Military finance agency to cut workforce

Officials at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service plan to trim the agency’s workforce from almost 14,000 employees to less than 10,000 by 2011, DFAS Director Zack Gaddy said.The move is one of several steps the agency is taking to improve the speed and quality of its services, Gaddy said Sept. 18 at the Defense Finance 2007 conference in Alexandria, Va. Worldwide Business Research organized the event.DFAS is the financial and accounting arm of the Defense Department. Its tasks include paying DOD civilian and military personnel, managing military retirement and health benefit funds, and accounting for DOD’s foreign military sales.Besides trimming the number of employees, Gaddy also wants to change the composition of DFAS’ workforce. The goal is to reverse the current mix of 70 percent technical workers and 30 percent professional experts by 2011, he said. In the process, the ratio of one supervisor for every eight workers is slated to change to 15 or more workers per boss, he added.Officials hope a leaner workforce will enable employees to process 13,600 transactions per person annually, up from 9,300 in 2006, Gaddy said.At the same time, DFAS is consolidating its 19 sites across the United States and Europe into 10, a move mandated by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure legislation. Of those 10, seven centers of excellence will share the agency’s main tasks, Gaddy said. The agency will maintain its two sites in Japan and Europe.