) challenging work, (4) flexible
work arrangements, and (5) training--the very thing you said
that we did not get a chance to discuss today. But I would like
to submit this for record, without objection, and if you all
could just grade the Federal Government on these five areas in
the coming weeks, I think that would be helpful.
[The information of Hon. Joe Scarborough follows:]
RESPONSE TO QUESTION FOR THE RECORD BY CHAIRMAN SCARBOROUGH
Mr. Lieberman. We agree with the article's premise that factors
other than pay alone are important to Federal employees, both military
and civilian. Regarding grades for the Federal Government in the five
areas mentioned by the author, however, we are hesitant to generalize
beyond those parts of the DOD workforce that we have evaluated recently
from a personnel management standpoint or that belong to the job series
used in our office. We also believe there are drastically different
degrees of workforce issue awareness and workforce management
effectiveness across the many organizations that comprise the DOD.
Finally, numerous actions began over the last year or two that are
intended to address recruiting and retention problems, so any
performance grades given at this time may not capture the effects of
those initiatives.
Those caveats aside, we offer the following observations:
Management. Managing a workforce during a prolonged period of
downsizing is extremely difficult, but the lack of a strategic plan for
the DOD civilian workforce throughout the past decade has made the
situation worse. The Department has yet to demonstrate that, across the
board, it has any particular plan for the civilian workforce other than
to make additional arbitrary cuts. On the military side, the Secretary
of Defense has raised the provocative question of whether the
traditional ``up or out'' promotion and retention policy still makes
sense.
Work Environment. The DOD can compete favorably with other
organizations in terms of work environment for civilian employees,
except that constant public disparagement of Government workers has a
wearing effect on employee morale. The Department needs to do more in
terms of expressing confidence in its civilian workforce. In addition,
the instability and uncertainty created by seemingly never ending talk
and rumor of further downsizing, restructuring and outsourcing make it
difficult to maintain a positive work environment. Achieving a
strategic plan that lays out a clear roadmap for what lies ahead would
greatly help. On the military side, the DOD has recognized the severe
degradation of the work environment caused by very high operating
tempo, underinvestment in housing and other facilities, and frustrating
shortages of materiel.
Challenging Work. Overall, DOD ranks high in terms of offering
interesting work to both civilian and military personnel.
Flexible Work Arrangements. We have not reviewed this matter and
have no basis for comment, except to note that the use of alternative
work schedules and other flexible arrangements appears fairly
widespread.
Training. The Department has acknowledged that much more needs to
be done to improve both civilian and military training.
Mr. Scarborough. Thank you again. I appreciate it.
Senator Voinovich. We again thank the witnesses and thank
Members of the House and Senate that have been here with us.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the Subcommittees were
adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am please to be here with my colleagues from the House Civil
Service Subcommittee and the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of
Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia. As
the former Ranking Member of the Civil Service Subcommittee, I know the
importance of bipartisanship and forming good working relationships
with our friends in the Senate.
The focus of today's hearing: How the human capital crisis is
affecting the national security, is vitally important. In recent years,
military services have struggled to meet recruiting goals. The State
Department has struggled to recruit and retain Foreign Service
Officers. Sadly, the thought of ``serving our country'' is not enough
to lure people to the Departments of Defense and State. With the
attraction of higher salaries and competitive benefit packages, it is
not surprising that Federal agencies are finding it difficult to keep a
talented workforce.
It is imperative that we examine the Federal government's efforts
to recruit recent college graduates and their retention and training
efforts.
Human capital reforms will be necessary as Federal employees are
aging and nearing retirement. In a recent interview, the new director
of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stated that Federal
agencies are struggling to hire qualified college graduates at a time
when a large majority of their Federal workers are nearing retirement.
The Federal Government faces the great challenge of keeping a
qualified and well-trained workforce. Federal agencies must offer
enhanced technology training and higher wages. Later this year, I will
reintroduce the Federal Workforce Digital Access Act (FDWA) that
proposes to provide a home computer and Internet access to permanent
Federal employees, who complete one year of employment. Additionally, I
support Senator Sarbanes' effort to ensure civil service employees
receive a pay raise similar to the pay raise given to our men and women
in the military.
I agree with Senator Voinovich that we must do all that we can do
to empower Federal employees by creating a workplace where employees
can efficiently use their talents and skills to make a difference.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
Thank you.
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