Department of Energy

The Department of Energy (DOE) spent about $379 million in fiscal year 1997--the most recent year for which cost data are available--on training (about $57 million for federal employees and about $322 million for contractor employees). This total is about $175 million less than the amount DOE spent on training in fiscal year 1995. This report discusses (1) DOE's current process for setting its training budget, (2) identifies ways to reduce the costs of DOE's training program, and (3) evaluates DOE's draft plan for training its employees in the future. GAO found that DOE has not completed any of the critical steps identified in the Office of Personnel Management's and its own guidance that lead to developing a sound and defensible training budget. Also, DOE could reduce its training costs by eliminating certain nonmandatory training and reducing duplicative and nonstandard training across the Department. Regarding DOE's draft training plan, GAO found that the draft training plan has several shortcomings that may preclude it from improving departmental training through fiscal year 2001, as intended.

GAO noted that: (1) DOE has not completed any of the critical steps identified in the Office of Personnel Management's and its own guidance that lead to the development of a sound and defensible training budget; (2) for instance, DOE has not defined the training needs for various occupations, including program managers and contractor oversight specialists; (3) in addition, DOE employees have generally not completed individual development plans, and DOE offices have generally not prepared annual training plans; (4) DOE could reduce its training costs by eliminating certain nonmandatory training and reducing duplicative and nonstandardized training across the Department; (5) about 90 percent of DOE's training, according to a departmental estimate, is not mandated by laws or regulations, but DOE has not developed criteria on the type of nonmandatory training that is appropriate; (6) as a result, DOE offers a wide range of nonmandatory training courses, such as a course on determining social styles in the workplace and one on employees facing mid-life questions; (7) furthermore, because DOE and its contractors independently develop and deliver training, duplicate courses exist and nonstandardized training occurs across the department; (8) DOE's draft training plan has several shortcomings that may preclude it from improving departmental training over fiscal years 1999 through 2001, as intended; (9) for example, the draft plan does not realistically estimate what overall costs and overall savings will result from the plan, how the plan will be financed, given DOE's decentralized training resources, and how DOE's training centers of excellence will eliminate duplicative training, as intended; (10) moreover, even though DOE spent about 85 percent of its fiscal year 1997 training expenditures on contractor employees, the draft training plan does not address the steps necessary to improve contractor training; and (11) DOE officials stated that they are aware of these shortcomings and intend to address them in the final plan.

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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