The Results Act: Observations on OPM's May 1997 Draft Strategic Plan
(Correspondence, 07/11/97, GAO/GGD-97-150R).
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Office of
Personnel Management's (OPM) May 1997 draft strategic plan, focusing on:
(1) whether the draft strategic plan contained each of the six
components required by the Government Performance and Results Act and
assessed the components' strengths and weaknesses; (2) whether OPM's key
statutory authorities were reflected; (3) whether discussions about
crosscutting functions and interagency coordination were included; (4)
whether the draft plan addressed major management challenges; and (5)
OPM's capacity to provide reliable information about operations and
performance.
GAO noted that: (1) of the six components required by the Act, two--how
the goals and objectives will be achieved and relating performance goals
to general goals and objectives--were not specifically identified in the
draft plan; (2) the remaining four components--mission statement, goals
and objectives, external factors, and program evaluations--were
discussed in the draft plan; (3) however, each of these components had
weaknesses, some of more significance than others; (4) the four
identified components generally contained some, but not all, of the
attributes that would be desirable to meet the purpose of the Act and to
be consistent with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance, or
that might be expected in a stand-alone explanation of OPM's planned
strategy for the next 5 years; (5) OPM's draft plan could better meet
the purposes of the Act and OMB guidance if it contained a
well-developed discussion of statutory authorities, crosscutting issues,
and management problems; (6) OPM's draft plan does not discuss OPM's key
statutory authorities, which could help OPM's stakeholders better
understand the diversity and complexity of OPM's overall mission as well
as the challenges the agency faces in carrying out its mission; (7) the
plan does identify a number of crosscutting issues; (8) since OPM had
not met with stakeholders before developing its plan--as officials
stated in their initial consultation with House consulting team
members--the draft plan is silent on the Results Act required
coordination; (9) in addition, the draft plan does not discuss the
status of OPM's efforts to address the formidable federal personnel
management problems that have been identified over the years; (10) such
a discussion in the plan could assist OPM in the process of refining its
goals and objectives as well as inform stakeholders of problems that
could impede OPM's efforts to achieve its goals and objectives; (11)
OPM's draft plan contains little discussion of the information systems
that directly support OPM's role as the administrator and fiduciary for
federal employees' benefit programs; (12) these systems are the source
of performance information for gauging how well OPM carries out its
stewardship of the benefit programs; (13) a discussion of these systems
would be valuable to stakeholders since an independent accountant found
that key financial systems did not adequately support OPM's financial
statements for the Retirement Program and the Health Benefits Program;
and (14) other information systems, such as the Central Personnel Data
File (CPDF), are also key to assessing OPM's performance but are not
mentioned in the plan.
--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------
REPORTNUM: GGD-97-150R
TITLE: The Results Act: Observations on OPM's May 1997 Draft
Strategic Plan
DATE: 07/11/97
SUBJECT: Program evaluation
Agency missions
Management information systems
Federal employee retirement programs
Congressional/executive relations
Personnel management
Interagency relations
Strategic planning
Information resources management
Reporting requirements
IDENTIFIER: OPM Central Personnel Data File
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Cover
================================================================ COVER
September 1997
GAO/GGD-97-150R
OPM's Draft Strategic Plan
(410161)
Abbreviations
=============================================================== ABBREV
CFO - Chief Financial Officers
CPDF - Central Personnel Data File
EEOC - Equal Opportunity Commission
FLRA - Federal Labor Relations Authority
GMRA - Government Management Reform Act
HRM - human resource management
MSPB - Merit Systems Protection Board
OGE - Office of Government Ethics
OIG - Office of Inspector General
OMB - Office of Management and Budget
OPM - Office of Personnel Management
BOP - Federal Bureau of Prisons
CFO - Chief Financial Officers
DEA - Drug Enforcement Administration
DOJ - Department of Justice
FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation
INS - Immigration and Naturalization Service
NPR - National Performance Review
OMB - Office of Management and Budget
Letter
=============================================================== LETTER
B-277421
July 11, 1997
The Honorable Richard K. Armey
Majority Leader
House of Representatives
The Honorable John Kasich
Chairman
Committee on the Budget
House of Representatives
The Honorable Dan Burton
Chairman
Committee on Government Reform
and Oversight
House of Representatives
The Honorable Bob Livingston
Chairman
Committee on Appropriations
House of Representatives
Subject: The Results Act: Observations on OPM's May 1997 Draft
Strategic Plan
On June 12, 1997, you asked us to review the draft strategic plans
submitted by cabinet departments and selected major agencies for
consultation with Congress as required by the Government Performance
and Results Act of 1993 (the Results Act). This letter is our
response to that request concerning the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM).
OBJECTIVES, SCOPE, AND
METHODOLOGY
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :1
Our overall objective was to review and evaluate OPM's draft
strategic plan. As you requested, we specifically (1) determined if
the draft strategic plan contained each of the six components
required by the Results Act and assessed
the components' strengths and weaknesses,\1 (2) determined whether
OPM's key statutory authorities were reflected, (3) identified
whether discussions about crosscutting functions and interagency
coordination were included, (4) determined if the draft plan
addressed major management challenges, and (5) described OPM's
capacity to provide reliable information about operations and
performance.
We reviewed the OPM draft strategic plan dated May 14, 1997, which
was the most recent draft available. The House staff team that is
assigned to consult with OPM on the strategic plan used this draft to
begin the consultation process with OPM envisioned by the Results
Act. On the basis of that consultation, OPM officials said that they
would be revising the draft plan we had available for this review.
Our overall assessment of OPM's draft strategic plan was generally
based on our knowledge of OPM's operations and programs, our numerous
reviews of OPM and federal workforce issues, a recently issued report
on OPM's fiscal year 1996 financial audit by an independent public
accountant, and other existing information available at the time of
our assessment. Specifically, the criteria we used to determine
whether OPM's draft strategic plan complied with the requirements of
the Results Act were the Results Act, supplemented by Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) guidance on developing the plans
(Circular A-11, Part 2). To make judgments about the strengths and
weaknesses of the plan and its components, we used our May 1997
guidance for congressional review of the plans (GAO/GGD-10.1.16) as a
tool. To determine whether the plan contained information on
interagency coordination and addressed management problems, we relied
on our general knowledge of OPM's operations and programs and on our
previous reports (see Related GAO Products). As you requested, we
coordinated our work on OPM's key statutory authorities and OPM's
capacity to provide reliable information with the Congressional
Research Service and the OPM Inspector General's Office (OIG),
respectively.
We did not interview OPM officials but did attend the initial
consultation session between House consulting team members and
officials from OPM. We did our work in Washington, D.C., in June and
July 1997. On July 7, 1997, we provided a draft of this letter to
the Director of OPM for review and comment. OPM's comments are
discussed at the end of this letter.
