An Assessment of Dependent Care Needs of Federal Workers Using	 
the Office of Personnel Management's Survey (30-MAR-07, 	 
GAO-07-437R).							 
                                                                 
Recognizing the changing demographics of the federal		 
workforce--significant portions of the workforce are aging,	 
facing the need to care for elderly parents, and are or will be  
retiring, and in turn likely to be replaced by a younger	 
workforce with child care needs--the Congress was interested in  
understanding the dependent care needs of the federal workforce  
and to what extent employees were using or could use federal	 
programs and benefits designed to help meet these needs. We have 
previously reported that work-life programs, such as alternative 
flexible work schedules and child care centers and assistance,	 
are viewed by agency officials as being among the most effective 
programs used to help manage their workforce. In response to	 
these trends, the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations, 
included a mandate in its Conference Report 108-792 directing GAO
to: (1) provide technical assistance to the Office of Personnel  
Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA) in
their efforts to gather data on federal employee child care needs
and analyze options to meet those needs, and (2) review the data 
and analysis generated and provide the results to the Committees.
This letter and enclosure is our response to this mandate. More  
specifically, they provide our analysis of results from a survey 
of federal employees, which OPM developed and administered, that 
address: (1) the extent of dependent care needs reported by these
employees, and (2) the ways in which these employees currently	 
meet those needs, including the use of certain			 
federally-sponsored programs and flexibilities intended to help  
address child and adult dependent care needs.			 
-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-07-437R					        
    ACCNO:   A67627						        
  TITLE:     An Assessment of Dependent Care Needs of Federal Workers 
Using the Office of Personnel Management's Survey		 
     DATE:   03/30/2007 
  SUBJECT:   Child care programs				 
	     Dependents 					 
	     Employee benefit plans				 
	     Federal agencies					 
	     Federal employees					 
	     Flexible work schedules				 
	     Occupational surveys				 
	     Elder care 					 

******************************************************************
** This file contains an ASCII representation of the text of a  **
** GAO Product.                                                 **
**                                                              **
** No attempt has been made to display graphic images, although **
** figure captions are reproduced.  Tables are included, but    **
** may not resemble those in the printed version.               **
**                                                              **
** Please see the PDF (Portable Document Format) file, when     **
** available, for a complete electronic file of the printed     **
** document's contents.                                         **
**                                                              **
******************************************************************
GAO-07-437R

   

     * [1]PDF6-Ordering Information.pdf

          * [2]Order by Mail or Phone

te

n

March 30, 2007

The Honorable Richard Durbin
Chairman
The Honorable Sam Brownback
Ranking Minority Member
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate

The Honorable Jose E. Serrano
Chairman
The Honorable Ralph Regula
Ranking Minority Member
Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government
Committee on Appropriations
House of Representatives

Subject: An Assessment of Dependent Care Needs of Federal Workers Using
the Office of Personnel Management's Survey

Recognizing the changing demographics of the federal
workforce--significant portions of the workforce are aging, facing the
need to care for elderly parents, and are or will be retiring, and in turn
likely to be replaced by a younger workforce with child care needs--the
Congress was interested in understanding the dependent care needs of the
federal workforce and to what extent employees were using or could use
federal programs and benefits designed to help meet these needs. We have
previously reported that work-life programs, such as alternative flexible
work schedules and child care centers and assistance, are viewed by agency
officials as being among the most effective programs used to help manage
their workforce.^1

In response to these trends, the House and Senate Committees on
Appropriations, included a mandate in its Conference Report 108-792
directing GAO to: (1) provide technical assistance to the Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration (GSA)
in their efforts to gather data on federal employee child care needs and
analyze options to meet those needs, and (2) review the data and analysis
generated and provide the results to the Committees. This letter and
enclosure is our response to this mandate. More specifically, they provide
our analysis of results from a survey of federal employees, which OPM
developed and administered, that address: (1) the extent of dependent care
needs reported by these employees, and (2) the ways in which these
employees currently meet those needs, including the use of certain
federally-sponsored programs and flexibilities intended to help address
child and adult dependent care needs.

^1GAO, Human Capital: Effective Use of Flexibilities Can Assist Agencies
in Managing Their Workforces,  GAO-03-2 (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 6, 2002).

