Defense Acquisition Workforce: DOD Increased Use of Human Capital Flexibilities but Could Improve Monitoring

DOD spends over $300 billion annually on contracts for products and services such as major weapons systems and military support services. By awarding and overseeing these contracts, DOD's acquisition workforce plays a critical role in maximizing DOD's buying power. DOD has increased the size of its acquisition workforce in recent years, but has also faced a number of challenges hiring and retaining personnel. DOD has a number of human capital flexibilities that help DOD in hiring, recruiting, and retaining its civilian acquisition workforce. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 included a provision for GAO to review DOD's implementation of human capital flexibilities for its acquisition workforce. This report: (1) provides information on DOD's use of human capital flexibilities and (2) determines the extent to which DOD has monitored and assessed its use of these flexibilities. GAO reviewed relevant statutes, and DOD policies, guidance, and acquisition workforce plans; analyzed DOD's fiscal year 2014-2018 civilian acquisition workforce personnel data; and interviewed DOD officials.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has used human capital flexibilities extensively to hire, recruit, and retain its civilian acquisition workforce. Since 2014, usage rates for hiring flexibilities—alternatives to the traditional, competitive hiring process—have generally increased. DOD leadership has encouraged its hiring personnel to use these flexibilities, such as direct hire authorities, to reduce the length of the hiring process. From fiscal year 2014 to 2018, DOD used hiring flexibilities for 90 percent of its approximately 44,000 civilian acquisition workforce hiring actions (see figure).

DOD also increased its use of recruitment and retention flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce, increasing the dollar amount authorized from $13.9 million in fiscal year 2014 to $33.7 million in fiscal year 2018. This increase came as DOD leadership emphasized the benefits of these flexibilities, and oversaw concerted efforts to increase their usage through the dissemination of information to human resource specialists.

While usage of human capital flexibilities has increased, DOD's Office of Human Capital Initiatives (HCI), which is responsible for DOD-wide acquisition workforce strategic planning, does not regularly monitor or assess how the department uses these flexibilities. HCI regularly monitors the overall health of the acquisition workforce, including by reviewing workforce metrics on a quarterly basis, but does not regularly monitor the military departments' use of human capital flexibilities. For example, GAO found the Air Force and Navy used direct hire authorities twice as often as the Army in fiscal year 2018. Without efforts to gain such insights through monitoring, HCI may be missing opportunities to identify challenges, inconsistencies, or needed improvements in using these tools. With regard to assessing the use of human capital flexibilities, HCI intends to study how long it takes to hire personnel when using the flexibilities. According to DOD officials, this analysis can begin following development of a plan to ensure that defense components consistently collect data on hiring timeframes. DOD officials said they expect to issue this plan in 2019.

GAO recommends that HCI regularly monitors DOD's use of human capital flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce to help identify challenges, inconsistencies, or needed improvements in using these tools. DOD concurred with the recommendation.

The Department of Defense (DOD) spends over $300 billion annually  acquiring products and services spanning major weapon systems like the  Joint Strike Fighter, commercially available items including laptop  computers, and support for military bases in the form of maintenance and  food services, among other things. DOD’s acquisition workforce helps  maintain military readiness and maximize DOD’s buying power by  managing and overseeing the contracts at the core of these acquisitions.  This acquisition workforce consists of program managers, contracting  officers, engineers, logisticians, cost estimators, and many others.

Like other federal agencies, DOD faces a number of challenges in hiring,  recruiting, and retaining its civilian employees, including its civilian  acquisition workforce personnel. Personnel provisions in Title 5 of the  U.S. Code (Title 5) have generally governed much of the federal  government’s civil service system, including requirements for hiring,  recruiting, and retaining personnel. These provisions ensure a merit- based civil service, for example, by requiring agencies to publicly post job  opportunities and screen applications against minimum qualification  standards before filling a position. Federal agencies, however, have  raised concerns that they have lost job candidates to the private sector  due to the length of the hiring process. Over the past 10 years, Congress  has enacted various human capital flexibilities in laws that provide DOD  with authority and flexibility to shorten the hiring process.

Section 843 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year  2018 included a provision for us to review DOD’s implementation of hiring  and retention flexibilities for the acquisition workforce, with a focus on its  civilian acquisition workforce. This report: (1) provides information on  DOD’s use of available hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities for its  civilian acquisition workforce personnel from fiscal years 2014 to 2018;  and (2) determines the extent to which DOD has monitored and assessed  its use of these flexibilities.

To examine DOD’s use of available hiring, recruitment, and retention  flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce personnel from fiscal years  2014 to 2018, we reviewed relevant statutes, reports, and DOD policies  and guidance to identify hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities  available. Based on our review, we identified the following hiring  authorities:  competitive examination, which we refer to as “the traditional hiring  method,” and

46 alternatives to the traditional hiring method, which we refer to as  “hiring flexibilities” for the purposes of our review.

We also identified four monetary incentives DOD can use to recruit and  retain civilian acquisition workforce personnel—(1) recruitment bonuses,  (2) retention bonuses, (3) relocation bonuses, and (4) student loan  repayments—which we collectively refer to as “recruitment and retention  flexibilities” for the purposes of our review.

We also analyzed data from the Defense Civilian Personnel Data System  (DCPDS), DOD’s central repository for civilian personnel transactions  data. We obtained DCPDS data on hiring actions from the Office of the  Under Secretary of Defense (USD) for Personnel and Readiness (P&R) –  Defense Manpower Data Center. We obtained DCPDS data on dollars  authorized for recruitment and retention flexibilities from USD (P&R) –  Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service (DCPAS). We electronically  tested these data, reviewed relevant standards and guidance, and interviewed DCPAS and Defense Manpower Data Center officials to  determine that the data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of  reporting the frequency with which DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce  used hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities for fiscal years 2014  through 2018.

To determine the extent to which DOD has monitored and assessed its  use of these flexibilities, we reviewed acquisition workforce human capital  plans from each of the military departments (Air Force, Army, and Navy)  and the USD for Acquisition and Sustainment (A&S) – Office of Human  Capital Initiatives (HCI). We also reviewed DOD’s policies and guidance  for acquisition workforce management and the use of human capital  flexibilities and data and metrics collected by HCI and DCPAS. We  assessed DOD’s efforts against our key practices for effectively managing  human resource flexibilities and federal internal control standards,  including that management should use quality information to achieve the  entity’s objectives. We also reviewed reports by the Advisory Panel on  Streamlining and Codifying Acquisition Regulations—commonly referred  to as the Section 809 Panel after the legislative provision that created it— and interviewed Section 809 Panel commissioners to supplement our  analysis.