--------------------
\1 The Results Act specifies that agencies' strategic plans should
have these critical components: (1) a comprehensive agency mission
statement; (2) general goals and objectives for the major functions
and operations of the agency; (3) a description of how the goals and
objectives are to be achieved; (4) a description of how the
performance goals included in the performance plan shall be related
to the general goals and objectives in the strategic plan; (5) an
identification of key external factors to the agency and beyond its
control that could affect the achievement of general goals and
objectives; and (6) a description of the program evaluations used in
establishing or revising general goals and objectives, with a
schedule for future program evaluations.
BACKGROUND
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :2
OPM is a central management agency of the federal government charged
with responsibilities for administering and enforcing federal civil
service laws, regulations, and rules and for aiding the President in
carrying out his responsibilities for managing the federal workforce.
OPM has policy responsibilities related to hiring, managing,
compensating, and separating federal employees. In connection with
these responsibilities, OPM develops and promulgates regulations
affecting agencies covered under the competitive civil service
system. Moreover, OPM endeavors to ensure compliance with civil
service policies through a program of overseeing the personnel
activities of covered federal agencies.
In addition to these responsibilities, OPM also promulgates
regulations related to federal employee benefits, including
retirement, health, and life insurance benefits. OPM directly
administers all or major portions of these benefit programs, which
serve millions of current and former federal employees.
Top OPM officials said they envision OPM as providing human resource
management (HRM) leadership for the federal government. Through that
leadership, OPM officials say they intend to ensure that the merit
principles that are the basis for the federal civil service system
are followed throughout the government and that human resources
management is effective.
OPM has downsized its own workforce by about 48 percent since fiscal
year 1993, among the largest reductions that has occurred in any
federal agency, and has made changes to its organizational structure.
OPM's full-time equivalent ceiling, which was 6,208 employees in
fiscal year 1993, is projected to be down to 3,253 by fiscal year
1998. During the downsizing, OPM determined that the work of its
training and investigations units could be performed as well in the
private sector and, as a result, privatized both of those
functions.\2
OPM officials said that they believe they are able to accomplish
their mission with reduced resources because they followed a plan for
the downsizing. They said the redesign process they followed, which
involved their stakeholders, changed the way OPM does its business by
focusing OPM on improving service to its customers and on oversight.
Further, they said their experience in developing a strategy for
downsizing will be useful as they refine their draft strategic plan.
OPM is currently revising the May 14, 1997, draft strategic plan that
it developed under the Results Act. It is important to recognize
that, under the Act, the final plan is not due until September 1997.
Furthermore, the Results Act anticipated that it may take several
planning cycles to perfect the process and that the final plan would
be continually refined as various planning cycles occur. Thus, our
comments reflect a snapshot status of the plan at a given point in
time. We recognize that developing a strategic plan is a dynamic
process and that OPM and OMB, in consultation with congressional
staff, are continuing to work to revise the draft plan.
--------------------
\2 OPM retained its residential training centers in Charlottesville,
Virginia; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Denver, Colorado. OPM
officials said that these centers were retained because OPM believes
that consistency in executive development is important to leadership
in the federal government.
RESULTS IN BRIEF
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :3
Of the six components required by the Act, two--how the goals and
objectives will be achieved and relating performance goals to general
goals/objectives--were not specifically identified in the draft plan.
The remaining four components--mission statement, goals and
objectives, external factors, and program evaluations--were discussed
in the draft plan. However, each of these components had weaknesses,
some of more significance than others.
The four identified components generally contained some, but not all,
of the attributes that would be desirable to meet the purposes of the
Act and to be consistent with OMB guidance, or that might be expected
in a stand-alone explanation of OPM's planned strategy for the next 5
years. For example:
-- The mission statement in the draft plan makes broad reference to
OPM providing "high quality services" but does not otherwise
explicitly recognize certain key responsibilities, such as
administering the federal employees' retirement and health
benefit systems.
-- The goals and objectives suggest some results to be achieved
(e.g., that federal agencies will recruit and retain the
workforce needed for the future) but provide little direct basis
for judging how OPM would know that those results are being
achieved or what OPM's contribution may be to achieving those
results.
-- While a number of external factors are identified, the plan does
not include factors, such as changes in the labor market, that
may have an impact on future federal hiring and does not meet
the Act's requirement to link each factor to a particular goal
or to identify how it might affect OPM's success in meeting its
goals.
-- The program evaluation component of the plan is limited to a
discussion about customer satisfaction with OPM services. This
part of the plan does not indicate how evaluations were used in
developing strategic goals or provide a schedule for future
evaluations as the Act requires and as OMB guidance instructed.
OPM's draft plan could better meet the purposes of the Act and OMB
guidance if it contained a well-developed discussion of statutory
authorities, crosscutting issues, and management problems. OPM's
draft plan does not discuss OPM's key statutory authorities, which
could help OPM's stakeholders better understand the diversity and
complexity of OPM's overall mission as well as the challenges the
agency faces in carrying out its mission. The plan does identify a
number of crosscutting issues. Since OPM had not met with
stakeholders before developing its plan--as officials stated in their
initial consultation with House consulting team members--the draft
plan is silent on this Results Act required coordination. In
addition, the draft plan does not discuss the status of OPM's efforts
to address the formidable federal personnel management problems that
have been identified over the years. Such a discussion in the plan
could assist OPM in the process of refining its goals and objectives
as well as inform stakeholders of problems that could impede OPM's
efforts to achieve its goals and objectives.
Similarly, OPM's draft plan contains little discussion of the
information systems that directly support OPM's role as the
administrator and fiduciary for federal employees' benefit programs.
These systems are the source of performance information for gauging
how well OPM carries out its stewardship of the benefit programs. A
discussion of these systems would be valuable to stakeholders since
an independent accountant found that key financial systems did not
adequately support OPM's financial statements for the Retirement
Program and the Health Benefits Program. Other information systems,
such as the Central Personnel Data File (CPDF), are also key to
assessing OPM's performance but are not mentioned in the plan.
DRAFT PLAN DOES NOT FULLY
ACHIEVE THE PURPOSES OF THE
ACT'S REQUIREMENTS, AND THE
QUALITY OF INDIVIDUAL
COMPONENTS COULD BE IMPROVED
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :4
Two of the components required by the Results Act--how the goals and
objectives will be achieved and relating performance goals to general
goals/objectives--were not specifically identified in the draft plan.
The other four Results Act required components had corresponding
components in OPM's draft plan. Table 1 shows the Results Act's
required components and the corresponding components in OPM's plan.
