HUD Human Capital Management
Comprehensive Strategic Workforce Planning Needed Gao ID: GAO-02-839 July 24, 2002Looming retirements during the next 5 years at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have brought the need for workforce planning to the forefront. HUD has done some workforce planning and has determined how many staff it needs to meet its current workload, but it does not have a comprehensive strategic workforce plan to guide its recruiting, hiring, and other key human capital efforts. Workforce planning steps taken include a detailed analysis of HUD's potential staff losses and completion of HUD's resource estimation and allocation process, which estimates the staff needed to handle the current workload in each office. Some of the Public and Indian Housing (PIH) managers and staff reported that the lack of workforce planning makes it difficult to accomplish mission-related activities and provide customer service. The issue of greatest concern for PIH managers and staff is the staffing shortage. Because HUD lacks a comprehensive strategic workforce plan, some PIH managers and staff were uncertain about what work should be done and the best mix of staff knowledge, skills, and abilities to do it.
RecommendationsOur 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.
Director: Team: Phone:GAO-02-839, HUD Human Capital Management: Comprehensive Strategic Workforce Planning Needed
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Report to Congressional Requesters:
July 2002
HUD Human Capital Management: Comprehensive Strategic Workforce
Planning
Needed:
GAO:
GAO-02-839
Contents:
Letter
Results in Brief:
Background:
HUD Lacks a Comprehensive Strategic Workforce Plan to Guide Recruiting
and Hiring:
Managers and Staff Reported That the Lack of a Comprehensive Strategic
Workforce Plan Sometimes Makes Accomplishing PIH‘s Mission Difficult:
Conclusions:
Recommendation:
Agency Comments:
Scope and Methodology:
Appendix I: PIH‘s Organization:
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Housing and
Urban Development:
Appendix III: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contacts:
Acknowledgments:
Table:
Table 1: Professional Staff We Interviewed:
Figures:
Figure 1: Key PIH Mission-Related Activities:
Figure 2: PIH and Public Housing Authorities--Foundation for Delivery
of Housing Assistance:
Figure 3: HUD Staff by Grade Level Who Will Be Eligible to Retire by
August 2003:
Figure 4: REAP Staff Ceilings Compared with Staff On Board as of
September 30, 2001:
Figure 5: PIH Staff On Board as a Percentage of REAP Ceilings:
Abbreviations:
GS: General Schedule
HUD: Department of Housing and Urban Development
IG: Inspector General
NAPA: National Academy of Public Administration
OMB: Office of Management and Budget
OPM: Office of Personnel Management
PIH: Public and Indian Housing
REAP: Resource Estimation and Allocation Process:
Letter:
United States General Accounting Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
July 24, 2002:
The Honorable Paul S. Sarbanes
Chairman
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
United States Senate:
The Honorable Jack Reed
Chairman
Subcommittee on Housing and Transportation
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
United States Senate:
The Honorable Wayne Allard
Ranking Minority Member
Subcommittee on Housing and Transportation
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
United States Senate:
Human capital management issues at the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) are an immediate concern. Looming retirements in the
next 5 years suggested by current demographics have brought the need
for workforce planning to the forefront. By workforce planning we mean
the strategy used to identify current and future human capital needs--
including size and deployment of the workforce and the knowledge,
skills, and abilities needed to pursue the HUD mission. This includes
recruiting and hiring the workforce of the future. By August 2003, HUD
estimates that about half of its professional workforce will be
eligible to retire. According to its Human Resources officials, HUD is
faced with a need for a large-scale recruiting and hiring effort due to
the above retirement statistics and the fact that HUD has done little
outside hiring in the past 10 or more years.
You asked us to study workforce planning, recruiting, and hiring issues
as part of our response to your broad request for a series of GAO
reports on what HUD could do to improve its management.[Footnote 1] In
response, we agreed to assess department wide policies and practices
and their effect on some of HUD‘s field locations and professional
staff in the Public and Indian Housing (PIH) component of HUD. We
selected PIH because it is a large HUD component responsible for
administering rental assistance programs that we have designated as
being at a high risk of vulnerability to waste, fraud, abuse, and
mismanagement. [Footnote 2] Specifically, we agreed to determine the
following: (1) what HUD has done to implement the use of workforce
planning to guide recruiting and hiring, and (2) how PIH managers and
staff believe workforce planning issues affect PIH‘s ability to meet
its mission and to provide service to its customers.
To address our objectives, we analyzed documentation, including HUD‘s
workforce demographics studies; staffing information from its Resource
Estimation and Allocation Process (REAP); and related HUD Inspector
General (IG) reports. We interviewed headquarters Human Resource and
PIH officials and completed structured interviews with managers and
staff at four PIH field locations: public housing offices in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Jacksonville, Florida; and San Francisco,
California; and an office of Native American programs in Phoenix,
Arizona. We also visited several PIH-directed centers that HUD
established, beginning in 1997 as part of its 2020 management reform
effort, to consolidate and streamline some operations that had
previously been done in HUD‘s field offices. Our scope and methodology
are discussed in greater detail at the end of this report.
