This Strategic Plan is the cornerstone of a comprehensive set of interlocking plans that cover all major aspects of agency operations. In this plan, we have defined the strategic issues facing the agency and established broad goals and objectives to be achieved during the planning period. As a result, this plan serves as the foundation and guide for the specific functional plans required to manage the agency. These include the following:

• The Customer Service Plan, which provides our pledge of service to our customers, states specifically the level of service the customers can expect from us. It is posted in each office of the RRB in order to communicate our standards of openness, accessibility and accountability to our public. Each year we provide a report card on how well we are meeting the standards we set for ourselves, and the level of service we provide our customers. The plan itself is reviewed annually, and updated periodically, as we gain more experience with it and as we compare our service with the best in business. This plan is included as Exhibit 2.
  
  
• The Strategic Information Resources Management Plan describes the agency’s information resources mission and vision to support customer service through information technology. The purpose of this plan is to communicate clearly where the RRB is today in terms of information resources management, where the RRB wants to go in the next several years, and how the RRB intends to move from the present to the future. It mirrors the direction of the agency’s Strategic Plan. The plan includes the agency’s Enterprise Architecture Strategy and serves as a tool to make informed management decisions and to assist in capital planning, investments, and budgeting.
  
  
• The Information Technology Capital Plan, which is part of the Strategic Information Resources Management Plan, specifically describes the capital resources needed to support the initiatives described in the Strategic Information Resources Management Plan. It provides a schedule of when those resources will be needed. This plan is updated annually and is used to prepare the agency’s budget submission.
  
  
• The Annual Performance Budget provides detailed performance goals and indicators to guide agency managers as they implement the Strategic Plan. It also details the human and capital resources required to achieve the performance targets. We update the Performance Budget each year and include it as part of the agency’s budget submission and justification. Exhibit 3 provides a matrix showing each of the agency’s performance goals and the measures that are used to determine how well we performed. After each fiscal year, we report on how well we achieved the performance goals in our Performance and Accountability Report.