Table 1
Strategic Plan Components Required by
the Results Act and Corresponding
Components in OPM's Draft Strategic Plan
Components required by the Results Components in OPM's May 1997 draft
Act plan
---------------------------------- ----------------------------------
1.Comprehensive mission statement 1. OPM's mission
covering the major functions and
operations of the agency
2.General goals and objectives for 4.OPM's strategic goals and
the major functions and operations objectives
of the agency
3.Description of how the goals and (None)
objectives are to be achieved
4.Description of how the (None)
performance goals included in the
performance plan shall be related
to the general goals and
objectives in the strategic plan
5.Identification of key external 5.External factors that could
factors to the agency and beyond affect achievement of OPM's goals
its control that could affect and objectives
achievement of general goals and
objectives
6.Description of the program 6.Program evaluation agenda
evaluations used to establish or
revise general goals with a
schedule for future program
evaluations
(Section not required by the Act) 2.OPM's vision
(Section not required by the Act) 3.OPM's values
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Numbers indicate the order in which the components are
discussed in the Results Act and OPM's draft plan, respectively.
Source: The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 and OPM's
Draft Strategic Plan dated May 1997.
MISSION STATEMENT DOES NOT
FULLY REFLECT OPM'S ROLE
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :4.1
In order to establish a context in which meaningful and specific
agency goals can be determined, it is crucial that the mission
statement cover the agency's basic purpose (with particular focus on
its core programs and activities) as well as its major functions and
operations. The other required components of OPM's strategic plan
should flow from and support the agency's mission statement.
OPM's mission statement is "OPM serves the public by providing human
resource management leadership and high-quality services based on
merit principles, in partnership with federal agencies and
employees." The broad wording lacks the specificity needed to
communicate why OPM exists and what it does. For example, the
statement could be more useful if it more clearly delineated OPM's
major responsibilities, such as administering the federal employees'
retirement and health benefit systems.
Further, the statement that OPM serves the public by providing human
resources management leadership and high-quality services based on
merit principles could be clarified to better reflect the results OPM
expects to achieve. As a central personnel management agency, OPM
provides services to other federal agencies. The mission statement
is vague on the results that OPM's services are to achieve in the
federal government and how those results might ultimately serve the
public.
OPM's mission statement also does not appear to reflect a close
examination of OPM's role in light of both its legislative mandate
under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and other relevant laws
and the many changes that have occurred in the federal personnel
system and in OPM's external environment since the agency's creation.
The duties and prerogatives of the central personnel agency,
particularly when nearly half of the federal government's employees
are now in the excepted service and therefore not under OPM's direct
purview, are fundamental issues for OPM that are not acknowledged in
its mission statement.\3
OPM's draft strategic plan includes a vision statement--a feature
provided in addition to the components required by the Act--which
augments the mission statement and provides some greater sense of the
role that OPM envisions for itself. For instance, the vision
statement says that OPM "provides effective, merit-based, and
family-friendly personnel systems for use government-wide and ensures
that agencies are accountable for their appropriate use." The vision
statement thus may provide a basis for expanding upon the mission
statement. Nevertheless, the vision statement, like the mission
statement, does not cover certain key OPM responsibilities, such as
administering federal employee benefit systems.
--------------------
\3 The Excepted Service: A Research Profile (GAO/GGD-97-72, May
1997).
LONG-TERM GOALS AND
OBJECTIVES COULD BETTER MEET
THE PURPOSES OF THE ACT OR
OMB GUIDANCE
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :4.2
OPM's May 1997 draft plan contains the following five goals:
(1) Provide policy direction and leadership to recruit and retain the
federal workforce required for the 21st century.
(2) Protect and promote the merit-based civil service and the
employee earned benefit programs through an effective oversight and
evaluation program.
(3) Provide advice and assistance to help federal agencies improve
their human resources management programs to effectively operate
within the economy, demographics, and environment of the 21st
century.
(4) Deliver high-quality, cost-effective human resources services to
federal agencies, employees, annuitants, and the public.
(5) Establish OPM as a leader in creating and maintaining a sound,
diverse, and cooperative work environment.
The Results Act requires that agency goals and objectives include
results-oriented goals and objectives, and OMB guidance provides that
general goals and objectives should be stated in a manner that allows
a future assessment to be made of whether the goals were or are being
achieved. The goals in the draft plan do not provide a sense of the
results OPM expects to achieve or how they might be measured. For
example, in its first goal, OPM states that it expects to provide
policy direction and leadership to recruit and retain the federal
workforce needed in the future, and in its fourth goal, OPM states
that it will deliver high-quality, cost-effective human resources
services. However, neither the goals themselves nor the accompanying
objectives explain how OPM will assess whether the appropriate
workforce has been recruited or whether its human resources services
are high-quality or cost-effective.
For each of the five goals, OPM listed a number of objectives. These
objectives also could be made more useful. Many of the objectives
are simply statements of what OPM already is doing or plans to do but
not of what it intends to accomplish. In the Results Act, Congress
stated that the general goals and objectives should include
outcome-related goals and objectives. When an agency's
responsibility includes producing a specific product or service,
objectives can include improvements to those products or services.
In this regard, financial management goals for the federal employee
benefit programs, for example, could include quantifiable goals for
providing service to the federal employees participating in the
plans. Similarly, the objectives for the retirement program could
include timeliness and accuracy of the payments to annuitants.
Moving to the extent possible toward this type of specificity would
enhance the value of OPM's goals and objectives.
In addition, some of the objectives do not appear to have a close or
direct relationship with the stated goal. For instance, for the goal
of providing policy direction and leadership to recruit and retain
the federal workforce required for the 21st century, the draft plan
lists an objective to "provide government-wide leadership via the
Personnel Automation Council for the development and application of
HRM automation technology, with immediate focus on the conversion of
paper official personnel folders to an electronic medium." While such
changes in how the government handles personnel records may be
desirable, the relationship between these changes and providing
leadership to recruit and retain the federal workforce of the future
is not clear.
In summary, OMB's Circular A-11 states that, in defining general
goals and objectives, agencies should avoid platitudes or rhetoric
that is inherently unmeasurable. OPM's plan will be more useful to
both external stakeholders, like Congress, and to OPM managers, if
OPM can move toward goals and objectives that lend themselves more
readily to progress assessments. To the extent this cannot be done,
Circular A-11 states that the performance goals and indicators in the
annual performance plan should be used to provide the basis for
progress assessments.\4 If this is the strategy that OPM plans to
employ, some recognition of how the annual performance plans will
translate the strategic goals and objectives into assessable
components would be useful in the strategic plan.
--------------------
\4 In addition to a strategic plan, the Act requires that agencies
prepare annual performance plans. The first annual performance plans
are to cover fiscal year 1999.
APPROACHES OR STRATEGIES TO
ACHIEVE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
NOT SPECIFICALLY IDENTIFIED
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :4.3
The plan does not specifically identify strategies that OPM intends
to pursue to achieve its goals. For each of its five stated goals,
the plan lists a set of objectives, some of which imply, but do not
specifically identify, a strategy related to achieving the goal. For
instance, for the goal of providing policy direction and leadership
to recruit and retain the federal workforce required for the 21st
century, the first objective under the category of overall human
resources management is: "By the year 2001, examine all significant
governmentwide HRM policies and programs to identify changes needed
to promote a meritorious and cost-effective federal service;
publicize positive outcomes." This objective implies a process of
identifying significant governmentwide HRM policies and studying them
in sufficient detail to formulate corrective measures, if necessary.