For both objectives, we interviewed officials from

HCI, the office responsible for DOD-wide acquisition workforce

DCPAS, the office responsible for developing DOD’s civilian human  resources policies and programs;  the Defense Manpower Data Center, the office responsible for  collecting and maintaining DOD’s civilian personnel data;  the Directors for Acquisition Career Management (DACM) for each  military department and the Fourth Estate, which is responsible for the  30 defense agencies and field activities outside the military  departments;  the Air Force Personnel Center;

Navy’s Office of Civilian Human Resources; and  the command within each military department that had the largest  number of civilian acquisition workforce personnel in fiscal year 2018:  Air Force Materiel Command, Army Combat Capabilities Development  Command, and Naval Sea Systems Command. We also interviewed  officials from the Defense Contract Management Agency, which had  the largest number of civilian acquisition personnel of the other  defense agencies with acquisition workforce personnel. Collectively,  these four organizations comprised about 38 percent of DOD’s civilian  acquisition workforce in fiscal year 2018.

We also interviewed personnel from the Office of Personnel Management  (OPM), which is responsible for developing and promulgating  government-wide human capital policies, and personnel from the Society  for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest human resources  membership group, who were familiar with metrics used by the private  sector to monitor hiring and retention efforts. See appendix III for more  information about our scope and methodology.

We conducted this performance audit from August 2018 to August 2019  in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.  Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain  sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our  findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that  the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and  conclusions based on our audit objectives.

A skilled acquisition workforce is vital to maintaining military readiness,  increasing the department’s buying power, and achieving substantial  long-term savings through activities such as systems engineering and  contract administration. As of September 2018, DOD’s civilian acquisition  workforce was comprised of about 157,000 civilian personnel (see figure  1).

About 60 percent of DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce personnel held  positions in 3 of 14 acquisition career fields: engineering, contracting, and  life cycle logistics (see table 1).

Prior Studies on DOD Acquisition Workforce Challenges

We have previously found that DOD has faced various challenges in  growing and sustaining its acquisition workforce, including challenges  with hiring, recruiting, and retaining personnel. In December 2015, we  found that over the past 20 years, DOD has significantly reduced and  then subsequently increased the size of its acquisition workforce.

During the 1990s, as defense budgets decreased, DOD reduced the  size of its military and civilian acquisition workforce, and by the early  2000s it began relying more heavily on contractors to perform many  acquisition support functions. According to DOD, between 1998 and  2008, the number of military and civilian personnel performing  acquisition activities decreased 14 percent, from about 146,000 to  about 126,000 personnel.

Due to concerns about skill gaps within the workforce and growing  reliance on contractors, the Secretary of Defense announced his  intention in 2009 to rebalance the workforce mix. In 2010, DOD issued  an acquisition workforce plan that specified DOD would add 20,000  military and civilian personnel to its acquisition workforce by fiscal  year 2015. DOD subsequently increased the size of its military and  civilian acquisition workforce by 21 percent between 2008 and 2015 to  about 153,000 personnel, but did not accomplish growth goals set for  certain priority career fields, such as engineering and contracting.  DOD officials stated that the shortfalls were largely the result of high  attrition rates, difficulty hiring qualified personnel, and budget  constraints.

In May 2018, we found that DOD’s Science and Technology Reinvention  Laboratories (defense laboratories), which include acquisition workforce  personnel, experienced challenges with delays with security clearances  and human resource processing of personnel actions, which contributed  to a lengthy hiring process. We also found that the delays made it  difficult for defense laboratories to hire highly qualified candidates.

Similarly, in June 2018, the Section 809 Panel identified DOD’s  cumbersome hiring process as a challenge for shaping its acquisition  workforce. The Section 809 Panel emphasized that these challenges  undermine DOD’s ability to successfully recruit top candidates into the  acquisition workforce.

Most recently, in March 2019, we reported that DOD had not developed  metrics to track progress associated with shaping the future acquisition  workforce, such as workforce targets as a whole or by specific career  fields. For example, we reported that DOD issued an updated  acquisition workforce strategic plan in October 2016 which, among other  things, assessed its current capacity and capability, and identified risks  that DOD needed to manage to meet future needs. In addition, in  September 2017, DOD issued a workforce rationalization plan. However,  neither the October 2016 strategic plan nor the September 2017  workforce rationalization plan established specific size targets. We noted  that without such metrics, DOD would not be able to demonstrate that its  strategic workforce planning efforts and associated initiatives were  successful, despite increasing the size of its acquisition workforce beyond  its earlier target.

Federal Hiring Process and Available Flexibilities

DOD’s challenges with hiring civilian acquisition workforce personnel are  not unique within the federal government. The traditional method of hiring  for the federal government, also known as the competitive examining  process, has been characterized by federal agencies as rigid and lacking  in flexibility. The traditional hiring method generally requires agencies to,  among other things, notify the public that the government will accept job  applications for a position, screen applications against minimum  qualification standards, apply selection priorities such as veterans’  preference, and assess applicants’ relative competencies or knowledge,  skills, and abilities against job-related criteria to identify the most qualified  applicants. In 2008, OPM established a roadmap for the traditional  hiring method, including an 80-day time-to-hire goal (see figure 2).

To address some of the human capital challenges federal agencies face,  statutes have provided hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities that  provide agencies with tools to help manage their workforces. Legislation  has also provided hiring flexibilities exclusively to DOD for specified  purposes, including hiring acquisition workforce personnel.

Hiring flexibilities can help the government fill critical skills gaps or  achieve certain public policy goals, such as employing veterans. As of  September 2018, we identified 46 hiring flexibilities that DOD could use to  hire civilian acquisition workforce personnel, including the following.

