An article titled “Mission-Critical Gaps in Skills Among Federal Workers is a ‘High Risk’” and posted on the Government Executive website reports that the government needs to do a better job identifying and eliminating gaps in critical skills and competencies among federal workers.
The article points out that “mission-critical skills gaps within specific federal agencies as well as across the federal workforce pose a high risk to the nation because they impede the government from cost effectively serving the public and achieving results.” The article goes on to report that the pending large numbers of retiring federal government employees threatens to exacerbate this problem.
The full report by the US Government Accountability Office on January 30, 2015 has the title “OPM and Agencies Need to Strengthen Efforts to Identify and Close Mission-Critical Skills Gaps.” The GAO recommended that “OPM:

(1) strengthen its methodology for identifying and addressing skills gaps,

(2) establish a schedule and process for collecting government-wide staffing and competency data, and

(3) develop a core set of metrics for use in agencies’ HRstat reviews.

OPM generally concurred with the first and third recommendations but did not concur with the second recommendation because of funding implications. GAO acknowledges there may be funding constraints; however, GAO’s recommendation may help OPM address these constraints.”

Check it out.

~ CCJ