However, the purposes of the Act could be better achieved if the
objective described how significant HRM policies will be identified,
specified the actions OPM will take to study them, and identified how
these actions relate to promoting a meritorious and cost-effective
federal service.
At a minimum, as OPM further develops its draft plan, it would be
useful to describe the strategy or strategies that OPM plans to use
to achieve its goals. In accordance with the Act and OMB Circular
A-11, the plan is to describe how the agency's goals and objectives
are to be achieved, including a description of the processes and the
human, capital, and information resources required to achieve the
goals and objectives. In addition, the strategy should include a
schedule for initiating and completing any significant actions for
implementing the goals.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
LONG-TERM GOALS AND ANNUAL
PERFORMANCE GOALS NOT
ESTABLISHED
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :4.4
Unlike strategies, which are not specifically identified but are at
least implied for some goals, OPM's draft plan neither identifies nor
implies the type, nature, or scope of the performance goals to be
included in its annual performance plan. The draft strategic plan
does not include any discussion about the relationship between its
long-term goals and annual performance goals.
OPM is developing the next iteration of the draft plan. The Act's
requirement for a discussion of the relationship between the
long-term goals and annual performance goals raises certain issues
for OPM to consider. These issues include (1) how in its plan OPM
will link the strategic goals and annual performance goals; (2) how
OPM will link its annual performance goals to the program activity
structure listed in the budget; (3) whether OPM will suggest
modifying its budget program activity structure; (4) whether OPM's
long-term goals will be measurable and, if not, what basis will be
used to evaluate whether goals are met; and (5) what performance
measures OPM will establish to determine how well information
technology supports the strategic and program goals.
PLAN IDENTIFIES EXTERNAL
FACTORS BUT DOES NOT DISCUSS
HOW OPM WILL ADDRESS THEM
OPERATIONALLY
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :4.5
The Results Act requires, and OMB's Circular A-11 instructs, agencies
to include in their plans key external factors that could affect
their ability to achieve their goals. OPM's draft strategic plan
identified 19 such factors, which it organized by the following
categories: (1) governmentwide issues, (2) relationships with other
federal agencies, (3) federal agency structural issues, (4) personnel
system changes, and (5) the personnel community. We did not assess
the validity of the factors OPM identified.
Although OPM's analysis suggests that its ability to carry out its
goals is influenced by a number of external factors, this section of
the plan could be improved by adding a more thorough description of
how these 19 factors might affect OPM and how OPM is planning to
ameliorate them, if at all. In most instances, although instructed
to do so by OMB Circular A-11, OPM did not link each factor to a
particular goal or discuss how each factor might affect OPM's success
in meeting its goals. For example, the plan noted that changes in
the labor market may affect recruitment, delivery of employment
information, and staffing policies and processes. However, the plan
did not identify the likely changes in the labor market or which of
OPM's five goals would be affected or how. In addition, the draft
plan did not indicate for this external factor, or most of the
others, the actions that OPM plans to take to reduce or ameliorate
the potential impact of the factor on OPM's effort to achieve its
goal.
Further, several important external factors were barely addressed.
Changes taking place in the labor market again provide an example.
As we noted in our earlier work, demographic changes in the labor
market could affect a variety of human resource policies and
programs, such as child and elder care, flexible work schedules,
health benefits, and diversity.\5 These possible effects are not
discussed in the draft plan. Other external factors that were either
not addressed in OPM's plan or whose importance was not well
developed include the changing nature of the workforce and the
applicability of current classification, compensation, and
supervisory frameworks given those changes, as well as how targeted
reductions in the federal personnelist workforce combined with the
increased delegation of personnel functions could affect the
integrity of the merit system.
--------------------
\5 The Changing Workforce: Demographic Issues Facing the Federal
Government (GAO/GGD-92-38, Mar. 24, 1992).
PROGRAM EVALUATIONS WERE
DISCUSSED, BUT THE ACT'S
REQUIREMENTS WERE NOT FULLY
MET
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :4.6
OPM's draft strategic plan contains a section that discusses the
program evaluation efforts of various OPM organizational units. In
general, however, these discussions of evaluation efforts seem to
broadly cover OPM's personnel management oversight responsibilities
or specify how well OPM's units are providing services. The units
rely mainly on customer surveys to determine whether current services
need to be improved.
To meet the purposes of the Act, this discussion of program
evaluations needs to be expanded. The Act calls for an explanation
of how evaluations were used in establishing or revising the general
goals and objectives and for a schedule for future program
evaluations. The draft OPM plan does not contain these required
elements.
Moreover, as described in the draft plan, the evaluations rarely
address whether the current services need to be altered or new
services need to be developed to achieve OPM's broader, long-term
goals. For example, the Retirement and Insurance Service surveys
annuitants who have had a retirement-related transaction to determine
whether they were satisfied with the speed and accuracy of the
transaction. The program evaluation plan does not indicate, however,
whether the Retirement and Insurance Service unit, or any other OPM
unit, evaluates whether the current federal retirement systems are
adequate to enable the government to attract and retain appropriately
skilled employees at a reasonable overall compensation cost.
KEY STATUTORY AUTHORITIES ARE
GENERALLY REFLECTED IN OPM'S
STRATEGIC PLAN BUT NOT
DISCUSSED
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :5
A discussion of OPM's statutory responsibilities could be an
informative addition to the plan. OMB Circular A-11 states, for
example, that the mission statement may include a concise discussion
of enabling legislation or authorizing legislation, as well as
identification of issues that Congress specifically charged the
agency to address.
Unlike some federal agencies, a single enabling statute, the 1978
Civil Service Reform Act, as amended, serves as the primary source of
OPM's authority and is the primary basis for much of OPM's mission.
Among other things, that act vests the function of "executing,
administering, and enforcing" the civil service rules and regulations
of the President and OPM and the laws governing the civil service in
the OPM Director. The Director's functions also include
"recommending policies relating to the selection, promotion,
transfer, performance, pay, conditions of service, tenure, and
separation of employees."
Although the 1978 act specifies that agency heads bear responsibility
for ensuring compliance with civil service laws, regulations, and
rules, it also requires that the OPM Director establish and maintain
an oversight program to ensure that the execution of civil service
activities is in accordance with merit system principles and other
standards established by the act. Separately, OPM has authority to
promulgate regulations and manage employee benefits, including
retirement, health, and life insurance benefits. In addition to
these responsibilities, OPM has a number of other specific
responsibilities under law and executive orders.
In our opinion, some recognition of these statutory responsibilities
in the plan would provide valuable perspective for stakeholders.
While the goals and objectives in the plan are so broadly worded as
to generally reflect most of these statutory responsibilities, the
plan would be significantly improved in our view if it explicitly
discussed OPM's underlying statutory responsibilities. OPM's other
responsibilities derived from the statute and executive orders could
be presented in sufficient detail for stakeholders to understand the
full range of OPM's responsibilities and at least generally how OPM
plans to fulfill those responsibilities over the 5-year period
covered by the strategic plan.