DOD Direct Hire Authorities. These authorities help expedite the hiring  process by allowing DOD to hire candidates without regard to certain  provisions in Title 5, such as veterans’ preference and applicant rating  and ranking. According to DOD officials, using direct hire authorities  can reduce the time to hire personnel by nearly half as compared to  the traditional hiring method. We identified 14 DOD direct hire  authorities in effect as of fiscal year 2018 that DOD could use to hire  civilian acquisition workforce personnel. For example, the “expedited  hiring authority for certain defense acquisition workforce positions”  (expedited hiring authority for acquisition positions) permits the  Secretary of Defense to determine that a shortage of candidates or a  critical hiring need exists for certain acquisition workforce positions,  and to recruit and appoint qualified persons directly to those  positions. For the purposes of the expedited hiring authority, in  December 2015, the Secretary of Defense had designated 12 of the  14 acquisition career fields as critical or understaffed, including the  engineering, contracting, and life cycle logistics career fields.

DOD Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project  (AcqDemo) Hiring Authorities. According to HCI officials, about 19  percent of DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce personnel participate  in the AcqDemo performance management system, an alternative to  the General Schedule pay system. Hiring managers under  AcqDemo may use AcqDemo-specific hiring flexibilities, such as direct  hire appointments for the business and technical management  professional career path, in addition to hiring flexibilities available  DOD-wide.

Veterans-Related Hiring Authorities. These authorities allow agencies  to hire certain veterans without regard to certain provisions in Title 5.  For example, agencies may appoint eligible veterans under the  Veterans’ Recruitment Appointment authority without competition  under limited circumstances or otherwise through excepted service  hiring procedures.

Pathways Programs. These programs promote employment  opportunities in the federal government for students and recent  graduates through an exception to the competitive hiring rules for  certain positions in the federal workforce.

Appendix I provides additional information on the hiring flexibilities that  were available to DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce as of September  2018.

Sections of Title 5 outline recruitment and retention flexibilities that  agencies can offer to prospective and current employees to help recruit  and retain highly qualified personnel. Like other federal agencies, DOD  can use these incentives to recruit and retain civilian personnel, including  those in the acquisition workforce.

Recruitment bonuses may be paid to a newly hired federal employee  if the agency determines that the position would be difficult to fill in the  absence of a bonus.

Relocation bonuses may be paid to a current employee who must  relocate for a position in a different geographic area if the agency  determines that the position would be difficult to fill in the absence of a  bonus.

Retention bonuses may be paid to a current employee if the agency  determines that the unusually high or unique qualifications of the  employee or a special need of the agency for the employee’s services  makes it essential to retain the employee who would likely leave  federal service in the absence of such a bonus.

Student loan repayments may be paid on behalf of a job candidate or  a current employee to recruit or retain highly qualified personnel.  The employees must sign a service agreement of at least 3 years with  the agency that pays the loans. Federal agencies may pay up to  $10,000 per employee per calendar year, totaling no more than  $60,000 for any one employee.

DOD can fund the four monetary incentives with the Defense Acquisition  Workforce Development Fund (DAWDF)—a dedicated funding source for  the recruitment, training, and retention of DOD’s acquisition personnel— as well as other sources, such as operations and maintenance  appropriations.

Appendix II provides additional information on the recruitment and  retention flexibilities available to DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce as of  September 2018.

DOD Acquisition Workforce and Civilian Personnel Leaders

Several offices within DOD play key roles in managing how the  department uses hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities for the  civilian acquisition workforce. For example, HCI oversees department- wide acquisition workforce strategic planning; DCPAS develops  implementation guidance on how DOD flexibilities should be used; and  civilian personnel centers track the extent to which flexibilities are used  (see table 2).

DOD Has Increased Its Use of Hiring, Recruitment, and Retention Flexibilities for Its Civilian Acquisition Workforce

From fiscal year 2014 to 2018, DOD increased its use of hiring,  recruitment, and retention flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce.  During this period, DOD used hiring flexibilities for 90 percent of its  approximately 44,000 civilian acquisition workforce hiring actions. This  high usage rate came as USD (A&S), USD (P&R), and the military  departments’ leadership encouraged their hiring managers and human  resource specialists to use the hiring flexibilities to help reduce the length  of the hiring process. Additionally, during this period, DOD’s human  resource specialists issued guidance that helped address confusion about  the requirements governing the hiring authorities. Currently, USD (P&R)  is leading a DOD-wide effort to consolidate direct hire authorities in an  attempt to simplify their application. During this 5-year period, DOD also  increased its use of recruitment and retention flexibilities for the civilian  acquisition workforce, increasing the dollar amount authorized for these  flexibilities from $13.9 million in fiscal year 2014 to $33.7 million in fiscal  year 2018. This increase came as DOD leadership emphasized the  benefits of recruitment and retention flexibilities and oversaw concerted  efforts to increase their usage through the dissemination of information to  human resource specialists.

DOD Used Hiring Flexibilities for Vast Majority of Civilian Acquisition Workforce Hires from Fiscal Years 2014 to 2018

We found that DOD used hiring flexibilities for about 90 percent of DOD’s  approximately 44,000 civilian acquisition workforce hiring actions between  fiscal years 2014 and 2018. Further, DOD increased its use of these  flexibilities, which include direct hire authorities, from 80 percent in fiscal  year 2014 to 95 percent in fiscal year 2018 (see figure 3).

From fiscal year 2014 to 2018, DOD used the expedited hiring authority  for acquisition positions more than any other direct hire authority for its  civilian acquisition workforce. Congress enacted this authority in fiscal  year 2009 and in fiscal year 2010, amended the authority to, among other  things, allow hiring of all qualified applicants instead of only highly  qualified applicants. Additionally, in November 2015, legislation  eliminated the expedited hiring authority’s expiration date and made the  authority permanent. Command officials told us that they used this  authority often because it does not have as many requirements as other  direct hire authorities and because of their familiarity with it. Nine of the  14 DOD direct hire authorities identified were not available for use until  fiscal year 2017 because they were enacted after that year or DOD had  not yet implemented the authority, either through memorandums or  federal register notices (see table 3).

Since 2015, USD (A&S), USD (P&R), and leadership of the military  departments have encouraged the use of hiring flexibilities—particularly  direct hire authorities—over the traditional method.

From July 2015 to November 2017, USD (A&S) and USD (P&R)  convened five joint acquisition and human resource summits to  provide a recurring forum for discussing leading practices in  sustaining the acquisition workforce, including the improved use of  hiring flexibilities.

In October 2016, USD (A&S) issued its current acquisition workforce  strategic plan for DOD and used this document to encourage  implementation of direct hire authorities as appropriate.

In November 2017, senior leadership in the USD (P&R) office issued  a Federal Register Notice that updated and consolidated AcqDemo’s  rules and guidance, including introducing additional AcqDemo hiring  flexibilities (see appendix I, table 8 for additional information on these  flexibilities).

