According to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, a shortage of IT professionals in the face of growing need for a talented cyber workforce is one of the federal government’s most important challenges.
But a dashboard created by the Office of Personnel Management to help federal agencies make workforce planning decisions isn’t used, even by the OPM itself. According to the report, five of the six agencies the GAO looked at don’t use the dashboard and all six of the agencies reported issues with the dashboard’s functionality and usefulness.
“The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) launched its Cyber Workforce Dashboard in 2023 as a government-wide application for managing the cybersecurity workforce. The intended purpose of the Dashboard was to provide a comprehensive government-wide view of federal cyber workforce data and to allow agencies to benchmark their workforce data against other agencies,” the report said. “However, five of six selected agencies and OPM, the administrator of the Dashboard, reported they were not using the Dashboard. The General Services Administration was the one agency using it, primarily for workforce planning. All six selected agencies reported limitations with the Dashboard, including communications with OPM, access, functionality, and use of data. OPM reported many of the same types of limitations in managing the effort.”
The GAO recommended that the OPN either terminate the dashboard or address feedback from the agencies and continue offering it with improvements.
The GAO looked at the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Justice, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration and the National Science Foundation to determine their use of the dashboard. The GAO said its review found that the dashboard is not meeting its intended purpose, and that the OPM does not know the extent of non-use by almost 20 other federal agencies that have access to the dashboard. Additionally, OPM did not solicit feedback on the dashboard. The report said OPM officials could not give an estimate of the exact costs for the dashboard, or how much future planned changes would cost.
The GAO recommended that OPM collect and analyze information on dashboard use, solicit feedback on the dashboard and determine costs to make evidence-based decisions about the tool’s continued presence. OPM partially concurred and state it will work with the Office of the National Cyber Director to determine what actions should be taken.