Results in Brief:
HUD has undertaken some workforce planning and has determined how many
staff it needs to meet its current workload, but it does not have a
comprehensive strategic workforce plan to guide its recruiting, hiring,
and other key human capital efforts. Workforce planning steps taken
thus far include a detailed analysis of HUD‘s potential staff losses
due to retirement and completion of HUD‘s resource estimation and
allocation process, which estimates the staff needed to handle the
current workload in each office. Elements that we have said are
necessary for comprehensive workforce planning, but are missing from
HUD‘s workforce planning, include an analysis of what work its staff
should be doing now and in the future; the knowledge, skills, and
abilities needed by staff to do this work; the appropriate staff
deployment across the organization; and strategies for identifying and
filling gaps.[Footnote 3] As a result, HUD is not as prepared as it
could be to address its human capital challenges and to recruit and
hire the staff needed to pursue its mission. HUD‘s workforce planning
effort is currently focused on responding to major human capital
deficiencies that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) identified
in its 2001 baseline evaluation of HUD‘s human capital management as
part of the President‘s agenda for improving the government‘s
performance. This effort is focused on specific initiatives such as
reducing the number of HUD managers and supervisors and does not
consider the broader elements of workforce planning that we have
endorsed. In addition to the OMB-directed effort, HUD is moving forward
with an internship program that officials said could be used to train
new hires for a variety of positions likely to be affected by upcoming
retirements. While the internship program may help HUD over the longer
term if interns are converted to permanent employees, without more
comprehensive planning it is not possible to determine how this will
enable HUD to recruit and hire the staff needed to do the work
necessary to pursue its mission.
Some of the PIH managers and staff we interviewed reported that the
lack of workforce planning makes it difficult to accomplish several
mission-related activities and provide service to its customers. The
workforce planning issue of greatest concern for PIH managers and staff
is the staffing shortage. Directors of several public housing and
Native American program field offices, who were staffed at less than 90
percent of the recommended staffing level when we conducted our review,
said that they lack the staff to provide the level of oversight and
technical assistance that the housing authorities need. For example, a
field office director said that his staff never has enough time to do
all of the technical assistance that needs to be done, and that current
workload and staffing levels do not allow time for the number of
reviews of housing authority operations that should be conducted.
Although the field office directors we interviewed said that they were
meeting the goal of using risk assessment techniques to focus oversight
efforts, they lacked a standard method of assigning levels of oversight
based on risk. According to field office directors, staffing shortages
are exacerbated by skill gaps and uncertainties about what work should
be done and the best mix of staff knowledge, skills, and abilities to
do it. Field office directors said that current skill gaps exist in the
areas of facilities management, real estate development, and financing.
They also said that they expect the skill gaps to worsen over the next
several years because of retirements of knowledgeable staff. Because
HUD lacks a comprehensive strategic workforce plan, some PIH managers
and staff we interviewed were uncertain about what work should be done
and the best mix of staff knowledge, skills, and abilities to do it.
We are recommending that the Secretary of HUD develop a more
comprehensive workforce plan.
In commenting on a draft of this report, the HUD Assistant Secretary
for Administration said that HUD recognizes the need for additional
workforce planning, as we recommended, and did not disagree with our
report. She also provided information on several HUD efforts to improve
its strategic workforce planning, enhance training, and deploy staff in
offices where their skills best meet program needs. HUD‘s comments are
reprinted in appendix II.
Background:
For many years, HUD has been the subject of sustained criticism for
management and oversight weaknesses that have made it vulnerable to
fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. In 1994, we designated all of
HUD‘s programs as high risk because of four long-standing management
deficiencies: weak internal controls; inadequate information and
financial management systems; an ineffective organizational structure,
including a fundamental lack of management accountability and
responsibility; and an insufficient mix of staff with the proper
skills. HUD undertook reorganization and downsizing efforts in 1993 and
1994; and its 2020 Management Reform Plan that was announced in 1997,
was the effort intended to finally resolve its managerial and
operational deficiencies, among other things. HUD also said one of the
purposes of its plan was to ensure HUD‘s relevance and effectiveness
into the twenty-first century.
HUD‘s 2020 Management Reform Plan was a complex and wide-ranging plan
to change the negative perception of the agency by updating its mission
and focusing its energy and resources on eliminating fraud, waste, and
abuse in its programs. The reform plan presented two interrelated
missions for HUD: (1) empower people and communities to improve
themselves and succeed in the modern economy, and (2) restore public
trust by achieving and demonstrating competence. With these two
missions, HUD‘s goals were to become more collaborative with its
partners; move from process-oriented activities to an emphasis on
performance and product delivery; and develop a culture within HUD of
zero tolerance for waste, fraud, and abuse.
As part of the 2020 plan, HUD was to refocus and retrain its staff to
ensure it had the skills and resources where needed. HUD planned to
reduce staffing from 10,500 at the end of fiscal year 1996 to 7,500 by
fiscal year 2002 through buyouts, attrition, and outplacement services.
However, we found that the staffing target was not based on a
systematic workload analysis, and we questioned whether HUD would have
the capacity to carry out its responsibilities once the reforms were in
place.[Footnote 4] HUD reduced staffing to about 9,000 full-time
positions by March 1998, when the downsizing effort was terminated.