In 2018, the Secretary of the Navy, the Assistant Secretary of the  Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, and the Assistant Secretary  of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs each issued  memorandums to their respective departments stating that the use of  direct hire authorities be considered first in the hiring process, as  appropriate. These memorandums note that direct hire authorities  provide significant advantages in timeliness compared to the  traditional hiring process, and encourage maximum use of direct hire  authorities to the extent appropriate.

In addition to DOD leadership emphasis, command officials credited  DCPAS and the military departments’ civilian personnel centers for taking  actions to help DOD increase its use of direct hire authorities. These  officials explained that confusion among hiring managers and human  resource specialists over the numerous requirements that apply to each  direct hire authority constituted one of the main challenges that had  previously limited DOD’s use of direct hire authorities. To illustrate the  potential for confusion, table 4 presents some of the direct hire authority  requirements a hiring manager would have to consider under two different  hiring authorities.

To help address the confusion stemming from the direct hire authorities’  numerous requirements, in 2017 and 2018, DCPAS and the personnel  centers consolidated information on the available direct hire authorities  and the requirements that govern each of them into concise and  comprehensive guidance documents. As a result, command-level and  personnel center officials told us that human resource specialists can now  quickly find and compare available direct hire authorities to determine  what may work best for their hiring needs.

Factors That Contributed to Limiting the Use of Hiring Flexibilities

We found that the military departments’ use of certain direct hire  authorities was limited by the amount of time it took DOD leadership to  implement some of the authorities. DCPAS officials told us that although  Congress enacts direct hire authorities in legislation, DOD human  resource personnel and hiring managers do not use the authorities until  DOD and the components issue implementing guidance. We found that  DOD implemented the 14 DOD direct hire authorities anywhere from 2 to  42 months after an authority’s enactment (see figure 4).

In May 2018, we reported on the 30-month lapse between the enactment  of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics direct hire  authority for students at the defense laboratories and DOD’s issuance of  corresponding implementation guidance. Defense laboratory officials  told us it took longer than anticipated to publish the federal register notice  that allowed the laboratories to use the hiring authority, and they  attributed the delays to coordination issues among relevant offices during  the approval process. In December 2018, we found that the defense  laboratories hired significantly fewer students than authorized because of  the delays. To address the delays, in May 2018, we recommended that  DOD establish and document time frames for its coordination process to  help ensure the timely implementation of defense laboratory hiring  authorities in the future. DOD concurred with our recommendation and  identified actions the department plans to take to improve oversight and  coordination of the defense laboratories’ hiring efforts.

DOD acquisition workforce and human resource officials told us that they  also did not use certain direct hire authorities as much from fiscal years  2014 to 2018 because the requirements associated with them made them  harder to use. For example, according to DOD guidance documents we  reviewed, most of the DOD direct hire authorities applicable to the civilian  acquisition workforce have expiration dates or limits on the number of  hires. Table 5 provides examples of requirements governing direct hire  authorities that officials identified as making the authorities more difficult  to use.

Going forward, HCI and DCPAS officials told us that USD (P&R) is  leading a DOD-wide effort to advise Congress on which direct hire  authorities could be consolidated and which requirements could be  eliminated. For example, HCI officials said that USD (P&R) recently  provided Congress input on consolidating four cybersecurity-related  authorities into one authority. DCPAS officials also told us they previously  provided input to Congress on certain challenges hiring managers  experienced in using some of the direct hire authorities. According to  command officials, DCPAS recommended that Congress raise the limits  on the number of personnel that could be hired under the defense  laboratory direct hire authorities.

DOD Increased Its Use of Recruitment and Retention Flexibilities from Fiscal Years 2014 to 2018

We found that DOD increased its use of recruitment and retention  flexibilities from fiscal year 2014 to fiscal year 2018. We also examined  two other issues related to recruitment and retention—post-employment  restrictions on military personnel and authorities to remove civilian  acquisition workforce employees for unacceptable performance. DOD  officials did not identify either issue as a major challenge for managing  the civilian acquisition workforce.

We found that DOD increased its use of recruitment bonuses, relocation  bonuses, retention bonuses, and student loan repayments from $13.9  million in fiscal year 2014 to $33.7 million in fiscal year 2018 (see figure  5).

As part of the increased total amount of funds authorized for recruitment  and retention flexibilities, DOD had increased the number of awarded  recruitment and retention flexibilities by approximately 140 percent  between fiscal years 2014 to 2018 (see table 6).

DOD leadership has emphasized the benefits of recruitment and retention  flexibilities, which helped increase their use. For example, in DOD’s  October 2016 acquisition workforce strategic plan, USD (A&S) stated that  the acquisition workforce would increase the use of these flexibilities by  leveraging DAWDF. Additionally, in November 2016, USD (A&S) and  USD (P&R) held a joint acquisition and human resource summit, which  highlighted efforts of an integrated product team established to expand  the use recruitment and retention flexibilities. For example, the integrated  product team developed a fact sheet to answer frequently asked  questions about incentives from human resource specialists and hiring  managers within the military departments.

Officials from the commands and DACMs generally agreed that  recruitment and retention flexibilities were useful tools in helping them  recruit and retain acquisition workforce talent. To receive these monetary  incentives, employees must enter into written service agreements to  remain with the department for a specific period.

DACM and defense agency officials, however, noted that retention  bonuses were the least effective of the monetary recruitment and  retention flexibilities. For example, Defense Contract Management  Agency and Air Force officials told us they do not use retention bonuses  as widely because they do not view them as effective tools in retaining  talent. Defense Contract Management Agency officials explained that  most of the personnel who leave their agency for other jobs go to other  DOD organizations or federal agencies, and retention bonuses are  generally used only for employees who are likely to leave federal service.  The Air Force DACM’s representatives told us the Air Force decreased its  use of DAWDF for retention bonuses as a result of a 2016 RAND  Corporation study that found that private sector companies made minimal  use of retention bonuses. According to this study, none of the 21  companies in RAND’s sample—among Fortune’s “100 best companies to  work for”—identified retention bonuses as a primary tool to retain talent.  Lastly, command and personnel center officials we interviewed also noted  that a number of factors outside of monetary recruitment and retention  flexibilities influence an employee’s decision to join or remain with DOD.  These factors include the organization’s mission and work-life programs  and policies.