To conduct our analysis, as agreed with staff of the subcommittee, we
assisted OPM with developing and administering a survey to federal
workers. The survey was administered to 40,000 randomly-selected employees
to identify their existing and future child and adult dependent^2 care
needs and the extent to which current federal dependent care options meet
the identified needs. Current dependent care options include federal child
care centers, the Child Care Subsidy Program, and dependent care flexible
spending accounts or equivalent (DCFSA). GSA and individual agencies are
authorized to sponsor child care centers for children of federal
employees. The Child Care Subsidy Program authorizes agencies to assist
lower-income employees with child care needs by providing a monetary
subsidy for care. The DCFSA is a type of flexible spending account that
permits employees to set aside a portion of their salaries pretax to pay
for dependent care expenses. Dependent care options also include a number
of flexible scheduling benefits, such as telework and alternative and
flexible work schedules, that federal agencies offer and employees use to
meet their dependent care needs. The dependent care survey was
administered from April 6 through June 1, 2006, to employees of executive
and legislative agencies and the judicial branch's court units and the
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The survey was designed to
obtain the needs of, and options used by, employees from various age
groups and income levels since programs such as the Child Care Subsidy
Program have income eligibility requirements. The data were sufficiently
reliable for our purposes of reporting the results.

We analyzed survey data governmentwide for the entire survey population
and for agencies or units in each branch separately. We also analyzed
survey data for employees with multiple types of dependent care needs
because OPM indicated that a growing number of federal workers have both
young children and aging parents for whose care they are simultaneously
responsible. In some cases, we also analyzed data for individual agencies
to determine if there were significant differences across agencies for a
few, targeted questions. To supplement survey data and information on
dependent care options, we also obtained data on the availability,
operation, and utilization of federal child care centers from GSA; on the
numbers of executive branch agency personnel and their geographic location
from OPM's Central Personnel Data File; and on the number of executive
agencies that provide child care subsidies from OPM. While we did not
independently verify the survey responses provided to us by OPM, we did
independent analyses and certain statistical tests to verify OPM's
analyses of the data and any comparisons contained in this report.

^2OPM's survey included questions on both child and adult dependent care
needs. Adult dependent care was defined as the responsibility of providing
services essential to the health, well-being, or activities of daily
living for another adult (aged 18 or older). This included, but was not
limited to, elder care.

On December 14, 2006, we briefed subcommittee staff on preliminary survey
results. This letter and its enclosure summarize and update the
information presented at the briefing and include additional information
on federally-sponsored child care centers requested by subcommittee staff.
The enclosure generally covers governmentwide trends and additional survey
results on agencies in the executive branch, in part because they are
under OPM jurisdiction and that agency has primary authority over
workplace programs in the executive branch. The enclosure then highlights
the extent to which results for employees within the legislative agencies
and judicial units match or differ from employees in the executive
agencies.

Summary of Findings

Governmentwide, survey results show that about 54 percent of federal
employees reported having either child or adult dependent care needs, or
both, and about 19 percent of employees currently without dependent care
needs expect to have them in the future. Dependent care needs varied
across executive branch agencies and between the legislative, judicial,
and executive branches. Governmentwide, federal employees with children
reported using an array of child care arrangements to meet their needs,
with about 75 percent of them reporting that they prefer the arrangements
they currently use. Most employees reported they prefer to use some form
of in-home care to meet their needs. Less than 10 percent of employees
with children in care prior to first grade reported using federal child
care centers. However, of the 25 percent of employees with children that
were not using their preferred child care arrangement, from 45 to 71
percent of these employees (depending on the age of the child) wanted to
use federal centers, and many reported they could not because of
availability and cost. In terms of availability, we found that there are
currently 225 federally-sponsored child care centers nationwide with one
half sponsored and operated by GSA and the other half sponsored and
managed by agencies. When determining whether to sponsor a center, an
agency, among other things, assesses the geographic location of its
employees and whether there are large enough numbers to sustain a center,
and if this is the best federal option available to meet employee needs.

With respect to the two other federal dependent care programs, 98 percent
of executive branch employees with children reported they did not use a
child care subsidy program (not available to legislative and judicial
branch employees), and governmentwide, about 93 percent said they did not
use a DCFSA. Most employees reported not using these programs either
because they did not pay for care or because they did not know about these
benefits. Also, of the employees who did not use the DCFSA, 8 percent
reported not using it because they did not know how to use it. While
results for legislative and judicial branch employee use of child care
centers was similar to those for the executive branch, more of these
employees used the DCFSA than in executive agencies. Governmentwide,
employees reported also using a variety of workplace scheduling
flexibilities as options for addressing their dependent care needs. The
availability and use of these flexibilities varied widely across agencies
and more employees in the legislative agencies and judicial units reported
using such flexibilities than in executive agencies. Although availability
and use varied, survey results indicated that these workplace scheduling
flexibilities were consistently important to the recruitment and retention
of employees with dependent care needs governmentwide.