During fiscal year 1999, HUD substantially completed its reorganization
under the 2020 Management Reform Plan.
In September 2000, we testified on HUD‘s progress in addressing its
major management challenges as it tried to transform itself from a
federal agency whose major programs were designated ’high risk.“
[Footnote 5] In January 2001, we recognized that HUD‘s top management
had given high priority to implementing the 2020 Management Reform
Plan.[Footnote 6] Considering HUD‘s progress toward improving its
operations through the management reform plan and consistent with our
criteria for determining high risk, we reduced the number of programs
deemed to be high risk from all HUD programs to two of its major
program areas--single-family mortgage insurance and rental housing
assistance.
In October 2001, we reported that HUD had some successes in
implementing its major 2020 management reforms, but we also identified
challenges that remain.[Footnote 7] We reported that some initiatives,
such as consolidating and streamlining operations in new centers, had
produced results; other efforts, such as improving efficiency and
accountability, had been hampered by inefficient distribution of
workload and other issues. Overall, we identified strategic human
capital management--of which workforce planning, recruiting, and hiring
are significant component---as the most pressing management challenge
facing HUD.
Concerned about HUD‘s approach to using staff, Congress asked the
National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to evaluate HUD‘s
ability to develop staffing requirements based on meaningful measures
and received a NAPA report on the issue in 1999. NAPA recommended that
HUD adopt a management approach that bases staff estimates and
allocations on the level of work and the specific location where it is
to be performed. HUD made a commitment to implement this recommendation
by developing its REAP in consultation with NAPA. In September 2000,
the HUD IG expressed concern that the implementation of REAP had not
progressed with the urgency that would have been expected for a
priority status project.[Footnote 8]
The human capital management challenges that HUD faces are a concern
across the federal government. GAO, OMB, and the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM) have challenged agencies to acquire and develop staffs
whose size, skills, and deployment meet agency needs and to ensure
leadership continuity and succession planning. Last year, we added
strategic human capital management to our list of high-risk government
programs as an area that needs attention to ensure that the national
government functions in the most economic, efficient, and effective
manner possible. Several of the key challenges we identified were
directly related to workforce planning, recruiting, and
hiring.[Footnote 9] Three of the four ’human capital cornerstones“ that
we identified in our Model of Strategic Human Capital
Management[Footnote 10] relate directly to the challenges at HUD that
this report examines. These cornerstones are as follows:
* leadership commitment to human capital management and recognition
that people are important enablers of agency performance;
* strategic human capital planning in which the human capital needs of
the organization and new initiatives or refinements to existing human
capital approaches are reflected in strategic workforce planning
documents, and decisions involving human capital management and its
link to agency results are routinely supported by complete, valid, and
reliable data; and:
* acquiring, developing, and retaining talent using strategies that are
fully integrated with needs identified through strategic and annual
planning and that take advantage of appropriate administrative actions
available under current laws, rules, and regulations.[Footnote 11]
In 2001, as part of the President‘s management agenda for improving the
government‘s performance, OMB did a baseline evaluation of executive
branch agencies‘ performance in five major management categories,
including human capital management.[Footnote 12] It scored 26 executive
branch agencies as achieving green, yellow, or red levels of
performance in each management dimension.[Footnote 13] For human
capital management, no agency received a green status, which would have
indicated that it had met all core criteria. Three of the 26 agencies
evaluated received a yellow status, indicating the achievement of some,
but not all, of the core criteria; and 23 agencies, including HUD,
received red status, indicating that that they had one or more major
deficiencies in human capital management.
HUD currently has a staff of about 9,000 to meet its mission of
promoting adequate and affordable housing, economic opportunity, and a
suitable living environment free from discrimination. To meet this
mission, HUD has outlined the following eight strategic goals:
* Make the home-buying process less complicated, the paperwork less
demanding, and the mortgage process less expensive.
* Help families move from rental housing to homeownership.
* Improve the quality of public and assisted housing and provide more
choices for their residents.
* Strengthen and expand faith-based and community partnerships that
enhance communities.
* Effectively address the challenge of homelessness.
* Embrace high standards of ethics, management, and accountability.
* Ensure equal opportunity and access to housing.
* Support community and economic development efforts.
HUD‘s PIH office plays a major role in administering HUD‘s affordable
rental housing programs. PIH has identified five activities to meet its
mission of ensuring safe, decent, and affordable housing; create
opportunities for residents‘ self-sufficiency and economic
independence; and ensure fiscal integrity by all program participants.
These mission-related activities are listed in figure 1.
Figure 1: Key PIH Mission-Related Activities:
[See PDF for image]
Source: PIH.
[End of figure]
PIH is responsible for oversight of the public housing program that
serves about 1.2 million low-income households and the housing voucher
program that serves about 1.8 million low-income households. (See fig.