DOD military personnel are subject to certain post-employment  restrictions that could potentially dissuade them from seeking further  employment with the department as civilian personnel, but DACM and  command officials told us these restrictions have not significantly affected  their ability to recruit new hires. For example, the “180-day rule” prevents  DOD from appointing retired military personnel to civil service positions  within 180 days of the military person’s retirement unless the  appointment, which must be in the competitive service, is authorized by  the Secretary of Defense or a designee, OPM approves the appointment,  and the minimum rate of basic pay has been increased. DACM and  command officials noted that retired military personnel could elect to work  for private sector companies during the 180-day period. However, these  officials did not cite post-employment restrictions as a major recruitment  challenge for the civilian acquisition workforce and instead cited other  challenges, such as limited resources dedicated to recruiting civilian  personnel and hiring delays due to the security clearance process.

DOD does not have specific statutory authority in Title 10, U.S. Code for  removing civilian acquisition workforce personnel for unacceptable  performance. However, DOD’s civilian employees are subject to a  longer probationary period than other civilian federal employees, and  DACM and command officials told us that removing underperforming staff  is easier during a probationary period than when staff are permanently  employed. Officials also noted that staff tend to leave on their own  accord if they are not performing well within the department.

DOD Does Not Regularly Monitor Hiring, Recruitment, and Retention Flexibilities or Assess Their Effectiveness

DOD does not regularly monitor its use of hiring, recruitment, and  retention flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce, and despite  ongoing efforts, is not yet able to systematically assess the effectiveness  of these flexibilities. HCI, the office responsible for DOD-wide acquisition  workforce strategic planning, regularly monitors the overall health of the  acquisition workforce, in part by reviewing and reporting statistics on  workforce size, workforce gains and losses, and other workforce-related  metrics on a quarterly basis. Further, as previously noted, DOD has  increased its overall use of human capital flexibilities. However, HCI does  not regularly monitor the military departments and defense components’  specific use of hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities. As a result,  HCI is missing opportunities to identify variations in usage rates, and use  that information to determine whether there are specific issues or  challenges being encountered. For example, we found that the Air Force  and Navy used direct hire authorities twice as often as the Army in fiscal  year 2018. Further, while DOD leadership has emphasized that using  hiring flexibilities improves DOD’s ability to recruit and hire high-quality  talent in a timely manner, HCI is not yet able to assess how effective the  hiring flexibilities have been in achieving these goals. This is because  DCPAS has not yet developed a plan to consistently measure how long it  takes to hire new personnel across the department. Similarly, DCPAS has  not yet established metrics to assess the quality of the new personnel  DOD hires. DCPAS has efforts underway to address these issues and  plans to start using these metrics in 2019.

HCI Does Not Regularly Monitor Usage of Hiring Flexibilities

DOD policy states HCI should implement strategies and policies to help  attract and retain acquisition workforce personnel. To this end, HCI  officials told us they monitor the overall health of the acquisition workforce  in various ways, including outreach to the DACMs on workforce  challenges, as well as holding knowledge-sharing events, such as a May  2018 acquisition workforce human capital symposium. Additionally, HCI  reviews and reports statistics on workforce size, workforce gains and  losses, and other workforce-related metrics on a quarterly basis. For  example, in its fiscal year 2019 first quarter assessment, HCI reported  data on the current size of the acquisition workforce; acquisition  workforce education and certification levels; and workforce gains, losses,  retirement eligibility and attrition rates, among other things, both on a  DOD-wide basis as well as by acquisition career field. HCI officials told us  they use these data to identify potential or emerging workforce  challenges. HCI officials noted that if they identify any issues, they further  analyze data to identify the root cause of the issues.

HCI officials acknowledged, however, that HCI does not regularly collect  or review data on the defense components’ specific use of hiring,  recruitment, and retention flexibilities as part of its quarterly assessments.  HCI officials stated that they collect and review hiring flexibilities data on  an as-needed basis, such as in preparation for DOD acquisition workforce  governance forums, including senior steering board and workforce  management group meetings, in which the use of the flexibilities will be  on the agenda, or in response to Congressional requests. HCI officials  also noted that because the use of hiring, recruitment, and retention  flexibilities are made at the command level within the military  departments, the military departments are better positioned to regularly  monitor usage. However, the military departments are not in a position to  identify variations in usage rates across DOD’s civilian acquisition  workforce, which are significant. For example, we found that the Air Force  and the Navy used direct hire authorities for 85 percent and 84 percent of  their respective hiring actions in fiscal year 2018, while the Army used  direct hire authorities for 42 percent of its hiring actions that year.

Similarly, some career fields use the hiring flexibilities at higher rates than  others. While hiring flexibilities comprised 95 percent of total civilian  acquisition workforce hiring actions in fiscal year 2018, the auditing and  purchasing career fields used hiring flexibilities for only 68 percent and 62  percent of their respective hiring actions that year. Without regularly  monitoring usage rates for hiring flexibilities across the civilian acquisition  workforce, HCI lacks visibility into these types of variations and  opportunities to investigate and address them, as appropriate.

Lastly, HCI focuses its efforts on those recruitment and retention  flexibilities funded by DAWDF because HCI is responsible for DAWDF’s  management. Based on DAWDF reports and DCPDS data, we found that  the amount of dollars obligated for DAWDF-funded recruitment, retention,  and recognition initiatives in 2017 was $15 million or about two-thirds of  the total dollars authorized for the recruitment and retention flexibilities for  DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce in fiscal year 2017. The remaining  amount (about one-third) was funded by other sources, such as the  military departments’ operations and maintenance appropriations, but is  not included as part of HCI’s annual review.

Since 2002, we have repeatedly found that agencies should strategically  manage their use of human capital flexibilities—including hiring,  recruitment, and retention flexibilities—to address human capital  challenges. Additionally, federal internal control standards state that an  agency’s management should obtain relevant data on a timely basis to  effectively monitor activities to achieve objectives. Based on these  standards, in May 2018, we recommended that DOD’s defense  laboratories routinely monitor data on its use of hiring authorities. DOD  concurred with our recommendation and planned to determine the  appropriate data to be collected and establish routine reporting  requirements. Because HCI is not regularly reviewing hiring flexibility  usage, it may be similarly missing opportunities to help identify  challenges, inconsistencies, or needed improvements in using the  flexibilities.

