Navy Manpower Management

Continuing Problems Impair the Credibility of Shore Establishment Requirements Gao ID: NSIAD-85-43 March 7, 1985

GAO conducted a review to assess whether improvements have been made in: (1) the Navy's shore-based manpower management system; (2) the accuracy of Navy's workload data; and (3) the oversight of manpower planning at the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and Command headquarters and of the application and use of staffing standards at the user level.

GAO found that the Navy has made progress in managing its shore-based manpower by adopting work measurement concepts and methods. However, the Shore Requirements, Standards, and Manpower Planning System (SHORSTAMPS) and the Navy Manpower Engineering Program (NAVMEP) fall short of meeting congressional expectations. This is due primarily to: (1) the Navy's lack of oversight of manpower planning; and (2) various continuing technical problems, such as budgeting, personnel, procedures, and data. GAO believes that the key reason manpower standards are not used is the absence of monitoring and enforcement at all levels. Most of the Navy's shore manpower is not covered by the SHORSTAMPS standards, there has been little emphasis on managing and retaining trained analysts, methods-improvement studies are not being performed, none of the major commands visited was ensuring that the Shore Required Occupational Capability (SHOROC) values submitted by activities were accurate, some commands were not using the system in accordance with the approved implementation instruction, and there was no incentive to use SHORSTAMPS. Furthermore, GAO found that NAVMEP, which the Navy has initiated because of dissatisfaction with SHORSTAMPS, may be endangered due to methodological weaknesses and budget instability. In NAVMEP, the Navy is likely to sacrifice accuracy and efficiency due to time constraints, the use of macro-models, and the use of engineered estimates as a substitute for standards.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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