2.) Public housing authorities administer both programs. Because
tenants‘ rents typically do not cover the cost of operating public
housing, PIH administers subsidies, vouchers, and other federal
payments to more than 3,000 local public housing authorities. PIH also
provides the housing authorities with oversight, monitoring, and
technical assistance in planning, developing, and managing public
housing, and intervening if problems arise with public housing
authorities‘ delivery of services. HUD also provides funds to housing
authorities for major modernization projects through the Capital Fund
Program that PIH administers.
Figure 2: PIH and Public Housing Authorities--Foundation for
Delivery of Housing Assistance:
[See PDF for image]
Source: GAO analysis of HUD data.
[End of figure]
HUD Lacks a Comprehensive Strategic Workforce Plan to Guide Recruiting
and Hiring:
Although HUD has started to do workforce planning and has identified
the resources required to do its current work, it does not have a
comprehensive strategic workforce plan that identifies the knowledge,
skills, and abilities it needs to build its workforce for the future.
HUD has done a detailed analysis of its potential losses of staff to
retirement; but without a complete workforce plan, HUD is not fully
prepared to recruit and hire staff to pursue its mission. In the
interim, HUD has begun to hire interns whom it hopes can be trained to
fill positions that are likely to be affected by upcoming retirements.
HUD Has Taken Some Workforce Planning Steps:
Workforce planning steps HUD has taken thus far include completion of a
detailed analysis of HUD‘s potential staff losses due to retirement and
the REAP, which estimates the staff needed to handle the current
workload in each office.
HUD has analyzed data on retirement eligibility by component office,
position, and grade level. Among its findings is that by August 2003,
half of its workforce in General Schedule (GS) Grades 9 through 15 will
be eligible to retire. Figure 3 shows retirement eligibility by grade
level.
Figure 3: HUD Staff by Grade Level Who Will Be Eligible to
Retire by August 2003:
[See PDF for image]
Source: GAO analysis of HUD succession planning data, August 2000.
[End of figure]
The REAP study reviews staffing levels by component office and the
tasks that staff in various job classifications are assigned. On an
office-by-office basis, the REAP study looked at the number of staff on
board and assigned a staff ceiling--the number of staff needed for that
office based on the work the office is currently performing--and then
calculated the resources required to do the work. The REAP also
provides a framework for periodic validation of the data. Figure 4
compares the REAP estimated needs for major HUD offices with the staff
on board as of September 30, 2001.
Figure 4: REAP Staff Ceilings Compared with Staff On Board as
of September 30, 2001:
[See PDF for image]
Source: GAO analysis of HUD data.
[End of figure]
HUD Lacks a Comprehensive Workforce Plan:
The compilation of data on retirement eligibilities and the REAP study
are important first steps for HUD toward strategic human capital
planning, but additional workforce planning steps are necessary. REAP
has collected valuable information about staff levels and workload, but
HUD has not done a comprehensive strategic workforce plan that includes
an analysis of:
* successes and shortcomings of existing human capital approaches;
* work that staff should be doing by thinking broadly of how the
mission should change over the next decade;
* knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by staff to do this work;
* the capabilities of current staff;
* gaps in skills, competencies, and development needs and the links
between strategies for filling these gaps and mission accomplishment;
* recruiting and hiring requirements necessary to fill the gaps; and:
* the resources required and milestones for implementation.
In its 2001 baseline evaluation of HUD‘s human capital management,
completed as part of the President‘s management agenda for improving
the government‘s performance, OMB identified the following deficiencies
at HUD:
* skill gap deficiencies across the department;
* HUD‘s inability to sustain a high-performing workforce that is
continually improving in productivity; strategically using existing
personnel flexibilities, tools, and technology; and implementing
succession planning; and:
* human capital that is not aligned to support HUD‘s mission, goals,
and organizational objectives.
In response, HUD issued a human capital strategic management plan in
February 2002 that summarizes its plans to address the deficiencies OMB
identified. The plan focused on specific goals, including reducing the
number of HUD managers and supervisors and GS 14 and 15 positions;
expanding personnel flexibilities, such as transit subsidies and
telecommuting; and providing employee training and development to fill
skill gaps. However, as of June 2002, the plan was not comprehensive
enough to fully address the deficiencies outlined by OMB or the broader
elements of workforce planning that we have endorsed that would involve
looking carefully at what work staff should be doing now and in the
future, planning for training and other staff development, and
recruiting and hiring to build the workforce needed to accomplish its
mission in the future.
HUD Not Fully Prepared to Recruit and Hire New Staff:
Without a comprehensive strategic workforce plan, HUD is not fully
prepared to recruit and hire staff to pursue its mission. We have noted
that federal agencies faced with growing retirement eligibilities may
have difficulty replacing the loss of skilled and experienced staff. We
found that high-performing organizations address this human capital
challenge by identifying their current and future needs--including the
appropriate number of employees, the key competencies for mission
accomplishment, and the appropriate deployment of staff across the
organization--and then create strategies for identifying and filling
the gaps.[Footnote 14]
According to HUD officials, in light of the pending retirements, HUD is
faced with a need for a large-scale recruiting and hiring effort
because it has done little outside hiring in more than 10 years. Some
vacant positions have gone unfilled; others have been filled through
lateral transfers, promotions, or the upward mobility of administrative
staff into professional positions. Said one manager, ’all we are doing
is stealing from one another.“
As a first step in the recruiting and hiring effort, in April 2001, the
Human Resource Office proposed a strategy for a HUD intern program that
would recruit interns at experience levels ranging from some high
school to completion of graduate or professional degrees. The program
is designed to bring on new staff at support or entry levels (GS 5, 7,
9, and 11 for legal interns)--current students or people who have
earned high school, college, graduate, or professional degrees that
qualify them for entry-level positions. According to HUD officials, the
internship program is a way to begin bringing new staff into HUD who
could be trained to take over higher level positions as retirements
occur. The largest component of the program is the HUD career
internship program. Candidates who perform successfully for 2 years as
HUD career interns, completing rotations in various parts of the
organization, will be offered career professional positions with HUD.
