Results Act

Earlier work by GAO and others has documented poor workforce planning that can hinder the government's progress toward performance-based management. Agencies also confront major human capital issues, from the aging of the federal workforce to skills imbalances resulting from downsizing. Leadership by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will be critical to addressing the government's human capital challenges. OPM's fiscal year 2000 annual performance plan provides a general picture of intended performance across the agency. The plan's performance goals address OPM's major programs and priorities. However, the plan could have been more useful if it contained cost-based performance measures to show how efficiently OPM performs certain tasks, such as processing civil service retirement payments. OPM's annual performance plan includes a general discussion of strategies and resources the agency will use to achieve its goals. OPM's fiscal year 2000 annual performance plan provides a fuller discussion of its performance information than does last year's performance plan, but overall it provides limited confidence that agency performance information will be credible. GAO concludes that, overall, OPM's fiscal year 2000 annual performance plan represents a moderate improvement over the fiscal year 1999 plan in that it addresses several of the weaknesses that GAO cited in its assessment of the fiscal year 1999 plan.

GAO noted that: (1) past work done by others and GAO has documented poor workforce planning in federal agencies that can hinder their movement toward performance-based management; (2) major human capital challenges are also emerging, such as the aging of the federal workforce, skills imbalances that arose during downsizing, and a highly competitive market for the kinds of talented employees federal agencies need to meet modern demands for efficient and effective services; (3) because OPM is the central management agency responsible for assisting the President and agencies in managing the workforce, OPM's leadership will be critical to addressing the government's human capital challenges; (4) OPM's FY 2000 annual performance plan provides a general picture of intended performance across the agency; (5) GAO found that the plan's performance goals address OPM's major programs and priorities; (6) however, OPM's plan could have been more useful to decisionmakers in some areas, if it contained cost-based performance measures to show how efficiently OPM performs certain operations and activities, such as processing civil service retirement payments; (7) OPM's annual performance plan includes a general discussion of strategies and resources the agency will use to achieve its goals; (8) for each of its goals, the plan discusses a strategy for achieving that goal; (9) for example, the plan discusses OPM's strategy to enhance its information security program by conducting internal and external evaluations of its systems; (10) OPM's FY 2000 annual performance plan provides a fuller discussion of its performance information than its FY 1999 annual performance plan but overall provides limited confidence that agency performance information will be credible; (11) although the plan discusses OPM's verification and validation of its performance measures, the discussion does not always provide assurance that the methods used will be reliable; (12) the plan proposes using survey results of a sample of human resources specialists as a key element in its measurement program, but the survey received only a 29 percent response rate; (13) in general, the lower the response rates the larger the uncertainty about the reliability and validity of the survey results; and (14) overall, OPM's FY 2000 annual performance plan represents a moderate improvement over the FY 1999 plan in that it addresses a number of weaknesses that GAO identified in its assessment of the FY 1999 plan.