Observations on Survey Results and Next Steps

The dependent care survey results indicate there is no overall mandate for
new or additional federal dependent care programs and benefits, since most
employees are satisfied with their current care arrangements. However, the
data do suggest that agencies could improve communication about and,
therefore, better leverage the existing federal dependent care programs
and benefits that they may offer, given that a significant number of
employees said they did not know if their agency offered these programs or
did not know how to use them. Because survey results varied across
agencies, they could review their individual results with the programs and
workplace options they offer to determine whether these programs and
options best balance the agencies' employees' needs with mission
requirements and promote recruitment and retention of high-quality federal
employees. In reviewing their agency-specific data to assess their
employees' unique needs, executive agencies can coordinate with OPM,
legislative agencies can coordinate with any relevant oversight bodies
such as the Chief Administrative Officers (CAO) Council, and judicial
court units can coordinate with the Administrative Office of the U.S.
Courts. When assessing dependent care needs, agencies will want to
consider conditions and circumstances unique to their agency and
employees, including the age, income, and geographic distribution of their
workforce.

Agency Remarks

We provided a draft copy of this enclosure to OPM and GSA to verify the
accuracy of the data and program descriptions. We briefed the CAO Council
on the survey's overall results and results specific to the legislative
agencies and briefed the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on the
survey's overall results and results specific to the judicial branch. OPM
and GSA verified the accuracy of the data and program descriptions and OPM
agreed with our overall assessment of the survey results and our suggested
next steps. The CAO Council and the Administrative Office of the U.S.
Courts also agreed with our suggested next steps.

We will send copies of this report to the Director of OPM, the
Administrator of GSA, the Chair of the CAO Council, and the Director of
the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts; appropriate congressional
committees; and other interested parties. We will also make this report
available at no charge on GAO's Web site at http://www.gao.gov . Should
you or your staffs have any questions about this report, please contact me
at (202) 512-6510 or [email protected] . Contact points for our Offices
of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs can be found on the last
page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report
are Trina Lewis, Latesha Love, Karen O'Conor, Gregory Wilmoth, Rebecca
Shea, and George Quinn, Jr.

Eileen Regen Larence
Director, Homeland Security and Justice

Enclosure

(842225)

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright
protection in the United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in
its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this
work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the
copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material
separately.

GAO's Mission

The Government Accountability Office, the audit, evaluation and
investigative arm of Congress, exists to support Congress in meeting its
constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and
accountability of the federal government for the American people. GAO
examines the use of public funds; evaluates federal programs and policies;
and provides analyses, recommendations, and other assistance to help
Congress make informed oversight, policy, and funding decisions. GAO's
commitment to good government is reflected in its core values of
accountability, integrity, and reliability.

Obtaining Copies of GAO Reports and Testimony

The fastest and easiest way to obtain copies of GAO documents at no cost
is through GAO's Web site ( www.gao.gov ). Each weekday, GAO posts
newly released reports, testimony, and correspondence on its Web site. To
have GAO e-mail you a list of newly posted products every afternoon, go to
www.gao.gov and select "Subscribe to Updates."

Order by Mail or Phone

The first copy of each printed report is free. Additional copies are $2
each. A check or money order should be made out to the Superintendent of
Documents. GAO also accepts VISA and Mastercard. Orders for 100 or more
copies mailed to a single address are discounted 25 percent. Orders should
be sent to:

U.S. Government Accountability Office 441 G Street NW, Room LM Washington,
D.C. 20548

To order by Phone: Voice: (202) 512-6000 TDD: (202) 512-2537 Fax: (202)
512-6061

To Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal Programs

Contact:

Web site: www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm E-mail: [8][email protected]
Automated answering system: (800) 424-5454 or (202) 512-7470

Congressional Relations

Gloria Jarmon, Managing Director, [email protected] (202) 512-4400 U.S.
Government Accountability Office, 441 G Street NW, Room 7125 Washington,
D.C. 20548

Public Affairs

Paul Anderson, Managing Director, [email protected] (202) 512-4800
U.S. Government Accountability Office, 441 G Street NW, Room 7149
Washington, D.C. 20548

*** End of document. ***