DOD Cannot Yet Accurately Report on How Long It Takes to Hire New Personnel or the Quality of New Hires

DOD leaders have repeatedly emphasized that hiring flexibilities— particularly direct hire authorities—can help the department hire high- quality talent in a more timely manner. We have previously found that  time-to-hire and quality-of-hire are useful metrics that help agencies  evaluate their hiring efforts, which can include the use of hiring  flexibilities. To this end, DCPAS collects and reports time-to-hire data to  measure DOD’s progress in improving hiring practices. For example,  according to DCPAS, from fiscal year 2016 through 2018, DOD took an  average of 127 days to hire civilian personnel under the traditional hiring  method compared to an average of 110 days when using DOD direct hire  authorities. DCPAS also noted variations in time-to-hire across the  direct hire authorities, reporting that DOD took anywhere from 77 to 111  days to hire civilian personnel using the 14 DOD direct hire authorities  applicable to the civilian acquisition workforce. For the expedited hiring  authority for acquisition positions—the direct hire authority used most  frequently to hire civilian acquisition workforce personnel—DCPAS  reported an average time-to-hire of 106 days from fiscal year 2016  through 2018.

While these time-to-hire metrics could be helpful in determining which  direct hire authorities most effectively expedite the hiring process, HCI  officials told us they do not use these metrics to inform management  decisions for the civilian acquisition workforce because they are not yet  consistently measured. DCPAS officials explained that the military  departments and their major commands developed their own approaches  for inputting and reporting time-to-hire data based on their individual  needs and data systems. HCI and DCPAS officials acknowledged that  this resulted in different ways to record and track the data, which in turn  prevented meaningful comparisons between the time-to-hire metrics  produced by each of the components.

According to HCI and DCPAS officials, this difference, in part, is  attributable to the variation in how DOD personnel input certain data. For  example, one human resource specialist may initiate a request for a  personnel action—which is generally the starting date for time-to-hire  metrics—on the day the hiring manager submits a job description, while  another human resource specialist may initiate a request for personnel  action after the job announcement has been posted publicly. Moreover,  our analysis of DCPAS data for all DOD civilian personnel hires from  fiscal year 2014 to 2018 shows that about 36,000 of 420,000 personnel  actions, or about 9 percent, were initiated on or after the individuals’ start  dates, producing a zero or negative time-to-hire figure. DCPAS officials  told us they omit these figures when they report time-to-hire metrics. Until  time-to-hire metrics are consistently measured DOD-wide, HCI will not be  able to use this data to assess which direct hire authorities have most  effectively expedited the hiring process, which DOD components have  been the most successful in using these authorities, or identify potential  issues in using these authorities.

In September 2018, to address inconsistent time-to-hire methodologies  across DOD, we recommended that the DOD Chief Management Officer  require that all DOD human resource providers adopt consistent time-to- hire measures. DOD concurred with our recommendation, and in June  2019, DCPAS officials told us they were in the process of developing a  plan to implement consistent time-to-hire metrics across the department.  DCPAS officials anticipate completing the plan by July 2019 and will start  implementation after DOD leadership approves this plan. HCI officials told  us that they plan to use the time-to-hire metrics to assess the civilian  acquisition workforce’s hiring efforts, including the use of flexibilities,  when the metrics are comparable.

Similarly, HCI officials told us that they cannot systematically assess  quality-of-hire across the civilian acquisition workforce because DCPAS  has not developed guidance that outlines how quality-of-hire should be  measured. DOD’s June 2018 civilian human capital operating plan  outlines an initiative to improve the quality of civilian hires, among other  things. As part of this initiative, DCPAS is to establish quality-of-hire  metrics using data collected from an OPM hiring satisfaction survey tool.  Using the OPM survey, DOD’s hiring managers are to rate the  performance of new employees 6 months after they are hired. DCPAS  officials stated that various DOD components have used the survey since  2011, but acknowledged hiring managers completed the survey for only 1  percent of all DOD hires in fiscal year 2018. In March 2019, USD (P&R)  leadership issued a memorandum to DOD human capital offices  encouraging wider implementation of the survey, including outlining roles  and responsibilities and milestones for implementation. Starting in fiscal  year 2020, USD (P&R) plans to set quality-of-hire goals using the fiscal  year 2019 survey results and incorporating these into future civilian  human capital operating plans. HCI officials told us that they plan to use  the quality-of-hire metrics to evaluate the civilian acquisition workforce’s  hiring efforts, including the use of flexibilities, once DCPAS completes its  efforts.

Congress has provided DOD with a number of hiring, recruitment, and  retention flexibilities to help the department manage its acquisition  workforce. DOD leadership has encouraged the use of these flexibilities  across the department in recent years, and usage has increased  significantly since 2014. However, HCI does not regularly monitor  defense components’ use of hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities  for their civilian acquisition workforce to identify challenges,  inconsistencies, or needed improvements in using these tools. As a  result, HCI may be missing opportunities to develop strategies or inform  efforts aimed at improving the usage of these flexibilities.

The Secretary of Defense should ensure that the Director of Human  Capital Initiatives regularly monitors usage of hiring, recruitment, and  retention flexibilities for the civilian acquisition workforce—across the  military departments and acquisition career fields—to help develop  strategies or inform efforts aimed at improving the usage of these  flexibilities. (Recommendation 1)

We provided a draft of this report to DOD for review and comment. DOD  provided written comments, which are reprinted in appendix VII, and  concurred with our recommendation. In concurring with our  recommendation, DOD stated it would provide guidance to DOD  components to monitor usage of flexibilities and provide the results to HCI  at least annually.

We are sending copies of this report to the appropriate congressional  committees; the Secretary of Defense; the Secretaries of the Army, the  Air Force, and the Navy; the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition  and Sustainment; the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and  Readiness; the Director of the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory  Service, and the Director of Human Capital Initiatives. In addition, the  report is available at no charge on the GAO website at  http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact  me at (202) 512-4841 or dinapolit@gao.gov. Contact points for our  Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on  the last page of this report. GAO staff who made key contributions to this  report are listed in appendix VIII.

Appendix I: Key Hiring Flexibilities Available to the Department of Defense’s Civilian Acquisition Workforce

Sections of Title 5 of the U.S. Code include, among other things,  requirements that agencies must follow to hire personnel, such as those  associated with the competitive examining hiring authority. Competitive  examining has been the traditional method of hiring for the federal  government since 1978. The traditional hiring method requires agencies  to notify the public that the government will accept applications for a job;  screen applications against minimum qualification standards; apply  selection priorities such as veterans’ preference, where applicable; and  assess applicants’ relative competencies or knowledge, skills, and  abilities against job-related criteria to identify the most qualified  applicants.

