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GAO reports on Interior staffing Finds agency has made some progress in solving hiring, retention of staff overseeing oil, gas operations but more needs to be done ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
The United States Governmental Accountability Office has published a new report with the results of its review of the hiring, training and retention of staff in the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The staff in question are those responsible for the oversight of onshore and offshore oil and gas activities on federal lands in the United States.
The issues reviewed in the GAO report resulted from lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, with failings in regulatory oversight being one of the factors in the chain of events that led to the disaster. Challenges for the three bureaus in the Department of Interior have included the difficulty of retaining staff when faced with stiff competition from high salaries paid by companies in the oil industry. The bureaus also face a need to adequately train their staff, to ensure that regulatory activities are carried out effectively.
Hiring and retention The new GAO report says that the bureaus have taken steps to resolve their hiring and retention problems. However, the bureaus have not evaluated the effectiveness of what they have done and have missed opportunities for inter-bureau collaboration in resolving the various challenges, the report says.
The bureaus have been starting to address the problem of uncompetitive salaries by introducing special salary rates for certain key staff. And some bureaus have increased the number of staff receiving student loan repayments and other incentives. But, although through these efforts the bureaus succeeded in filling staff positions, the bureaus had not evaluated the effectiveness of their approach. As a consequence of this lack of evaluation, the Department of the Interior cannot determine whether or how to change its remuneration policies in the future, the report says.
Another impediment to the hiring of staff by the bureaus is the lengthy process for conducting the hiring. In response to this particular issue, the bureaus have acquired new human resource software to provide better data for tracking the hiring process. But Interior’s Office of Policy, Management and Budget, the office responsible for managing human resources across Interior’s various bureaus, missed opportunities for collaboration between the bureaus in terms of possibilities such as the coordination of separate bureau recruitment teams and the discussion of shared challenges - the bureaus may continue to use fragmented and potentially duplicated procedures, the report says.
Staff training From the perspective of staff training, Interior has conducted the training of key staff without fully evaluating training needs or training effectiveness. Furthermore, training evaluations required by statute and regulation have not been carried out, the report says. GAO also specifically criticizes BSEE for not having proficiency examinations or certifications for its inspectors. And Interior has provided only limited leadership in facilitating the sharing of training resources between the bureaus, the report says, commenting that, while in July 2016 BSEE had six full-time training staff and BLM had 59 staff in its training section, BOEM did not have any staff to develop or evaluate training programs.
Interior response In response to the GAO critique, Interior agreed with the need to implement regular evaluations of employment incentives and said that it had already been gathering data for this purpose. Interior also agreed that the Office of Policy Management and Budget should coordinate training needs across the bureaus. But Interior also commented that different skill sets are needed for onshore and offshore inspections, although there are core skills that BLM trainers could teach to staff from the other bureaus.
Interior disagreed with the need for certification for its BSEE inspectors, arguing that, given the highly technical nature of offshore inspections, BSEE is in the best position to determine the training that its inspectors need. And, although the inspectors do not receive a formal certificate, the inspectors are evaluated and approved by a supervisory inspector, Interior said.
Interior also commented that it would be difficult and expensive to continuously update BSEE certification modules in line with changing technologies in the offshore oil and gas industry - instead the bureau relies on technical training from outside vendors. And GAO has agreed with a comment by Interior that, given the highly technical nature of the competencies of agency oil and gas staff, each bureau should identify the competencies that its staff requires.
Interior also disagrees with GAO’s critique of a lack of collaboration between the Interior bureaus over staff hiring, retention and training - Interior says that there is coordination between the bureaus.
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