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GAO-23-105953 1 (2023-02-16)

handle is hein.gao/gaoogq0001 and id is 1 raw text is: U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 February 16, 2023 Chairman Ranking Member Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Committee on Appropriations United States Senate The Honorable John R. Carter Chairman The Honorable Debbie Wasserman Schultz Ranking Member Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Committee on Appropriations House of Representatives Veterans Health Administration: Hiring Trends in the U.S. Pacific Territories The Veterans Health Administration (VHA), within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), operates one of the largest health care systems in the nation. VHA offers health care services to about 9 million veterans enrolled at 171 VA medical centers and more than 1,100 outpatient facilities. In the U.S. Pacific territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), VHA provided outpatient primary and mental health care services at VA clinics to approximately 7,700 veterans in fiscal year 2021, according to VHA data. It is essential that VHA recruits and retains an adequate number of skilled staff to help it meet its mission of providing quality and timely care for veterans. To help facilitate the hiring, recruitment, and retention efforts of the federal workforce, federal law authorizes various human capital flexibilities and incentives. These human capital flexibilities include exceptions to the competitive examination process traditionally used to fill federal position vacancies (referred to as hiring flexibilities) and the incentives for recruiting, relocating, and retaining qualified staff, as authorized in statute.1 Hiring flexibilities can help the government address critical skills gaps or achieve certain public policy goals, such as employing veterans. Recruitment, relocation, and retention incentives assist federal agencies in attracting and retaining staff who possess unusually high or unique qualifications, or who fulfill essential needs for the agencies. These incentives include monetary awards and programs available to VHA's workforce, such as recruitment, relocation, and retention bonuses, as well as student loan repayment programs. 1The federal competitive examination process requires that agencies notify the public that the government will accept applications for a job, screen applications against minimum qualification standards, apply selection priorities such as veterans' preference, and assess applicants' relative competencies or knowledge, skills, and abilities against job-related criteria to identify the most qualitied applicants. GAO-23-105953 VA Hiring Trends in U.S. Pacific Territories Page 1

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