Human Capital

Human capital offices have traditionally used alternative service delivery (ASD)--the use of other than internal staff to provide a service or to deliver a product--as a way to reduce costs for transaction-based services. GAO was asked to identify which human capital activities agencies were selecting for ASD, the reasons why, how they were managing the process, and some of the lessons they had learned. Eight agencies were selected to provide illustrative examples of ASD use.

The selected agencies were using ASD for the full range of their human capital activities. Agencies generally approached their management of ASD in similar ways. They conceptually agreed that human capital activities that did not require an intimate knowledge of the agency, oversight, or decision-making authority could be considered for ASD, although in practice they showed differences in their choices of ASD activities. GAO identified several lessons the agencies had learned about ASD management, such as the importance of understanding the complexity and requirements of an activity before making an ASD decision. As the President's agent and adviser for human capital activities, OPM also has a central role in assisting agencies' management of ASD. Several agencies noted that they used OPM's Training and Management Assistance program, which provides human capital contract assistance. However, the officials also cited the need for sharing information about specific ASD efforts, useful metrics, and lessons learned.

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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