An official said that no HUD career interns were hired in fiscal year
2001, its first year of inception. However, the program is in full
operation this year. The official said HUD hopes to hire 140 HUD career
interns and up to 60 interns in other components of the program by the
end of fiscal year 2002. As of June 2002, 64 interns had been hired or
accepted offers from HUD.
The HUD internship program may be a good long-term approach for HUD as
interns are converted to permanent positions and move up the career
ladder. However, it does not help HUD to bring on board midcareer level
employees, although its demographic analysis shows the greatest
retirement eligibility is for employees in grades 13-15. (See fig. 3.)
A Partnership for Public Service[Footnote 15] report in February 2002
looked at midcareer retirements and recruiting strategies government
wide. It found that ’the impending wave of federal employee retirements
will have a disproportionately large impact on the mid-career ranks (GS
Grades 12-15) in government,“ and that ’after a decade of downsizing in
the federal workforce, there will likely be an insufficient number of
well-qualified internal candidates to replace the retirees.“ On the
basis of these findings, the Partnership for Public Service recommended
that the federal government expand its midlevel hiring practices to
include nonfederal candidates more frequently and suggested strategies
for doing so, including advertising federal jobs and their benefits
more broadly to targeted audiences and removing barriers to the hiring
process that unnecessarily limit vacancies to current federal
employees.[Footnote 16]
Managers and Staff Reported That the Lack of a Comprehensive Strategic
Workforce Plan Sometimes Makes Accomplishing PIH‘s Mission Difficult:
In assessing how they believe workforce planning issues affect PIH‘s
ability to meet its mission, PIH managers and staff we interviewed
reported that the lack of a comprehensive workforce plan makes it
difficult for them to accomplish several PIH mission-related activities
and provide service to their customers. The workforce planning issue of
greatest concern for these PIH managers and staff is staffing
shortages. The staffing shortages are exacerbated by skill gaps and
uncertainties about what work should be done and the best mix of staff
knowledge, skills, and abilities to do it.
Staffing Shortages Are a Workforce Planning Concern:
Directors of several public housing and Native American field offices
said that staffing shortages prevent them from providing the level of
oversight and technical assistance that the housing authorities need.
As shown in figure 5, the field offices were, as of September 2001,
staffed at less than 90 percent of the REAP-recommended staffing
levels. As a result of these staffing shortages, the directors said
that they are not able to accomplish PIH‘s goals of providing effective
oversight and technical assistance; acting as an agent of change; and
forming problem-solving partnerships with its clients, residents,
communities, and local government leadership. (See fig. 1.) Even with
staffing shortages, the field office directors we interviewed said that
they were meeting the goal of using risk assessment techniques to focus
oversight efforts. In June 2002, PIH officials said that some new
hiring in field offices had moved the numbers of staff on board closer
to REAP-recommended ceilings.
Figure 5: PIH Staff On Board as a Percentage of REAP
Ceilings:
[See PDF for image]
Source: PIH Staffing Plan, September 30, 2001.
[End of figure]
We received the following comments from directors of a public and a
Native American housing field office on how staffing shortages
sometimes had a negative impact on their ability to contribute to PIH‘s
goals:
* We never have enough time to do all of the technical assistance that
needs to be done. We are responsible for providing oversight and
technical assistance to 38 public housing authorities, including small
offices that require greater assistance than the larger, better-staffed
and equipped offices. We generally visit about 25 public housing
authorities a year to conduct oversight reviews and provide technical
assistance. We used to have a set cycle on which all of our housing
authorities received visits, but current workload and staffing levels
do not allow the time. Staff we interviewed in field offices and
centers
provided specific examples of work that they could not complete or
complete in a timely manner because of staffing shortages. The work
included prompt response to correspondence from customers that required
research of laws and regulations, writing program regulations and
guidance,
tracking audit findings to ensure that corrective actions were taken by
housing authorities, and closing out files on completed projects. One
staff member who was hired to help meet the goal of building community
partnerships with active outreach efforts said he had been used instead
’to do whatever needs doing the most at the moment, including
information systems management, managing grants applications, and doing
compliance reviews.“
A grants manager described the impact of staffing shortages on her
workload and her customers as follows:
* When tribal housing office staff call with questions, I sometimes
only have enough time to refer them to a handbook page to read. As a
result, the plans submitted to us need more rework than they would have
if we could have spent the time to be more helpful on the front end.
