Strategic human capital management is a pervasive challenge facing the
federal government. In January 2001, and again in January 2003, we
identified strategic human capital management as a governmentwide high-
risk area after finding that the lack of attention to strategic human
capital planning had created a risk to the federal government's ability
to serve the American people effectively.[Footnote 3] As our previous
reports have made clear, the widespread lack of attention to strategic
human capital management in the past has created a fundamental weakness
in the federal government's ability to perform its missions
economically, efficiently, and effectively.[Footnote 4] In the wake of
extensive downsizing during the early 1990s, done largely without
sufficient consideration of the strategic consequences, agencies are
experiencing significant challenges to deploying the right skills, in
the right places, at the right time. Agencies are also facing a growing
number of employees who are eligible for retirement and are finding it
difficult to fill certain mission-critical jobs, a situation that could
significantly drain agencies' institutional knowledge. Other factors
such as emerging security threats, rapidly evolving technology, and
dramatic shifts in the age and composition of the overall population
exacerbate the problem. Such factors increase the need for agencies to
engage in strategic workforce planning to transform their workforces so
that they will be effective in the 21stcentury.