Additional Training for U.S. Coast Guard Recommended by GAO

A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommends updates in training for the U.S. Coast Guard for emerging missions demands, such as Arctic operations, cybersecurity and modernizing its training efforts.

Meeting the mission demands requires enhanced skills and training for the Coast Guard workforce, the GAO said in a report published online Oct. 30.

The Coast Guard currently carries out varied duties, including Arctic patrols, cybersecurity and trying to stop illegal fishing in the Western Hemisphere. Its training command delivered over 400 unique training courses to more than 23,000 Coast Guard students in fiscal year 2023.

While the Coast Guard for the most part followed sound practices when developing, implementing and evaluating its training, it could improve how it measures the effectiveness of training and do more to ensure courses are regularly reviewed and keeping up with changing conditions, the GAO report said.

Force Readiness Command (FORCECOM) is responsible for a wide range of Coast Guard training programs. Specifically, FORCECOM develops learning objectives for each course describing knowledge and skills to apply on the job.

Training centers are to review these learning objectives to keep up with changing conditions, but FORCECOM doesn’t have accurate data on the date when a course was last reviewed, the GAO said. FORCECOM also has outdated guidance for evaluating the long-term effectiveness of its training programs.

Fully addressing these two leading practices will help FORCECOM’s efforts to ensure its training is effectively preparing the Coast Guard workforce to meet mission demands, the report said.

FORCECOM has already taken steps to update training for these emerging mission demands and to modernize its training enterprise and has a long-standing assessment program to evaluate Coast Guard units’ compliance with policies and procedures.

Still, FORCECOM does not have a detailed, written project plan for fully developing and implementing the data dashboard to centralize all the assessment program data.

The GAO said its study was prompted by the Coast Guard’s increased focus on emerging mission demands, including Arctic operations and cybersecurity.

Source: https://fishermensnews.com/additional-training-for-u-s-coast-guard-recommended-by-gao/