Staffing shortages and workload imbalances have prevented us from
having the chance to really improve customers‘ operations.
Six of the seven field office and center managers we interviewed agreed
that the workloads in their offices were much more or somewhat more
than could be handled at current staffing levels. Twenty of the 34
professional staff we interviewed at PIH locations around the country
described their workloads as somewhat or much more than they could
handle during normal business hours. Fourteen of the 18 public housing
revitalization specialists and Office of Native American Programs
grants management and evaluation specialists--the PIH staff who are
first-line contacts with public housing authority staff--described
their workloads as somewhat or much more than they could handle. Two of
these staff said that they were too new to their positions to assess
the workload, and two staff said the workload was about right.
Skill Gaps and Uncertainties About What Work Should Be Done and Who
Should Do It Exacerbate Staffing Shortages:
Three directors of public housing and Native American program field
offices said that they have skill gaps in their offices that exacerbate
the staffing shortages they are experiencing. Among the areas where
they said expertise is lacking are facilities management; demolitions;
real estate development; and financing, particularly mixed financing
using public and private funding to develop housing. One director noted
’We do not have a level of expertise here that could be defined as
…highly skilled.‘ I would say that my staff has about three-fourths of
the knowledge we need.“ Moreover, most of the field office directors we
interviewed said that they expect the skill gaps to worsen over the
next several years because of retirements of knowledgeable staff.
Almost half of all PIH staff and over half of PIH staff in such
positions as public housing revitalization specialist, financial
analyst, and Native American program administrator are projected to be
eligible to retire by August 2003. The following are comments we
received from managers and staff in two field offices:
* The youngest professional staff person here is 48 years old, and the
average age is 52. Almost all of our staff will be eligible to retire
in the next 3 to 5 years.
* Fourteen of our 31 staff could retire within 5 years. The impact
could be horrible, in terms both of the number of bodies to do the work
and the brain drain of knowledge, skills, and abilities that take years
to develop. It takes a long time to become good at interacting
effectively with our tribal communities.
Interviews with managers and staff of PIH offices also identified
uncertainties about what work should be done and the best mix of staff
knowledge, skills, and abilities to do it. For example, all of the
directors of public housing and Native American program field offices
we interviewed said that they used risk assessment techniques to focus
oversight. However, some managers and staff in field offices said they
were uncertain about the appropriate level of monitoring and technical
assistance to provide to their customers. PIH offices had no standard
methods of assigning levels of technical assistance and oversight based
on risk. One manager noted that each field office develops an annual
monitoring plan based on projections of what can be accomplished with
the staff on board. Although practical considerations require this type
of planning, more comprehensive, futuristic workforce planning
discussions are necessary to deal with questions on the desirable level
of monitoring and technical assistance to ensure that housing
authorities use HUD funds to provide the best possible service to
public housing residents and other customers.
Conclusions:
Strategic workforce planning is a major challenge for HUD. We have
found that high-performing organizations address this human capital
challenge by identifying their current and future needs--including the
appropriate number of employees, the key competencies for mission
accomplishment, and the appropriate deployment of staff across the
organization--and then create strategies for identifying and filling
the gaps. Because HUD has not addressed all of these elements of
strategic workforce planning, it does not know what work its staff
should be doing now and in the future to meet its strategic goals; what
knowledge, skills, and abilities its staff needs to do this work; the
capabilities of the current staff; what gaps exist in skills,
competencies, and developmental needs; and what its recruitment and
hiring strategy should be.
Without a comprehensive workforce plan, HUD is not fully prepared to
recruit and hire the people it needs to pursue its mission--an issue
made critical by its estimate that about half of its professional staff
and nearly 60 percent if its highest-graded GS employees will be
eligible to retire by August 2003.
Recommendation:
We are recommending that the Secretary of HUD develop a comprehensive
strategic workforce plan that is aligned with its overall strategic
plan and identifies the knowledge, skills, and abilities HUD needs and
the actions that it plans to take to build its workforce for the
future.
Agency Comments:
In commenting on a draft of this report, the HUD Assistant Secretary
for Administration said that HUD recognizes the need for additional
workforce planning, as we recommended, and did not disagree with our
report. She also provided information on several HUD efforts to address
the elements of a comprehensive workforce plan that we discussed in our
report. For example, she said that HUD has established a Human Capital
Management Executive Steering Committee, consisting of representatives
from all HUD program areas, to develop a five-year strategic plan to
focus on human capital issues. She also said that the HUD Training
Academy started several initiatives to support workforce planning,
including leadership and development training for new supervisors,
aspiring supervisors, and managers. In addition, according to the
Assistant Secretary for Administration, HUD is in the process of
completing an effort to redeploy field office staff so they are in
positions where their skills can best be used to meet program needs.
HUD‘s comments are reprinted in appendix II.
Scope and Methodology:
To determine how HUD uses workforce planning to guide recruiting and
hiring, we analyzed documentation and interviewed officials. Our
documentation analyses included our prior reports; NAPA studies; REAP
results; HUD strategic plans, budget justifications, and workforce
planning reports; and HUD IG reports. We interviewed headquarters PIH
and Human Resource officials.
