DOGE/DRP and Human Factors
This week was another one where many dedicated federal workers lost their jobs, most with little notice or justification. Each one will leave a capability gap. In my case I retired the old fashioned way, but I felt it was important to document one relatively small but important result of the DOGE/DRP process: the undoing of an institutional corrective action to a major tragedy. This discussion has nothing to do with me, but with the billet that it was my honor to occupy for 5 years, doing work that I loved - on behalf of Sailors.
The United States Fleet Forces (USFF) Comprehensive Review (CR) was created to address the root causes of two deadly collisions in 2017, (including two key ones: fatigue/stress and poor Human-centered system design). It included a number of recommendations for change. The last one was this:
“8.3.4 Sustaining change. Establish human performance expertise at all Type Commander staffs. Incorporate a Human Factors expert permanently on Echelon III staffs.”
As I prepared to retire in May, it become apparent that these two Surface Force Human Factors billets, established by the CR in 2017, are unlikely to survive the DOGE/DRP process. One was already gapped for nearly a year, unable to fill due to the hiring freeze. In my case, I chose not to take DRP because I refused to be complicit in the elimination of this important billet. It’s much bigger than me. It’s about Sailors and giving them a voice in the battle against stress, fatigue, and mishap root causes. But with the new hiring freeze, burdensome approval requirements, and a policy requirement that four billets be cut in order to hire one, a billet titled “Human Factors” is unlikely to survive. My former command already lost its recently hired Integrated Prevention Coordinator to DRP, a billet created to address suicide prevention and wellness following the GW and MARMC suicides. Another “corrective action” erased in the name of efficiency - to the detriment of Sailors.
The official Navy response to question about these cuts is “these cuts will not impact the mission as there are other individuals to carry on with the work”. This is disingenuous for several reasons, as I experienced during my attempt to hand over my duties to others on staff, knowing that my billet would be gapped:
Those individuals lack either the qualifications or experience to fully perform the task.
They are already overtasked and have no capacity to take on 5-15 hours of new responsibilities per week.
If they were qualified and were willing to take on new tasks, their supervisor vetoed the idea. The rationale is reasonable: either to shield the employee - or themselves -from assuming new responsibilities and accountability.
Here were some of the key functions for the billet that I left gapped:
Crew Endurance and fatigue management, including liaison and operational analysis of two major sleep studies.
Near Miss and Lessons Learned - conducting Human Factors Analysis on 2-4 reports per week
Supporting Human Factors for mishap investigations (2-3 per year).
Quality of Life and Suicide Prevention (picked up from IPC who took DRP)
Coordination of Sailor testing and design improvements for critical bridge systems.
There is not much our Navy leadership can do about it in the near term, but I felt that it is worth documenting that these actions - taken in the name of “efficiency” - have now effectively “unchecked the block” for one of the USFF CR Corrective Actions for at least a year, perhaps (even probably) for good. In this area we are essentially returning to 2017, with the Navy being forced into accepting a recognized “blind spot” as to the importance of Human Factors - until the next deadly collision. Even under normal circumstances these “Sailor-Centric” jobs are difficult to fill due to the education and certification requirements. Under DOGE/DRP, hiring freezes, and the general loss of attractiveness to join the Government in the current environment, it will be even tougher.
About three months ago I was enrolling Sailors in a sleep study and met a Sailor from one of the ships involved in the 2017 collisions - his berthing flooded but he escaped. He was happy to see fatigue research continuing and to hear that I was there in a job that was a direct result of the lessons learned from those events. He shared “some days it feels like we are forgotten” and I promised to do everything possible to make sure that doesn’t happen. Hence this post.
Addressing fatigue in the Surface Navy was the work of a decade. It would be a shame to see it slow, stop or go backward as the result of these new policies. Perhaps this was not the intent; but it appears to be a likely outcome. One day in the next few years, statistically speaking, the Navy will likely have another deadly event (hopefully not!) - we had three very close calls last year (see the blue box in the above graphic). In each of those events, multiple Sailors came within inches or seconds of becoming casualties and losing their lives; the next collision or catastrophic event could be much worse. When it happens, one of the questions asked will be the status of corrective actions from the last investigation; for example, “What happened to those Human Factors billets we created as a corrective after the last set of collisions?” There will be silence in the room.
As part of the preparation to answer to that question during the next investigation, my recommendation archive this post.