At the end of January, a comprehensive performance audit in the District of Columbia hit hard at the multiple negative impacts of having an increasingly fragmented organizational structure for human resources.

The audit, titled “D.C. Personnel Operations Need Greater Coordination, Cohesion” was released on January 30, 2026.  It describes a situation in which only 57 of 103 government entities in the city are under the D.C. Department of Human Resources (DCHR) and 46 have independent personnel authority. The result? Currently, only 44 percent of city employees fall under the central HR office. “There’s been a steady erosion of each agency wanting to do their own thing,” says Jason Juffras, senior analyst at the auditor’s office and auditor in charge for this audit team. 

The Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (ODCA) notes that the shift away from central HR oversight has accelerated since 2015. During that time “elected officials granted independent personnel authority to 11 agencies by statute.” A key recommendation in the audit is for the City Council to more carefully consider its decision to grant independent personnel status, requiring a written plan from agencies to demonstrate how they would take over the function effectively and efficiently.

In cities, states and counties around the U.S., debates have persisted for decades about the merits of centralization and decentralization of multiple government functions, including human resources. There are sometimes good reasons for agencies with specialized needs to have their own operations and that’s also true of government organizations that are elected independently or are otherwise outside of the control of the executive branch. 

That said, excessive fragmentation has many negative consequences. At the top of the list is a loss of overall strategic planning about the government’s workforce needs. As Juffras told us, “We lose sight of the fact that HR can be a very powerful foundation for better service delivery.”

The audit provides plentiful examples of the problems that result from fragmentation:

• Gaps in performance measurement and accountability: According to the audit, while the central HR department publishes performance plans and reports, “there is very little data about the human resources performance of agencies outside DCHR’s purview.” The result? DC performance measures for HR are incomplete, “depriving decision makers of information about the performance of different parts of the HR system and where improvements may be needed.”

• Limited ability for agency benchmarking. While many cities, counties and states use data to compare the performance of agencies, fragmented HR data systems make it difficult to spot the best performing agencies or divisions and share their practices. 

• Missed opportunities to collaborate in recruitment: The audit cites the lack of cross-agency hiring pools, which would “reinforce its efforts to improve recruitment.” More cooperation in recruiting would also allow agencies to know of good applicants who may not have been selected for one job but could potentially work out successfully for another agency. 

• Confusion experienced by applicants who face a fragmented hiring process: According to the audit “D.C. government has numerous job sites and they do not reflect principles of user-centered web design and digital services.” This creates “a fragmented system that may be difficult for job seekers to navigate and that does not serve the broader interests of the District government. 

• Potentially inefficient staffing. The audit notes that the Office of Contracting and Procurement, which has independent personnel status, has five HR staffers to support 209 employees, for a ratio of one HR professional for 41.8 FTEs. In contrast the central HR office has one HR employee for 70 FTEs. 

While the majority of the audit focuses on the problem of fragmentation, those are not the only problems that surface in the management and performance of DC’s human resource systems. The audit notes that the central HR office “has struggled for more than a decade to implement and sustain a workforce development system for HR professionals.”

It also criticizes the lack of “systematic workforce planning” which limits the ability to plan for future needs. This is a problem cited both in the operation of the central office and in the agencies with independent HR functions. According to the audit, “DCHR has not required agencies under its authority to prepare workforce plans, nor did ODCA learn of any agencies with independent personnel authority that created such plans.”

The audit includes many recommendations for addressing the fragmentation problem, but city auditor Kathy Patterson also points out that this is an election year with a new mayor taking office and the council undergoing change, as well.

That will give an elected mayor the opportunity to look at some of the drawbacks to the current system and the potential benefits of more central oversight, especially over agencies that firmly fall under the executive branch such as the contracting and procurement office. The advantage of having more control over personnel practices could generate “rethinking of how we organize our government,” she says.

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