Hiring flexibilities were established beyond the traditional hiring method to  expedite the hiring process and achieve certain public policy goals. We  identified 46 hiring flexibilities available to the Department of Defense’s  (DOD) civilian acquisition workforce as of September 2018—3 specific to  the DOD acquisition workforce; 6 specific to DOD’s Civilian Acquisition  Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project; 20 available DOD-wide,  including its acquisition workforce; and 17 available government-wide.  Further, of the 46 hiring flexibilities, 14 are DOD direct hire authorities  provided in statute that we have identified as being directly applicable to  the DOD civilian acquisition workforce—3 of which are specific to the  DOD acquisition workforce and 11 of which are available DOD-wide.  Tables 7 through 10 provide additional information on each of the 46  hiring flexibilities and denote the 14 DOD direct hire authorities and their  legal authorities.

Appendix II: Key Recruitment and Retention Flexibilities Available to the Department of Defense’s Civilian Acquisition Workforce

Recruitment and retention flexibilities assist federal agencies in attracting  and retaining employees who possess unusually high or unique  qualifications, or who fill essential needs for the agencies. Additionally,  they allow agencies more control over compensation and are intended to  help government compete with the private sector. We identified nine  recruitment and retention flexibilities available to the Department of  Defense’s (DOD) civilian acquisition workforce as of fiscal year 2018— four monetary incentives and five work-life balance policies and programs  (see tables 11 and 12).

Appendix III: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Section 843 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year  2018 included a provision for us to review and report on the effectiveness  of hiring and retention flexibilities for the Department of Defense’s (DOD)  acquisition workforce, with a focus on its civilian acquisition workforce,  including  (a) the extent to which DOD experiences challenges with recruitment  and retention of the acquisition workforce, such as post-employment  restrictions;  (b)  a description of the hiring and retention flexibilities available to DOD  to fill civilian acquisition positions and the extent to which DOD has  used the flexibilities available to it to target critical or understaffed  career fields;  (c) the extent to which DOD has the necessary data and metrics on its  use of hiring and retention flexibilities for the civilian acquisition  workforce to strategically manage the use of such flexibilities;  (d)  an identification of the factors that affect the use of hiring and  retention flexibilities for the civilian acquisition workforce;  (e) recommendations for any necessary changes to the hiring and  retention flexibilities available to DOD to fill civilian acquisition  positions; and  (f) a description of the flexibilities available to DOD to remove  underperforming members of the acquisition workforce and the  extent to which any such flexibilities are used.

This report: (1) provides information on DOD’s use of available hiring,  recruitment, and retention flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce  personnel from fiscal years 2014 to 2018; and (2) determines the extent  to which DOD has monitored and assessed its use of hiring, recruitment,  and retention flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce. In doing so,  the report addresses elements (a) through (f) identified above.

To examine DOD’s use of available hiring, recruitment, and retention  flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce personnel from fiscal years  2014 to 2018, we reviewed relevant statutes, reports, and DOD policies  and guidance to identify hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities  available to DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce. Based on our review, we  identified the following hiring authorities:  competitive examination, which we refer to as “the traditional hiring  method,” and

46 alternatives to the traditional hiring method, which we refer to as  “hiring flexibilities” for the purposes of our review.

Appendix I provides additional information on these 46 hiring flexibilities.

We also identified four monetary incentives and five work-life balance  programs that DOD can use to recruit and retain civilian acquisition  workforce personnel. We scoped our analysis to the four monetary  incentives DOD can use to recruit and retain civilian acquisition workforce  personnel—(1) recruitment bonuses, (2) retention bonuses, (3) relocation  bonuses, and (4) student loan repayments—and collectively refer to these  four incentives as “recruitment and retention flexibilities” for the purposes  of our review. We focused our review on the four government-wide  monetary flexibilities with personnel data in the Defense Civilian  Personnel Data System (DCPDS), DOD’s central repository for civilian  personnel transactions data, and required for submission to the Defense  Manpower Data Center. Appendix II provides additional information on  these four recruitment and retention flexibilities.

We also analyzed personnel data from DCPDS. We obtained DCPDS  data on hiring actions from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense  (USD) for Personnel and Readiness (P&R) – Defense Manpower Data  Center. We obtained DCPDS data on dollars authorized for recruitment  and retention flexibilities from USD (P&R) – Defense Civilian Personnel  Advisory Service (DCPAS). We also obtained acquisition workforce data  for fiscal years 2014 through 2018 from DOD’s DataMart, a central  repository of acquisition workforce data, from the Defense Manpower  Data Center. We analyzed the DataMart data to determine which DOD  civilian personnel were in DOD’s acquisition workforce at the end of each  fiscal year, the military department or organization in which these  personnel worked, and the career fields in which these personnel held  positions.

For our analysis of hiring flexibilities, we included all hiring actions for the  DOD civilian acquisition workforce with effective dates from fiscal year  2014 through 2018, except for actions with legal authority codes  designated as transfers. We did not include hiring actions designated as  transfers because they include hiring actions between military  departments as well as transfers from outside of DOD. We excluded all of  these transfer hiring actions because the data did not include enough  information for us to distinguish between internal and external transfers.  We identified 44,291 hiring actions for this 5-year period, and used the  legal authority code data fields for each hiring action to determine the  type of hiring authority or flexibility that DOD used. We analyzed DOD’s  usage of hiring flexibilities from fiscal years 2014 through 2018 across  each of DOD’s 14 acquisition career fields and the military departments.

Of the hiring flexibilities, we focused our analysis on DOD direct hire  authorities because they comprised the single largest category of hiring  authorities used by the DOD civilian acquisition workforce for hiring  actions from fiscal year 2014 through 2018—26,385 of 44,291 DOD hiring  actions or 60 percent. DCPDS, however, did not include enough  information for us to determine which specific direct hire authority DOD  used for each hiring action. For these actions, the human resource  specialists manually entered the details of the specific type of DOD direct  hire authority they used in DCPDS. To determine the type of DOD direct  hire authority used, two analysts independently reviewed each description  and identified the appropriate DOD direct hire authority. For 360 of the  26,385 the hiring actions (or 1.4 percent), the descriptions did not contain  enough information for us to determine the specific DOD direct hire  authority used.