To determine how PIH managers and staff believe workforce planning
issues affect PIH‘s ability to meet its strategic goals, we analyzed
strategic planning documents and interviewed PIH managers at HUD
headquarters. We pretested and conducted structured interviews with
managers and staff at four PIH field locations: public housing offices
in Philadelphia, PA; Jacksonville, FL; and San Francisco, CA; and an
office of Native American programs in Phoenix, AZ. We also visited
several PIH-directed centers that HUD established beginning in 1997 as
part of its 2020 management reform effort to consolidate operations
that had previously been done in HUD field offices. Centers we visited
were the Grants Management and Financial Management Centers in
Washington, D.C.; and a Troubled Agency Recovery Center in Cleveland,
OH. In consultation with PIH‘s acting directors of field operations and
Native American programs, we judgmentally selected the offices we
visited to include a mix of geographical locations, office sizes, and
type of work performed in consultation with PIH‘s acting directors of
field operations and Native American programs. At each of the
locations, we interviewed professional employees who were from six
professional job classifications and were available to talk with us.
The results of our interviews cannot be generalized to PIH overall.
Table 1 lists the professional positions from which we selected staff
to interview in PIH field offices and centers and describes some of
their duties.
Table 1: Professional Staff We Interviewed:
Professional position: Public housing revitalization specialists in
field offices, Public Housing Investments Office, and Troubled Agency
Recovery Center.; Duties: Front-line contact with Public Housing
Authority staff. In field offices, responsible for providing technical
assistance, monitoring, and oversight of assigned housing authorities.
In Troubled Agency Recovery Center, responsible for identifying
problems and causes of problems at housing agencies designated as
troubled and developing and implementing an intervention strategy to
deal with the problems identified.
Professional position: Grants management specialist; Duties: Front-
line contact with tribally designated housing entities in Native
American communities. Duties including reviewing housing plans,
responding to inquiries, and providing technical assistance on HUD
programs that are specific to Native Americans.
Professional position: Grants evaluation specialist; Duties: Front-
line contact with tribally designated housing entities in Native
American communities. Duties include doing monitoring visits and
evaluations of housing programs specific to Native Americans.
Professional position: Native American program specialist; Duties:
Duties include proactive outreach to tribally designated housing
entities and Native American communities.
Professional position: Financial analyst in field offices and Financial
Management Center; Duties: In field offices, manage financial aspects
of technical assistance, monitoring, and oversight. In the Financial
Management Center, do work related to the review and approval of HUD
Section 8 program financial documents related to assisted housing
programs. Duties include reviewing budgets and financial statements and
scheduling payments.
Professional position: General engineer; Duties: Advisor and point of
contact on engineering matters. Duties include analyzing data on
program compliance and performance operations.
Source: HUD position descriptions.
[End of table]
We did our work between September 2001 and July 2002 in accordance with
generally accepted government auditing standards.
As arranged with your office, we are sending copies of this report to
the Secretary, Department of Housing and Urban Development. We will
also make copies available to others upon request. In addition, the
report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://
www.gao.gov.
If you or your staffs have any questions about this report, please call
me at (202) 512-2834. Key contacts and major contributors to this
report are listed in appendix III.
Stanley J. Czerwinski
Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues:
Signed by Stanley J. Czerwinski:
[End of section]
Appendix I: PIH‘s Organization:
Figure 6:
[See PDF for image]
Source: PIH.
[End of figure]
[End of Section]
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Housing and Urban
Development:
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT WASHINGTON, D.C.
20410-3000:
OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR ADMINISTRATION:
Mr. Stanley J. Czerwinski:
Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues U.S. General Accounting Office
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Mr. Czerwinski:
Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on the proposed
report entitled ’HUD Human Capital Management: Comprehensive Strategic
Workforce Planning Needed“ (GAO-02-839). We have reviewed the proposed
draft report and find the report to be acceptable. We have the
following comments:
* Implementation of a Resource Estimation and Allocation Process (REAP)
began in August 2000 for the Department. REAP assessed HUD‘s staffing
requirements and included a detailed, analytic process of defining the
work of each program office. This information, along with (1) the
mission of HUD, (2) HUD‘s priorities, and (3) workforce profile
information, was analyzed to determine the Department‘s immediate
needs. In conjunction with other human capital efforts, the Department
will continue to use this data for future analysis and strategic
planning. The Department recognizes that it has an aging workforce with
a large percentage eligible for retirement. Thus, the need for
additional workforce analysis is appropriate.
* HUD is currently in the process of further refining and developing a
comprehensive strategic workforce plan that will guide its recruiting,
hiring, and other key human capital efforts. A Human Capital Management
Executive Steering Committee, consisting of representatives from all
HUD program areas, has been established to develop a five-year
strategic plan to focus on the following critical human capital issues:
current and future Departmental staffing level requirements,
organizational de-layering; supervisor to employee ratios, and, .
redirecting positions towards service delivery. In developing this
strategic plan, the actions of the Executive Steering Committee will
include a careful and comprehensive workforce examination and analysis
to identify and confirm mission-critical positions, skills imbalances,
and an assessment of the organizational impact and potential risks
associated with the retirement eligibility of the existing staff, at
all locations, for the core business functions of the Department. These
reviews also require an assessment of management‘s plans to use
training and development of existing staff, new intern hires, and
external recruitment to ensure that the Department has an adequate and
capable workforce to carry out its mission well into the future.
