Bureau of Land Management: Agency's Reorganization Efforts Did Not Substantially Address Key Practices for Effective Reforms

What GAO Found

According to the Department of the Interior's (Interior) strategic plan, the department aimed to better enable its managers and workforce in the field to make decisions by, in part, shifting the workforce closer to field locations at a number of its bureaus. On May 8, 2019, Interior provided Congress with written notification of its intent to proceed with reorganizing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) by relocating most Washington, D.C.-based headquarters positions to western states. In September 2019, BLM notified affected staff that their positions would be relocated and staff were to accept or decline reassignment by December 12, 2019. BLM expects the relocation to be completed by December 2020.

BLM's reform efforts have (1) partially addressed key practices for effective agency reforms in four subcategories of practices relevant to relocating employees and (2) minimally addressed key practices in one.

Assessment of the Extent to Which Plans to Reorganize the BLM Address Subcategories of Key Practices for Agency Reform

Specifically, BLM partially addressed key practices for establishing goals and outcomes by, for example, establishing broad goals for the reorganization. However, it did not establish performance measures that could be used to assess the effectiveness of the reforms. Further, BLM considered some costs and benefits of the reorganization, but its analyses did not include complete information on assumptions made, methodology, and relevant costs. For example, travel costs to Washington, D.C., from the new staff locations were recognized conceptually in a July 2018 Interior memo, but these costs were not included in the quantitative cost-benefit analysis.

BLM minimally or did not address key practices for involving employees and key stakeholders in developing its plan. Specifically, BLM sought input from its executive leadership team in February 2019, but documents the agency provided did not indicate what input the team provided, whether it was considered, or how it was used in formulating reorganization plans.

BLM partially addressed key reform practices for using data and evidence when developing reforms. For example, BLM developed a white paper on potential western locations but did not describe how it chose the location for its new headquarters. The agency also partially addressed key reform practices to manage and monitor reorganization efforts. Specifically, the implementation plan BLM provided to GAO contained high-level goals and a preliminary list of locations where staff would relocate, but did not include interim milestones or deliverables to show progress.

BLM also partially addressed key reform practices for strategic workforce planning. Specifically, BLM identified backup employees for leadership positions that were vacant and considered which vacancies were most important to fill, but it has not demonstrated how the proposed reorganization would affect the workforce, including staff retention. Additional strategic workforce planning would help the agency successfully implement the reorganization and ensure continued delivery of services.

Although BLM's reorganization is well under way, Interior has an opportunity to apply key practices for effective agency reforms as it continues to relocate BLM staff and considers reorganizing its other bureaus. Adopting effective practices for agency reform will help Interior ensure that the bureaus are well positioned to achieve intended reform goals and continue to deliver valuable services to the taxpayer.

Why GAO Did This Study

In July 2019, the Secretary of the Interior announced that the majority of BLM employees assigned to the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., would be transferred to BLM offices in western states and that a new BLM headquarters would be established in Grand Junction, Colorado. According to a January 23, 2020, BLM document, of the 311 positions moving, 132 were vacant before the reorganization was announced in July 2019, resulting in 179 staff who needed to relocate. Of the 179 staff, 90 accepted their reassignments; 81 either declined the reassignment or separated from their position between July 2019 and January 2020, creating additional vacancies; and eight staff fell into other categories.

GAO was asked to review the process BLM used to make decisions about reorganization. This report examines the extent to which BLM addressed key practices for effective agency reform efforts, including reorganization, in the development of its plan. GAO reviewed documents describing BLM's decision-making process and assessed BLM's reorganization efforts against selected key reform practices compiled in GAO's June 2018 report on government reorganization. The 2018 report identified key practices for developing and implementing agency reforms. Given that this reorganization involved relocating a large portion of headquarters staff, GAO focused on the five key practices relevant to relocating employees.