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The
Department of the Navy's current human resources system is
inadequate to meet future mission goals, and if its inadequacies
are not addressed, "the Navy can expect further degradation
of its capability to perform needed tasks and to ensure continuation
of its military superiority."
So finds a panel
of the National Academy of Public Administration in a new
report for the Department of the Navy on its civilian personnel
system.
Civilian Workforce
2020: Strategies for Modernizing Human Resources Management
in the Department of the Navy outlines what actions the Navy
should take in order to attract and retain a quality civilian
workforce capable of providing the human capital needed for
the Navy to achieve mission excellence in the year 2020.
The panel, chaired
by Academy Fellow James Colvard, also set out to analyze the
current status of civil service management practices and to
identify government and private sector trends. The panel's
work is part of a larger task force, directed by Sean O'Keefe,
former Secretary of the Navy, who is responsible for conducting
an overall review of military and civilian personnel systems.
According to Colvard,
"The Navy, as a high-tech organization, faces daunting
challenges in developing and managing both its military and
civilian workforce. The bold and far-reaching recommendations
of this report will help the Navy meet the civilian workforce
challenges."
Over the past several
decades, the Navy has moved to an increasingly interdependent
team of federal civilian, private contractor, and military
personnel for accomplishing its mission. The Navy's civilian
workforce has been reduced from nearly 350,000 in 1989 to
190,000 in 1999, marking about a 44-percent reduction. Furthermore,
over the past decade the composition of the workforce has
become more professional and administrative in nature and
less blue collar and clerical. Currently, there is a shift
toward greater use of knowledge workers at a time when the
market for such highly skilled employees is increasingly tight.
According to the report, the technical complexity of the Navy's
work will increase with time, and "the need for educated
talent-particularly scientific, engineering, and information
technology personnel-will increase with that complexity."
A big part of achieving
the Navy's mission goals is developing, acquiring, and utilizing
high-tech military equipment. The two main providers of expertise
in this area are civilians and contrac-tors, with the greater
trend toward using contractors. However, it is still important
for the Navy to maintain a "critical mass" of civilian
workers in order to protect the government's interests and
to oversee contractors' work.
As part of their
extensive research for this report, the Academy panel conducted
interviews with military leaders, federal agencies, and congressional
offices in order to obtain expert opinion about current and
future Navy human resources issues and solutions. Among their
findings were that there is no consensus about the future
role of Navy civilian employees, that the civilian workforce
will be smaller than it is today, and that the human resources
system needs significant improvement.
One criticism of
the human resources system is that it lacks the flexibility
needed to allow the Navy to make adjustments to meet mission
objectives. Keeping in mind that one of the Navy's top priorities
and concerns looking forward is being able to attract top
talent, the Academy panel views the current human resources
system as a significant barrier. According to the report,
"It is not a great leap of logic to predict that organizations
with people-management systems that are controlled by over
2,000 pages of law and regulation, with literally years required
to make change, will not be among the winners in the war for
talent."
The panel also conducted
human resources colloquia, one each with private industry,
academia, and government. These efforts uncovered similar
sentiments, including that human resources policies should
be flexible to allow managers to adapt their processes and
practices to the reality of their mission situation and that
the war for talent requires increased pay flexibility. Among
the other points stressed in the colloquia was that the Navy
needs to market itself as a desirable place to work based
on exciting assignments and a positive work environment.
The panel offers
several recommendations to correct these and other perceived
shortcomings in the Navy's civilian personnel system. Among
the major recommendations are:
· to design
a total force strategic planning and management system for
the present and future and not maintain a "human resources
system designed for the past"
· to create a new human resources management system
to provide the greater flexibility and agility needed to respond
to new requirements; in other words, a system that contains
"the necessary flexibility to ensure national defense"
· to install a modern Human Resources Information System
that would help to "attract and process applicants, to
deliver information and services to management and employees,
and to quickly store and process the many decisions involved
in managing, developing, and deploying a productive workforce"
· to implement new human resources strategies to acquire
and retain talent; e.g., competitive pay and a "first-class
recruiting system"
According to the
report, within the Navy's current work culture, civilian employees
are not treated with equal respect, thus detracting from teamwork
and mission needs. In this increasingly high-tech world, civilian
employees, many of whom are knowledge workers, will play a
critical role in ensuring that the Navy has both the manpower
and technology to maintain the upper hand against adversaries.
This report is designed to help the Navy keep that advantage.
The National Academy
of Public Administration is a nonpartisan, independent organization
chartered by Congress to improve government at all levels-federal,
state, and local. Its primary activities involve providing
practical assistance on public management to Congress and
the Executive branches. Academy Fellows include more than
450 distinguished practitioners, scholars, civic leaders,
and other experts in public administration.
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