PLAN IDENTIFIES SEVERAL
CROSSCUTTING PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
BUT DOES NOT DISCUSS
COORDINATION
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :6
As a central management agency, OPM must work with or through other
federal agencies to ensure that federal personnel policies are
appropriate and are followed properly. Thus, OPM's core
responsibilities are, in some sense, crosscutting across a large
portion of the federal government. More narrowly, OPM's functions or
activities relate fairly directly to the functions or activities of
certain other federal agencies.
OPM identified a number of crosscutting responsibilities in its draft
strategic plan. These include acting as the guardian of the merit
system; working with federal agencies to help them improve their HRM
programs; helping federal workers balance work and family issues;
supporting federal employees through labor-management partnerships;
providing leadership for developing and applying HRM information
technology; being an active member of the personnel security
community; and integrating employment information systems with those
at the state, local, and collegiate levels.
While developing its strategic plan, OPM is required by the Results
Act not only to consult with Congress but also to solicit and
consider the views and suggestions of customers and other
stakeholders who could potentially be affected by or interested in
the plan. The draft plan does identify some organizations with which
OPM must work to achieve results on crosscutting issues, including
the Interagency Advisory Group of federal personnel directors, the
Personnel Automation Council, the National Partnership Council, the
Security Policy Board and Security Policy Forum, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC),
the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), and the Merit Systems
Protection Board (MSPB). Further, OPM officials noted that they
regularly consult with other executive branch agencies and work with
OPM's stakeholders to ensure that their views are addressed as OPM
develops its policies and programs.
However, the draft plan does not indicate that OPM, in developing the
plan, coordinated with the entities involved in these crosscutting
issues. In the June 27, 1997, consultation on OPM's strategic plan
with congressional staff, OPM officials acknowledged that they had
not yet involved stakeholders but said that they would be doing so.
Further, the May 14 OPM draft plan does not assess the potential for
overlap and duplication or, conversely, cooperation and coordination
with agencies and others on other crosscutting issues. The draft
plan also does not discuss the extent of the interaction that will
need to take place with these entities if OPM's goals and objectives
are to be realized. The draft plan does mention a number of entities
with which OPM must work but does not mention other organizations and
groups that also have roles in crosscutting issues. For example, the
plan could discuss OPM's relationship with the Department of Labor on
workers' compensation, work/family, and other labor issues, or with
the Social Security Administration on disability and retirement
programs. Similarly, it could mention the Federal Retirement Thrift
Investment Board, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and the U.S.
Office of Government Ethics and how OPM plans to interact with these
agencies in meeting its goals.
Including a fuller discussion of OPM's interrelationship with other
agencies in the plan would be consistent with the purposes of the
Act. Such a discussion likely would also provide more information
for Congress and other stakeholders to use in judging whether OPM's
crosscutting responsibilities should in any sense be modified.
STRATEGIC PLAN DOES NOT ADDRESS
SOME MAJOR MANAGEMENT
CHALLENGES
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :7
Over the years, we have reported on major management problems OPM has
faced in attempting to carry out its mission. OPM has undertaken
efforts to reorganize, reform, and re-engineer its overall
mission-related management approaches and discusses these changes in
several places in the draft plan. Nonetheless, certain management
challenges are not addressed in OPM's draft strategic plan, such as
the status of its efforts to improve its financial records.
Although this type of information is not explicitly required to be
included in OPM's strategic plan, it could help OPM and its
stakeholders in at least two ways. First, it could help in the
processes of developing and reviewing the selection of goals,
strategies, and objectives. Second, major management problems could
impede OPM's efforts to achieve its goals and objectives, and
stakeholders could benefit from knowing what OPM has done, is doing,
or plans to do to address such problems.
We believe our past work, as well as that of OPM's Inspector General
and MSPB's Office of Policy and Evaluation, identified problem areas
that are significant enough to warrant some discussion in the plan.
At a minimum, in problem areas where OPM has taken successful
corrective actions, some discussion of how OPM addressed the problems
and intends to prevent them from resurfacing would be informative and
useful. If they do resurface, these problems could have a negative
impact on OPM's ability to achieve goals and measure performance.
For other problem areas where OPM may have had less success, the plan
could identify these and discuss how OPM plans to resolve them. If
these management problems persist, OPM's ability to successfully
implement the Results Act may be hampered.
Some of the major management challenges OPM faces include (1)
ensuring that the federal government is adequately competitive in
obtaining future workers; (2) determining whether federal employee
compensation (e.g., pay and benefits) is appropriate; and (3)
ensuring that decisions for information technology projects are based
on assessments of mission benefits, risks, and costs.
ATTRACTING AND RETAINING
WELL-QUALIFIED EMPLOYEES
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :7.1
We reported in 1992 that the federal government faced stiff
competition from other employers, who also wanted to hire and retain
the "best and brightest." In this competition for talent, the
dimensions (in addition to pay) that we said affected the federal
government's competitive position included recruiting and hiring
processes, benefits' structures, and approaches to downsizing when
workforces had to be reduced. However, we noted that many other
employers had more progressive approaches in these areas than the
federal government. The ability of the federal government to attract
and retain well-qualified employees is recognized in OPM's draft
plan, but a fuller analysis of what, if anything, needs to be done to
ensure future competitiveness in a rapidly changing labor market
would be useful. (See, for example, GAO/GGD-92-38, GAO/GGD-92-84,
GAO/T-GGD-96-42, and GAO/GGD-96-35.)
DETERMINING APPROPRIATE
COMPENSATION
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :7.2
Nine years ago, it was generally recognized that inadequate salaries
were a primary cause of the government's recruitment and retention
problems. In 1990, the administration and Congress reached an
agreement on a comprehensive, long-term pay reform program that was
designed to ultimately make federal salaries competitive with the
private sector. The program was enacted into law.
However, the pay adjustments called for under the pay comparability
methodology established by the act often have not been authorized.
Full pay comparability adjustments have not been authorized, in part
because, according to OPM officials, the administration believes that
the pay comparability methodology is flawed. Although the act allows
for denials of the full comparability adjustment, at the time of the
act's passage, full implementation of pay reform was considered to be
a key building block of a more effective government and important to
the government's ability to attract and retain a highly qualified and
motivated workforce. Thus, this is a key issue for OPM to consider;
however, the draft plan does not specifically address this and other
compensation matters, such as whether federal retirement and health
benefits are now and likely will continue to be competitive with
those offered by other employers. (See, for example, GAO/GGD-90-117,
GAO/GGD-91-63FS, and GAO/OCE-95-1.)
