The number of civilian personnel experts in the federal government has decreased by about 8,900 employees over the last four years, according to a new General Accounting Office report.
The GAO report, "Management Reform: Agencies' Initial Efforts to Restructure Personnel Operations," focuses on personnel office restructuring efforts at the Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Interior and Veterans Affairs. All four departments took different approaches to streamlining personnel operations and were in the early stages of implementing restructuring plans, the report found.
In 1993, the National Performance Review, now called the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, recommended that agencies reduce by half the costs related to central management control positions such as personnel specialists by 1999. To achieve the NPR's goals, the Office of Management and Budget required agencies to prepare streamlining plans detailing how they planned to reduce the targeted positions.
The reduction in the number of personnelists at the four departments ranged from 14 percent to 41 percent between 1993 and 1997. During the four years, USDA cut its personnel staff from 2,463 to 2,035, a decrease of about 17 percent. HHS lost 320 employees, or about 14 percent. Interior reduced its personnel staff by 41 percent, dropping from 1,787 employees to 1,062 employees. VA went 2,880 personnelists to 2,387 employees, a 17 percent decrease.
Despite the reductions, GAO found that each department's personnel servicing ratio, a comparison of the number of employees served to the number of personnelists serving them, did not change substantially. As of September 1997, the ratio ranged from 103:1 at VA to 47:1 at HHS.
As part of the restructuring process, the departments planned to reduce paperwork and workload for personnel staff by using new technology. The automation process was supposed to have been in place before staff reductions were made, but that did not occur at the departments, GAO found.
"Converting to the new systems has taken much longer than expected," GAO said. "A number of factors contributed to these milestone delays, such as the need for greater system testing than was initially expected."
Department officials said other agencies could facilitate the conversion process by purchasing commercially available software rather than building new personnel information and payroll systems in-house.
GAO's study also found that the four departments had "only limited measures" in place to assess the performance of personnel offices and operations, but were developing further measures.
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