For the purposes of our analysis, we established three categories of  hiring actions based on the DOD’s designations in DCPDS (see table 13).

For our analysis of recruitment and retention flexibilities, we included all  actions authorizing recruitment bonuses, retention bonuses, relocation  bonuses, and student loan repayments for the DOD civilian acquisition  workforce from fiscal year 2014 through 2018. We identified 13,643  authorization actions. We used the award amount data field for each  authorization action to determine the amount of dollars authorized for  these four types of incentives. We analyzed DOD’s usage of the  recruitment and retention flexibilities from fiscal years 2014 through 2018  across each of DOD’s 14 acquisition career fields.

We assessed data reliability by electronically testing these data,  reviewing relevant data standards and guidance, and interviewing  DCPAS and Defense Manpower Data Center officials. We determined  that the data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of reporting the  frequency with which DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce used hiring,  recruitment, and retention flexibilities for fiscal years 2014 through 2018.

We also identified factors that affected DOD’s use of hiring, recruitment,  and retention flexibilities for its civilian acquisition workforce by reviewing  DCPAS and military departments’ policies and guidance for using human  capital flexibilities, including implementation of 14 DOD direct hire  authorities provided in statute, and efforts by DCPAS to improve DOD’s  use of the flexibilities.

To determine the extent to which DOD has monitored and assessed its  use of hiring, recruitment, and retention flexibilities for its civilian  acquisition workforce, we reviewed acquisition workforce human capital  plans from the Office of Human Capital Initiatives (HCI) within USD for  Acquisition and Sustainment (A&S); acquisition workforce plans from the  Air Force, the Army, and the Navy; and data and metrics collected by HCI  and DOD’s four Directors for Acquisition Career Management (DACM)— one for each of the military departments and a fourth for the defense  agencies and field activities outside the military departments. We  assessed DOD’s efforts against our key practices for effectively managing  human resource flexibilities and federal internal control standards,  including that management should use quality information to achieve the  entity’s objectives. We also reviewed reports by the Advisory Panel on  Streamlining and Codifying Acquisition Regulations—commonly referred  to as the Section 809 Panel after the legislative provision that required the  Secretary of Defense to establish an advisory panel on streamlining  acquisition regulations—and interviewed Section 809 Panel  commissioners to supplement our analysis.

For both objectives, we interviewed officials from

HCI, the office responsible for DOD-wide acquisition workforce

We also interviewed personnel from the Office of Personnel Management  (OPM), which is responsible for developing and promulgating  government-wide human capital policies; and personnel from the Society  for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest human resources  membership group, who were familiar with metrics used by the private  sector to monitor hiring and retention efforts.

Appendix IV: The Department of Defense’s Usage of Hiring Flexibilities for the Acquisition Workforce by Career Field

Section 843 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year  2018 included, among other things, a provision for us to review the extent  to which the Department of Defense (DOD) has used hiring flexibilities  available to it to target critical or understaffed career fields. In its  December 2015 memo on using the expedited hiring authority for certain  defense acquisition workforce positions, DOD designated 12 of the 14  acquisition workforce career fields as shortage or critical needs  categories. We identified 44,291 DOD hiring actions from fiscal year  2014 to 2018 for the civilian acquisition workforce, and categorized them  as (1) traditional hiring method actions, (2) actions using DOD direct hire  authorities, or (3) other hiring flexibilities (see appendix I for additional  information on these hiring flexibilities, including DOD direct hire  authorities). We further categorized the hiring actions by DOD’s 14  acquisition workforce career fields and ordered the career fields by total  number of hiring actions in fiscal year 2018. Figures 6, 7, 8, and 9 provide  data on the use of hiring flexibilities for each of the 14 acquisition  workforce career fields.

Appendix V: The Department of Defense’s Usage of Hiring Flexibilities for the Acquisition Workforce by Military Department

We identified 44,291 Department of Defense (DOD) hiring actions from  fiscal year 2014 to 2018 for the civilian acquisition workforce, and  categorized them as (1) traditional hiring method actions, (2) actions  using DOD direct hire authorities, or (3) other hiring flexibilities (see  appendix I for additional information on these hiring flexibilities, including  DOD direct hire authorities). We further categorized the hiring actions by  military departments and defense agencies. Figure 10 provides data on  the use of hiring flexibilities for each of the military departments and the  Fourth Estate, which is responsible for the 30 defense agencies and field  activities outside the military departments.

Appendix VI: The Department of Defense’s Usage of Recruitment and Retention Flexibilities for the Acquisition Workforce

Section 843 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year  2018 included, among other things, a provision for us to review the extent  to which the Department of Defense (DOD) has used retention flexibilities  available to it to target critical or understaffed career fields. In its  December 2015 memo on using the expedited hiring authority for certain  defense acquisition workforce positions, DOD designated 12 of the 14  acquisition workforce career fields as shortage or critical needs  categories. We identified $123.9 million authorized in recruitment and  retention flexibilities for DOD’s civilian acquisition workforce from fiscal  year 2014 to 2018, and categorized them as (1) recruitment bonuses, (2)  relocation bonuses, (3) retention bonuses, and (4) student loan  repayments (see appendix II for additional information on these  recruitment and retention flexibilities). We further categorized the  recruitment and retention flexibilities by DOD’s 14 acquisition workforce  career fields and ordered the career fields by total dollars authorized by  DOD. See figures 11 through 14 below.

Appendix VII: Comments from the Department of Defense

Appendix VIII: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the contact named above, Nathan Tranquilli (Assistant  Director), Claire Li (Analyst-in-Charge), TyAnn Lee, and Ashley Rawson  made key contributions to this report. Lorraine Ettaro, Christopher  Falcone, Lori Fields, Cynthia Grant, Laura Greifner, and Sylvia Schatz  also contributed to this report.

DOD uses human capital flexibilities—including exceptions to the traditional federal hiring process—to hire and retain many of its personnel. For example, these flexibilities might allow DOD to more quickly hire a veteran, or pay a bonus to retain an employee with specialized skills.

We found that DOD has increasingly used these flexibilities over the past 5 years to hire and retain personnel in its civilian acquisition workforce (which manages contracts worth billions of dollars).

We recommended DOD regularly monitor how it uses these flexibilities for its acquisition workforce, which could help identify challenges and needed improvements.