ADDRESSING INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY
ISSUES
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :7.3
OPM's plan indicates that information technology will play a
significant role in accomplishing its goals and objectives over the
next 5 years. For example, the plan states that OPM has improved
customer service in employee earned benefit programs through
investment in technology. However, the strategic plan does not
address how OPM intends to meet requirements of the Clinger-Cohen Act
of 1996 for implementing a framework of modern technology management
to improve performance and meet strategic goals. This management
framework would describe OPM's approach for ensuring that (1) senior
executives are involved in information management decisions, (2) a
qualified senior-level Chief Information Officer is appointed, (3)
appropriate agencywide technology standards are established, (4)
discipline over information technology (IT) spending is imposed
through implementation of an IT investment strategy, and (5)
performance measures are used to assess technology's contribution in
achieving mission results.
Further, the discussion of two additional critical areas would
strengthen OPM's strategic plan. These areas--the year 2000 problem
and information security--are so important that we have identified
them as high-risk areas for the entire federal government. The year
2000 problem is rooted in the way dates are recorded and computed in
many computer systems. Many of OPM's critical systems are date
dependent and exchange data with virtually every federal government
agency. And, as a result of problems associated with the year 2000,
OPM's systems could malfunction or produce incorrect information.
For the past several decades, systems have typically used the last
two digits to represent the year, such as "97" to represent 1997, in
order to conserve on electronic data storage and reduce operating
costs. With this two-digit format, however, the year 2000 is
indistinguishable from 1900, 2001 from 1901, and so on. As a result
of this ambiguity, calculations, comparisons, or sorting may generate
incorrect results when applied to years after 1999. OPM's plan does
not address the need to ensure that its systems are year-2000
compliant so that operations are not disrupted and mission
performance is not adversely affected. Also, because of the
sensitivity and criticality of its information systems, it is
important for the OPM plan to address how it intends to ensure that
systems are secure and adequately protected from unauthorized access.
PLAN PROVIDES LITTLE DISCUSSION
ABOUT AGENCY CAPACITY TO
PROVIDE RELIABLE PERFORMANCE
INFORMATION
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :8
OPM uses or maintains information systems that often rely on the
quality of input from other federal agencies. These systems range
from the CPDF, which contains information about the status of more
than 1.8 million federal civilian employees, to information systems
that directly support OPM's role as the administrator and fiduciary
for federal employees' major benefit programs. The OPM draft plan
has little, if any, discussion of these systems and whether they are
and will be adequate to provide reliable performance information
related to OPM's goals. A discussion would be valuable since the
systems for supporting benefit programs need to be improved and other
systems may not be adequately reliable to support future uses.
OPM is one of the 24 federal agencies covered under the Chief
Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990, as expanded by the Government
Management Reform Act (GMRA) of 1994. GMRA requires agencies to have
their agencywide financial statements annually audited, beginning
with the fiscal year 1996 statements. However, OPM's
responsibilities under, and efforts to meet the requirements of, this
act are not discussed in the draft plan. The importance of OPM's
efforts to comply with the CFO Act is perhaps most dramatically
linked to its responsibility for administering and managing the
federal retirement, health, and life insurance programs. This
includes determining and paying benefits, maintaining accurate
benefit records, providing retirement support services, negotiating
and administering contracts with insurance carriers, and developing
legislative initiatives for all three programs.
OMB guidance on implementing the audit requirements of the CFO Act
requires agency auditors to determine whether the agency's internal
control structure provides reasonable assurance that the data
supporting the reported performance measures exist and are complete,
so as to permit preparation of reliable and complete performance
information. An official from OPM's OIG told us that the OIG had not
done any audits or issued any reports on performance measures.
However, the OIG official told us that an evaluation group within the
OIG will look at performance measures to determine, among other
things, whether the measures are appropriate.
For a number of years, OPM has reported in its Federal Managers'
Financial Integrity Act reports on material weaknesses in its
financial management systems and financial management reporting.
Moreover, the independent public accountant auditing OPM's fiscal
year 1996 financial statements under the CFO Act issued a qualified
opinion on the retirement program due to OPM's inability to
adequately verify the determination of benefit payments to
annuitants. In addition, the federal health benefits program
received a disclaimer of opinion as a result of the independent
public accountant's inability to satisfy itself as to the accuracy of
the transactions and balances related to insurance premiums and
activities of insurers.
In its fiscal year 1996 financial report, the independent public
accountant noted that OPM had not implemented adequate financial
management policies and procedures that establish internal controls
and financial management/accounting systems that provide useful and
reliable financial information for numerous areas. Also, it was
reported that OPM did not have ongoing oversight and monitoring
procedures for responsibilities it had delegated to federal agencies.
The independent public accountant also reported the following:
-- OPM's departmental and individual financial management
responsibilities did not incorporate policies and procedures
designed to monitor and ensure the accuracy and completeness of
the financial records of the plans for retirement, health
benefits, and life insurance.
-- OPM had not clearly defined the Financial Management Division's
business purposes and the responsibilities of its sections and
employees, and OPM had limited internal controls and accounting
systems. In addition, the financial information provided by and
for management was not necessarily reliable or useful in the
decisionmaking process.
Concerning automated information management systems, the independent
public accountant found that OPM (1) did not have an Information
Resources Management plan that provided for a 1- to 5-year forecast
of activities, (2) had not finalized its documentation and
implemented a system security plan for general support systems and
major applications, and (3) did not have a System Development Life
Cycle for major systems implementation efforts.
The independent public accountant recommended that OPM focus on
re-engineering and streamlining its financial operations. The
independent accountant said that such fundamental thinking was needed
because OPM's processes and systems have evolved over a long period
of time and have changed to address specific issues or weaknesses in
individual processes or systems, without necessarily assessing the
overall effects on OPM's financial management operations. The
independent public accountant recommended that OPM recharge its
Quality Improvement Teams to improve its financial management
systems, and establish time frames and action plans for each
significant area and then aggressively monitor the plans and time
frames.
OPM and public policy officials also rely on the CPDF to gain an
understanding of the current federal workforce and to track trends in
employment levels, grade and pay, and other matters related to
federal personnel policies. However, this system is not
comprehensive. Only those agencies covered by Title 5 are required
to provide data to OPM. Those agencies not covered by Title 5
provide data for the CPDF on a voluntary basis.\6 Although OPM has
various controls in place to ensure the accuracy of data entered into
the CPDF, to our knowledge a comprehensive study of the reliability
of CPDF data, or its suitability to support federal personnel
decisions in an era of significant change in such policies, has not
been done. We are currently studying issues related to the CPDF.
Since OPM and federal policymakers rely on the CPDF, a discussion of
the reliability of the system and what, if anything, OPM believes may
be necessary to make the system more useful in an evolving federal
personnel arena, would be a useful addition to the draft strategic
plan.
--------------------
\6 OPM officials indicated that the CPDF currently covers
approximately 93 percent of civilian federal employees, excluding the
Postal Service.
