Improving Leadership Capacity and Continuity

Given that management improvements and transformations can take years to achieve, steps are needed to ensure a continuous focus on those efforts. The creation of a chief operating officer/chief management officer (COO/CMO) position in selected federal agencies can help elevate, integrate, and institutionalize responsibility for key management functions and transformation efforts and provide continuity of leadership over a long term.

GAO continues to identify DOD’s approach to business transformation, as well as the implementation and transformation of DHS, on GAO’s biennial list of high-risk programs.

In the fiscal year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress established the Deputy Secretary of Defense position as the department’s CMO. created a Deputy CMO, and assigned CMO duties to the Under Secretary of each military department.  DHS’s Undersecretary for Management was also designated as the CMO of the department in 2007. However, while positive steps, these actions may not go far enough toward providing sufficient focus and continuity over the longer term needed to oversee large-scale organizational changes. In DOD’s case, it has yet to assign clear decisionmaking authority to the Deputy CMO or clearly define the roles and relationships among the CMO, Deputy CMO and military department CMOs. In the case of DHS, the position may not be at a sufficiently high level to provide elevated senior leadership attention.

GAO has developed criteria for determining the appropriate type of COO/CMO position in these and other federal agencies and the key strategies for implementing these positions, including providing for the continuity of leadership through term or career appointments.

^ Back to topWhat Needs to Be Done

To address business transformation and management challenges facing federal agencies, OMB should work with the President's Management Council to use the criteria that GAO has developed for determining the type of COO/CMO positions that ought to be established in the federal agencies that are members of the council.

Once the types of COO/CMOs have been determined, OMB should then work with the President's Management Council to use the key strategies GAO has identified in implementing these positions.

Congress should also consider the criteria and key strategies that GAO has identified for establishing and implementing COO/CMO positions in federal agencies as it develops and reviews legislative proposals.

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Organizational Transformation

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