* In addition, the HUD Training Academy has launched several
initiatives
to-support workforce planning. Studies have been conducted to identify
mission-critical positions in the core business programs. Core
competencies were developed for these positions to assist in addressing
skills imbalances and employee training needs for both program
technical training and career advancement. Accordingly, many training
resources are readily available to employees, via desktop applications,
the HUD Virtual University, and Career Resource Centers. A new program,
Operation Brain Trust, engages seasoned HUD staff to share their
institutional knowledge and professional experiences by providing
technical training to HUD employees. Leadership and developmental
training for new supervisors, aspiring supervisors, and managers is a
departmental priority. A Senior Executive Candidate Development Program
has been established with a comprehensive training and development
strategy, approved by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The
first class of program participants was recently completed with eight
candidates approved by OPM.
* Finally, HUD is in the process of completing a months-long effort at
redeploying staff in HUD field offices. This effort was designed to
assess the program delivery needs of the Department and match those
needs with staff who possess the skills sets that best meet the program
needs. To facilitate this change, revisions to personnel management
delegations of authority are also underway. In addition to aligning
employee skills with program needs, the redeployment effort attempts to
move staff closer to the customers.
Although much work remains to be done, the work described above
demonstrates that HUD is in the process of taking specific actions
designed to address each of the elements of strategic workforce
planning as described in the GAO Human Capital Management Report.
If you have any questions, please contact Glennel M. Cooper, Director,
Office of Budget and Administrative Support, on (202) 708-1583.
Vickers B. Meadows:
Assistant Secretary for Administration:
Signed by Vickers B. Meadows:
Jul 16 2002:
[End of Section]
Appendix III: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgements:
GAO Contacts:
Stan Czerwinski (202) 512-6520
Susan Campbell (202) 512-6790:
Acknowledgments:
In addition to those individuals named above, Deborah Knorr and
Gretchen Pattison made key contributions to this report.
[End of section]
FOOTNOTES
[1] In response to this request, we also have issued reports on the
status of HUD management reforms and HUD‘s information technology
acquisition efforts. U.S. General Accounting Office, HUD Management:
Progress Made on Management Reforms, but Challenges Remain, GAO-02-45
(Washington, D.C. Oct. 31, 2001). U.S General Accounting Office, HUD
Information Systems: Immature Software Acquisition Capability
Increases Project Risks, GAO-01-962 (Washington, D.C., Sept. 14, 2001).
[2] PIH is one of HUD‘s largest components with about 1,600 employees
as of May 2002. PIH is responsible for providing oversight and
assistance to over 3,000 public housing authorities across the country.
In addition, its Office of Native American Programs implements and
administers HUD programs that are specific to Native Americans. See
appendix I for PIH‘s organization chart.
[3] U.S. General Accounting Office, High Risk Series: An Update,
GAO-01-263 (Washington, D.C.: January 2001).
[4] U.S. General Accounting Office, HUD Management: Progress Made on
Management Reforms but Challenges Remain, GAO-02-45 (Washington, D.C.:
Oct. 31, 2001).
[5] U.S. General Accounting Office, Management Challenges: Department
of Housing and Urban Development, GAO/T-RCED-00-292 (Washington, D.C.:
Sept. 26, 2000).
[6] U.S. General Accounting Office, Major Management Challenges and
Program Risks: Department of Housing and Urban Development, GAO-01-248
(Washington, D.C.: January 2001).
[7] GAO-02-45.
[8] HUD Inspector General Audit Memorandum, 00-PH-169-0802, Sept. 29,
2000.
[9] GAO-01-263.
[10] U.S. General Accounting Office, A Model of Strategic Human Capital
Management, GAO-02-373SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 15, 2002) and U.S.
General Accounting Office, Human Capital: A Self-Assessment Checklist
for Agency Leaders GAO/OCG-00-14G (Washington, D.C.: September 2000).
[11] GAO-02-373SP. The fourth human capital cornerstone identified in
this report is indirectly related to workforce planning, recruiting,
and hiring. The cornerstone is the establishment of results oriented
organizational cultures in which employees at all levels are given the
authority they need to accomplish programmatic goals, innovation and
problem-solving are encouraged, and the culture is results-oriented and
externally focused.
[12] While our Model of Strategic Human Capital Management was
developed independently of OMB and OPM, we provided drafts of the model
for their review prior to publication to help ensure conceptual
consistency.
[13] The other management areas evaluated were competitive sourcing,
financial management, expanded electronic government, and budget/
performance integration.
[14] GAO-01-263.
[15] The Partnership for Public Service is a nonpartisan organization
dedicated to revitalizing public service.
[16] The Partnership for Public Service, Midcareer Hiring in the
Federal Government: A Strategy for Change, (February 22, 2002).
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