A federal dashboard designed to help address the government’s shortage of cybersecurity professionals is not used by five of six agencies examined by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), including the agency that created it, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
In a March 27 report, GAO said the Cyber Workforce Dashboard has never been used by the departments of Justice and State and the National Science Foundation. The Treasury Department and Small Business Administration used it in the past but have stopped, GAO said. Only the General Services Administration is currently using the dashboard, to establish a benchmark of its cyber workforce.
GAO randomly selected the agencies to assess the dashboard, which OPM established in 2023 as a government-wide application to help manage the cyber workforce. Yet OPM does not use the dashboard and reported limitations with it similar to what the six other agencies did, including access, functionality, and use of data, GAO said.
“Given the lack of use, the Dashboard is not meeting its intended purpose for the six selected agencies,” the report said. “Further, OPM does not know the extent of non-use by the almost 20 other federal agencies that have access to the Dashboard. Additionally, OPM has not solicited feedback on it.”
To address these concerns, GAO recommended that OPM collect and analyze information on dashboard use, solicit agency feedback on its limitations, determine its costs – and make an evidence-based decision to terminate the dashboard or continue offering it to agencies with needed improvements.
In a response contained in the report, Veronica Hinton, OPM’s associate director for workforce policy and innovation, said OPM would review GAO’s findings and “determine what actions, if any, are appropriate – such as whether the Dashboard should be improved, transitioned, continued, or sunset.”
As recently as September, the United States had a cyber workforce shortage totaling more than 500,000 open positions. A similar shortfall has beset federal agencies, and the GAO report emphasized the urgency of improving it.
“Given the ever-present threat posed by cyberattacks and the risk of unauthorized access to IT systems, it is essential that federal agencies ensure that the proper cybersecurity workforce resources are in place to protect the government’s technology infrastructure,” GAO said. “As a result, building and maintaining a talented cyber workforce is one of the federal government’s most important challenges.”
The Cyber Workforce Dashboard is comprised of two versions – a public version and another that is agency-specific – to provide government employers and employees with data to better address workforce needs.
But officials from five of the six agencies cited by GAO as not using the dashboard said they instead use other workforce planning methods, such as internally developed reports and applications.
Unlike the dashboard, they told GAO, these agency-specific planning methods “provided functionality the agencies needed, such as the ability to filter and format cyber workforce data.”