The President's Management Agenda (PMA)

The USPTO is committed to the objectives of the PMA, which is the President’s strategy for improving the management and performance of the federal government. Each quarter OMB releases an executive scorecard that rates progress and overall status in each of the PMA initiatives. Agencies are scored green, yellow, or red on their status in achieving overall goals or long-term criteria, as well as their progress in implementing improvement plans. The success is evidenced by the progress we have made in improving the strategic management of human capital, competitive sourcing, improved financial performance, expanded e-government, and budget and performance integration.

Strategic Management of Human Capital

In order to effectively carry out our mission, the USPTO needs to attract, hire, develop, and retain people with knowledge and skills in an increasing range and depth of technologies. The performance of the USPTO springs from the knowledge, energy, commitment, and professionalism of the people who work here. To build an outstanding performance-based organization, we must do an outstanding job of attracting, leading, and managing our people – our human capital.

The USPTO made excellent progress in the area of strategic management of human capital. The USPTO established, by Agency Administrative Order, the first ever Human Capital Council (HCC). This Council brings together leaders from the business units to work together and address the most pressing human capital challenges of the USPTO. The HCC is responsible for making recommendations to the Under Secretary and Director and the executive Management Council on USPTO-wide human capital policies, priorities, goals, objectives, and initiatives. Additionally, the HCC assesses workforce characteristics and future needs in order to align USPTO’s human capital policies to meet mission goals.

The USPTO’s recruitment program was a huge success. We hired 1,218 examiners for the Patent organization in FY 2006. We also added 87 examining attorneys to the Trademark organization. We have implemented a number of authorities, including pay flexibilities such as recruitment and retention incentives to attract and retain the best and brightest in hard-to-fill positions.

The USPTO established a new training program, the Patent Training Academy, for newly hired examiners with the goal to provide more effective and efficient training, reduce the one-on-one training burden faced by supervisors, and develop a more informed and productive class of examiners. The first training class under this program was initiated in January 2006, and completed the training in September 2006. Additional classes began in May, June, July, and September. We are in the process of evaluating the effectiveness of this program.

The USPTO continues to be a recognized leader in federal government Telework programs, and has received numerous awards for our accomplishments in this regard. In FY 2006, the USPTO received another award for the Telework program. The Telework Exchange recognized that the Trademark organization has created the model of an extremely successful telecommuting program for other government agencies, and awarded us the Telework Program with Maximum Impact on Government. At the beginning of FY 2006, we launched a hoteling program for patent examiners and provided participants the ability to work-at-home with complete access to online USPTO-provided resources. This program has resulted in space saving and better balance of work life for patent examiners.

In its September 18, 2006 issue of Business Week, the magazine named the USPTO as one of the 55 best places to launch a career. This is a guide, the magazine states, of employers that “really shine.”

The USPTO continues to build on our success and has begun an effort to develop a comprehensive Strategic Human Capital Plan, taking into account the OPM’s Human Capital Assessment and Accountability Framework to provide a consistent, comprehensive roadmap of human capital management for the USPTO.

Competitive Sourcing

The USPTO is committed to achieving performance enhancements and cost-savings through competitive sourcing. In past years, the USPTO has competitively sourced many functions, such as payroll, mail processing/handling, clerical support, data transcription, systems maintenance and development, help desk support, etc. While preserving the inherently governmental responsibility for patentability determinations, the USPTO is committed to increasing total patent examiner output by competitively sourcing multiple patent functions. For example, PCT (international) Search, Reclassification, and Pre-Grant Publication Classification services were competitively sourced during FY 2006. The award of contracts to perform these functions will permit patent examiners to focus on reduction of patent application backlog and on improving the quality of determinations made during the patent review process.

Improved Financial Performance

Again in FY 2006, the USPTO is in compliance with all federal accounting principles and standards and has encountered no instances of material weaknesses in internal controls or non-compliance with financial related laws and regulations. We will continue to maintain and strengthen our internal controls and improve the timeliness and usefulness of our financial management information. In fact, for FY 2006, the USPTO met all quarterly financial reporting requirements instituted by OMB. Again, the USPTO sustained its clean audit opinion, with FY 2006 marking the 14th consecutive unqualified audit opinion and the 10th consecutive year with no material weaknesses. The USPTO has a certified and accredited, fully integrated financial management system and uses a data warehouse to accommodate both financial and operational data. The data warehouse is used by managers for analyzing financial results and performance and by supervisory patent examiners for managing patent processing timeframes. The USPTO also operates a mature ABC system that captures costs of core mission activities and both direct and indirect costs for the entire Office. Managers use data from the ABC system to analyze the cost of operations when making decisions regarding improving processes, setting fees, or developing budget requirements.

