Management of VA

The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) approach to managing people does not effectively support its strategic management efforts. In the dynamic environment facing it today, VA needs a collaborative and future-oriented approach to human resource management, with proactive human resource planning as its cornerstone. Human resource planning is needed to focus VA's attention on the people dimension of its strategic vision. For example, VA might well need a different mix of jobs and skills to support the shift it envisions from inpatient care to an array of services--from outpatient to extended care--needed by an aging veteran population. Without Department-wide execution of the fundamentals of human resource planning, VA's goal of becoming the best-managed federal service organization will be difficult to achieve. VA needs to systematically monitor and assess external environmental trends affecting its people, thereby anticipating emerging labor force issues before they become crises. It needs to identify and address the human resource concerns of its managers, such as concerns about the effectiveness of its system of rewards and incentives. VA also needs to help line managers project human resource needs to ensure that enough people with the right skills are available when--and where--needed.

GAO found that: (1) the traditional VA approach to managing personnel has focused on operational personnel activities and compliance with personnel rules; (2) proactive human resource planning includes monitoring and assessing key human resource issues, projecting human resource requirements needed to accomplish VA goals and pinpointing the areas where problems may occur, developing broad human resource goals and related action plans to address identified problems, and assigning accountability for plan accomplishment; (3) VA plans to adjust its service delivery structure to meet the needs of the changing veteran population by employing advanced technologies and medical practices; (4) VA plans to increase the capacity of VA-owned nursing homes in fiscal year 1998 to address the increase in aging veterans; (5) VA lacks an adequate human resource planning system to project its human resource requirements; (6) VA does not systematically monitor and assess the external environmental trends that affect its future workforce or the strengths and weaknesses of its own internal human resource management; and (7) VA needs to address concerns about the effectiveness of its system of rewards and incentives and help managers ensure that qualified personnel are available to accomplish its goals.

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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