AGENCY COMMENTS
------------------------------------------------------------ Letter :9
On July 10, 1997, the Director of OPM provided written comments on
our draft letter. OPM said that it found our suggestions related to
its May 14 draft strategic plan to be constructive and that most
would be adopted as OPM continues to revise its plan. Among other
things, OPM said that its (1) revised plan would contain all six of
the Act's required components in clearly recognizable formats; (2)
objectives would be revised to be more results oriented, with time
frames for completion where appropriate; (3) revised plan would
include linkages between external factors and goals/objectives; (4)
program evaluation discussion would include more information on OPM's
evaluation agenda; (5) revised plan would discuss OPM's statutory
authorities, crosscutting issues, and management challenges; (6)
revised plan would include more information on OPM's information
technology systems and the objectives of its financial management
systems; and (7) discussion of strategies for achieving goals and
objectives would be more clearly identified. However, OPM also
disagreed with some of our suggestions and suggested that including
certain additional information in our draft would provide useful
context.
On the OPM mission statement, for example, OPM disagreed that its
mission statement does not fully reflect its role. OPM said that its
mission was the product of a very thorough development process that
began soon after the current Director came to OPM. This process
included steps that involved OPM senior managers, the OPM workforce,
and the agency directors of personnel for other federal agencies.
OPM said it believes the mission statement has assisted the agency in
maintaining its focus during its downsizing effort and remains on
target for guiding the agency over the period to be covered by the
draft OPM strategic plan. On the other hand, OPM said it does plan
to revise portions of the draft plan to provide greater specificity
on why OPM exists and what it does. We agree that revising portions
of the plan to provide greater specificity on why OPM exists and what
it does would be valuable. Nevertheless, to the extent OPM can more
precisely reflect these factors in its mission statement, we believe
the mission statement itself would be more useful, especially to
those external to OPM, who want to understand OPM's mission. We
modified our text to more clearly reflect this observation. In
response to another OPM concern, we corrected references that said
the mission statement was a draft; it has been OPM's mission
statement since December 1993 according to OPM.
OPM also said that the goals it identified in the draft plan are at
the core of what it will do in the next 5 years and that OPM was
confident that it had identified the right goals. We have not
analyzed whether OPM has identified the right goals. However, we
believe that, as OPM revises its plan, the goals could be clarified
to provide a better sense of what the results are that OPM intends to
achieve during the plan period and how those results might be
measured. As to its objectives for each goal, OPM said that it was
revising the objectives to be more results oriented and to outline
time frames for their completion, where appropriate. These changes
will, in our opinion, be beneficial, particularly if the revised
objectives will lend themselves more readily to progress assessments.
On one specific goal in the draft plan, related to providing services
to employees and annuitants, OPM said it believed our suggestion for
a timeliness and accuracy objective was more appropriate for the
annual performance plan than the strategic plan. We agree that OPM's
annual performance plans could contain specific goals or objectives
to make quantifiable improvements in timeliness and accuracy of
payments to annuitants. However, it can also be appropriate to set
long-term goals in a strategic plan that are subsequently to be
achieved in increments over the period of the strategic plan. It is
in this sense that we used a timeliness and accuracy objective for
OPM's retirement program as an illustrative example of improvements
that could be made in the OPM draft strategic plan.
OPM also acknowledged that it was just starting its formal
consultation process with stakeholders on its strategic plan but
noted that it consults regularly with other executive branch agencies
as it develops policies and programs. We added some discussion of
OPM's routine consultations to our text. OPM also believed that our
discussion of crosscutting issues suggested that OPM's
responsibilities significantly overlapped or duplicated those of
other agencies. OPM summarized its interpretation of our text as
saying that a fuller discussion of these responsibilities would
assist others in determining which OPM responsibilities should "in
any sense be modified." OPM strongly disagreed with this premise and
noted that at Congress' request the administration had done a
comprehensive study of the adjudicatory functions of OPM and related
agencies. That study, according to OPM, found little overlap. We
believe our text appropriately discussed this issue. We did not draw
any conclusion that the relationship between OPM and other agencies
with related responsibilities was problematic. Rather, we
highlighted the utility of a discussion in the draft plan that would
more fully show those interrelationships and whether the
relationships were optimal for achieving OPM's and the related
agencies' missions.
In relation to our observations on the discussion of program
evaluations in OPM's draft plan, OPM did not understand why we said
the plan's discussion of customer satisfaction was "not consistent
with the intention of this provision of the Act." OPM said that its
sense was that the Act supports customer satisfaction as one key
outcome measure. We clarified our text to better reflect our point
that the program evaluation section would be more consistent with the
Act's overall intent if it included a schedule for future evaluations
and an explanation of how evaluations were used, if at all, to
establish goals and objectives.
Although OPM said that it would discuss management challenges in its
revised draft plan, it offered observations on our discussion of
challenges OPM faces. Specifically, on determining appropriate
compensation for federal employees, OPM agreed that this was a major
management challenge and said that the plan would include a specific
objective on the issue. However, OPM said that its plan did address
compensation matters. We revised our text as appropriate to better
reflect OPM's discussion of the issue in the draft plan. Also, OPM
said that the challenge of ensuring high ethical standards was more
appropriately a responsibility of the Office of Government Ethics
(OGE) rather than OPM's. We believe ethical issues clearly are tied
to merit principles such as that of maintaining high standards of
integrity. However, we agree that OGE has lead responsibility on
ethics and eliminated this discussion from our letter.
Finally, OPM offered several technical and clarification comments,
which we addressed as appropriate in the letter.
---------------------------------------------------------- Letter :9.1
As arranged with your offices, unless you publicly announce its
contents earlier, we plan no further distribution of this letter
until 30 days from its issuance. At that time, we will send copies
of this letter to the Ranking Minority Members of your Committees; to
the Chairmen and Ranking Minority Members of the Senate Committee on
Governmental Affairs, Subcommittee on International Security,
Proliferation, and Federal Services; the House Committee on
Governmental Reform and Oversight, Subcommittee on the Civil Service;
and to the Director, Office of Personnel Management. We will send
copies to others on request. Please contact me on (202) 512-9039 if
you or your staff have any questions concerning this letter. Major
contributors to this letter are listed in enclosure II.
Michael Brostek
Associate Director, Federal Management
and Workforce Issues
(See figure in printed edition.)Enclosure I
COMMENTS FROM THE OFFICE OF
PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
============================================================== Letter
(See figure in printed edition.)
(See figure in printed edition.)
(See figure in printed edition.)
(See figure in printed edition.)
MAJOR CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS REPORT
========================================================== Appendix II
GENERAL GOVERNMENT DIVISION,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
-------------------------------------------------------- Appendix II:1
Steven J. Wozny, Assistant Director, Federal Management and
Workforce Issues
Clifton G. Douglas, Jr., Evaluator-in-Charge
Michael J. O'Donnell, Advisor
ACCOUNTING AND INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT DIVISION,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
-------------------------------------------------------- Appendix II:2
Ronald B. Bageant, Assistant Director
John P. Finedore, Assistant Director
Joan B. Hawkins, Assistant Director
Brian C. Spencer, Technical Assistant Director
OFFICE OF THE GENERAL COUNSEL,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
-------------------------------------------------------- Appendix II:3
Alan N. Belkin, Acting Associate General Counsel
Robert J. Heitzman, Attorney
============================================================ Chapter 0
============================================================ Chapter 1
============================================================ Chapter 2
RELATED GAO PRODUCTS
============================================================ Chapter 3
Personnel Practices: Improper Personnel Actions on Selected CPSC
Appointments (GAO/GGD-97-131, June 27, 1997).
