CDC’s human capital plan overlooks contractors, GAO says

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has improved workforce planning in the face of a changing mission and shortages of candidates for key positions, but more strategic planning is needed to manage its growing contractor workforce effectively, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released on Friday.

"Contractors have been the fastest growing segment of CDC's workforce, increasing 139 percent from fiscal year 2000 through fiscal year 2006, and now represent more than one-third of the agency's workforce," the report said. "Without addressing [management of contractors], the CDC plan will not give the agency a strategic view of its governmental and contractor workforce and thus may not be as useful as it could be in assisting the agency with strategic human capital planning for its entire workforce."

Vincent Ventimiglia, assistant secretary for legislation at the Health and Human Services Department, wrote in response that after reviewing other human capital plans the Office of Personnel Management had identified as best practices, CDC did not include contractors in its workforce plan because "the agency does not control their hiring, diversity, compensation, training and other key human capital factors."

But the report said CDC misunderstood GAO's directions, and should simply be doing more to determine the role contractors play in the agency's workforce overall, particularly given the growth of the contracting workforce. During the time the contractor workforce grew by 139 percent, the number of federal employees at CDC increased by 3.5 percent.

The use of contractors speaks to some of the other workforce challenges CDC faces. Twenty percent of general health scientists, 22 percent of public health analysts and 34 percent of medical officers will be eligible for retirement during the next five years, at the same time states are reporting shortages of people going into public health professions such as epidemiology.

The field in which CDC works also has broadened, GAO noted; and the agency's mission is now global. Two-thirds of the public health specialists who were deployed to deal with severe acute respiratory syndrome in Asia in 2003 were CDC officials.

"CDC needs a workforce that is capable of working with global partners, such as other countries' ministries of health, to expand surveillance systems used to detect and respond quickly to outbreaks," the report said.

But it takes nine months to a year to approve and hire a CDC staffer for an overseas position, according to the report, in part because of the need for State Department clearance.

CDC is trying to improve its hiring process and make itself more appealing to a diverse workforce, specifically focusing on Hispanic and disabled employees.

The agency's goal is to reduce hiring time to a maximum of 58 days. Between fiscal 2003 and 2007, however, it took an average of 73 and 92 days, respectively, to hire a job candidate. HHS took responsibility for hiring CDC employees, and the number of available human resources staffers declined from 178 to 105. CDC told GAO it has created a committee to evaluate the hiring process and is using a system to track the hiring process and identify delays.

The agency also has launched a number of workforce analysis initiatives, including analyzing gaps in mission-critical positions and hiring a person to manage development and deployment of a broad-based recruiting strategy.

But given the technical nature of many of the agency's jobs, CDC officials expressed concerns about their ability to meet some of their workforce goals, particularly increasing diversity.

"CDC noted that establishing a diverse workforce is a challenge for several reasons," the report said. "For example, technical skills and education levels vary across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, which in turn can have an impact on the pool of qualified job applicants from which to hire."