Federal Civilian Personnel: Cost of Lump-Sum Annual Leave Payments
to Employees Separating From Government (GAO/GGD-97-100, May 29,
1997).
The Excepted Service: A Research Profile (GAO/GGD-97-72, May 1997).
Federal Retirement: Federal and Private Sector Retirement Program
Benefits Vary (GAO/GGD-97-40, Apr. 7, 1997).
Information Management and Technology (GAO/HR-97-9, Feb. 1, 1997).
Exposure Draft Entitled Year 2000 Computing Crisis: An Assessment
Guide (GAO/AIMD-10.1.14, Feb. 1997).
Assessing Risks and Returns: A Guide for Evaluating Federal
Agencies' IT Investment Decision-making (GAO/AIMD-10.1.13, Feb.
1997).
Federal Downsizing: Better Workforce Strategic Planning Could Have
Made Buyouts More Effective (GAO/GGD-96-62, Aug. 26, 1996).
Privatization of OPM's Investigations Service (GAO/GGD-96-97R, Aug.
22, 1996).
Cost Analysis: Privatizing OPM Investigations (GAO/GGD-96-121R, July
5, 1996).
Federal Downsizing: The Costs and Savings of Buyouts Versus
Reductions-in-Force (GAO/GGD-96-63, May 14, 1996).
Transforming the Civil Service: Building the Workforce of the
Future, Results of a GAO-Sponsored Symposium (GAO/GGD-96-35, Dec.
20, 1995).
Retention Allowances: Usage and Compliance Vary Among Federal
Agencies (GAO/GGD-96-32, Dec. 11, 1995).
Federal Employee Redress: An Opportunity for Reform
(GAO/T-GGD-96-42, Nov. 29, 1995).
Federal Pensions: Thrift Savings Plan Has Key Role in Retirement
Benefits (GAO/HEHS-96-1, Oct. 19, 1995).
Civil Service Reform: Changing Times Demand New Approaches
(GAO/T-GGD-96-31, Oct. 12, 1995).
Equal Employment Opportunity: Women and Minority Representation at
Interior, Agriculture, Navy, and State (GAO/GGD-95-211, Sept. 29,
1995).
Federal Personnel Management: Views on Selected NPR Human Resource
Recommendations (GAO/GGD-95-221BR, Sept. 18, 1995).
Federal Retirement: Benefits for Members of Congress, Congressional
Staff, and Other Employees (GAO/GGD-95-78, May 15, 1995).
Federal Affirmative Employment: Progress of Women and Minority
Criminal Investigators at Selected Agencies (GAO/GGD-95-85, Apr. 24,
1995).
Conflict-of-Interest Controls: Documented Recusal Obligations of Top
Political Appointees in DOE and EPA (GAO/GGD-95-81FS, Mar. 7, 1995).
Federal Personnel: Federal /Private Sector Pay Comparisons
(GAO/OCE-95-1, Dec. 14, 1994).
Personnel Practices: Presidential Transition Conversions and
Appointments: Changes Needed (GAO/GGD-94-66, May 31, 1994).
Executive Guide: Improving Mission Performance Through Strategic
Information Management and Technology (GAO/AIMD-94-115, May 1994).
Performance Management: Comments on Reauthorization of the
Performance Management and Recognition System (GAO/T-GGD-93-37, June
24, 1993).
Inadequate Enforcement of Federal Ethics Requirements at VA Medical
Centers (GAO/HRD-93-39, Apr. 30, 1993).
Federal Personnel Management: OPM Reliance on Agency Oversight of
Personnel Systems Not Fully Justified (GAO/GGD-93-24, Dec. 8, 1992).
The Public Service (GAO/OCG-93-7TR, Dec. 1992).
Whistleblower Protection: Determining Whether Reprisal Occurred
Remains Difficult (GAO/GGD-93-3, Oct. 27, 1992).
Tax Administration: IRS' Progress on Integrity and Ethics Issues
(GAO/T-GGD-92-62, July 22, 1992).
Federal Employment: How Federal Employees View the Government as a
Place to Work (GAO/GGD-92-91, June 18, 1992).
Senior Executive Service: Opinions About the Federal Work
Environment (GAO/GGD-92-63, May 1, 1992).
The Changing Workforce: Comparison of Federal and Nonfederal
Work/Family Programs and Approaches (GAO/GGD-92-84, Apr. 23, 1992).
The Changing Workforce: Demographic Issues Facing the Federal
Government (GAO/GGD-92-38, Mar. 24, 1992).
Federal Health Benefits Program: Stronger Controls Needed to Reduce
Administrative Costs (GAO/GGD-92-37, Feb. 12, 1992).
Employee Conduct Standards: Some Outside Activities Present
Conflict-of-Interest Issues (GAO/GGD-92-34, Feb. 10, 1992).
Government Contractors: Are Service Contractors Performing
Inherently Governmental Functions? (GAO/GGD-92-11, Nov. 18, 1991).
Federal Affirmative Employment: Status of Women and Minority
Representation in the Federal Workforce (GAO/T-GGD-92-2, Oct. 23,
1991).
Federal Labor Relations: A Program in Need of Reform
(GAO/GGD-91-101, July 30, 1991).
Fraud and Abuse: Stronger Controls Needed in Federal Employee Health
Benefits Program (GAO/GGD-91-95, July 16, 1991).
Federal Pay: Private Sector Salary Differences by Locality
(GAO/GGD-91-63FS, Apr. 29, 1991).
Performance Management: How Well Is the Government Dealing With Poor
Performers? (GAO/GGD-91-7, Oct. 2, 1990).
Recruitment and Retention: Inadequate Federal Pay Cited as Primary
Problem by Agency Officials (GAO/GGD-90-117, Sept. 11, 1990).
Federal Recruiting and Hiring: Making Government Jobs Attractive to
Prospective Employees (GAO/GGD-90-105, Aug. 22, 1990).
Financial Disclosure: USDA's Systems Limited by Insufficient Top
Management Support (GAO/GGD-90-100, July 13, 1990).
Office of Personnel Management: Better Performance Information
Needed (GAO/GGD-90-44, Feb. 7, 1990).
Managing Human Resources: Greater OPM Leadership Needed to Address
Critical Challenges (GAO/GGD-89-19, Jan. 19, 1989).
Ethics Enforcement: Results of Conflict of Interest Investigations
(GAO/GGD-88-34, Feb. 19, 1988).
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