E-Government

The USPTO chooses IT projects that best support its mission and comply with its enterprise architecture. Individual projects are evaluated in the broader context of technical alignment with other IT systems, as well as the investment’s impact to the USPTO IT portfolio’s performance, as measured by cost, benefit, and risk. As part of the Capital Planning and Investment Control process, the USPTO prioritizes its investments and decides which projects will be funded in subsequent fiscal years. Once selected, each project is managed and monitored consistently throughout its life cycle. At key milestone dates, progress reviews are conducted to compare the project’s status to planned benefit, cost, schedule technical efficiency, and effectiveness measures. All major IT system investments are included in the OMB Exhibit 53 and Exhibit 300 business cases.

The USPTO is accelerating deployment of critical automated information systems that will allow patent applicants to create, and USPTO internal users to process, electronic patent applications and follow-on papers more easily and accurately; reduce time required for processing and responding to customers; automate routine patent formalities tasks so that patent examiners can focus on the intellectual aspects of examination; and continuously improve quality throughout the processes. Additional benefits will be realized through reduced contractor costs, elimination of lost paper files, improved workflow tracking, and automated support functions to yield a higher quality product.

The Patent File Wrapper (PFW) is one major initiative under the Patent Automation program that will allow the USPTO to close an identified agency performance gap by implementing a text-based, integrated file wrapper system in the coming years. A new system is proposed that will adequately support the Office as the issues of an overwhelming increase in filings, an urgent need for many types of remote access, and quantum changes in the examined technologies are faced. The USPTO plans to develop and implement: Workflow, Intelligent Text Processing, and Content Management Systems. PFW development and implementation will significantly advance the automation and management control over several major patent examination processes from initial application receipt through final patent grant and publication.

During 2006, the USPTO deployed EFS-Web, the new patent electronic filing system for e-filing of documents with the USPTO. EFS-Web is a web-based tool that eliminates the need for special software and regular upgrades from the USPTO that were required to submit eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format electronic applications using the previous version of the EFS. EFS-Web provides users a simple, safe, and secure method for submitting initial and follow-on patent applications over the Internet as a PDF file, including PDF fillable forms such as the Application Data Sheet and the IDS. As a result, the filing of documents with the USPTO via EFS-Web can be done in less time and at a lower cost by avoiding printing, postage, and courier costs, as compared with paper filings. The time required to file documents via EFS-Web may depend, inter alia, on the speed of the user’s Internet connection and the size of the PDF files being submitted. EFS-Web submissions are automatically processed through the USPTO, and an immediate notification is provided to the filer that their submission has been received by the USPTO. Opened to the public on March 16th, 2006, EFS-Web has proven a reliable success. In FY 2006, over 14 percent of all patent applications were filed using EFS-Web. The USPTO hopes to achieve 40 percent of all patent applications electronically in FY 2007.

The USPTO also provided patent applicants access to IFW contents for U.S. patent applications via Private Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR). Private PAIR is part of the USPTO’s PAIR system, which is a safe, simple, and secure means that allows patent applicants to electronically view the status of their patent applications and download their patent material. PAIR also includes Public PAIR, which only displays issued or published application status to the general public. Registered users (patent applicants) of Private PAIR can view and download the electronic file wrapper in PDF format at no cost. In addition, Private PAIR includes a direct login feature that allows access to Private PAIR through a web browser window, rather than having to access through USPTO directly. As EFS-Web is integrated with Private and Public PAIR, a trusted filer (someone who has a Digital Certificate), can view EFS-Web submissions in Private PAIR within hours instead of days or weeks. In addition, Private PAIR includes a feature which provides an estimated date (in months) of issuance of a first office action.

In addition, in FY 2006, the USPTO provided patent applicants the ability to file petitions for accelerated examination. Applicants meeting published filing requirements, including the use of electronic filing, will receive final patentability decisions from an examiner within 12 months.

The Trademark Automation Program enhances the current manual trademark-application processes with electronic processing and improves the maintenance of all the records associated with trademark applications. By implementing the Trademark Automation Program, USPTO reduces operations costs, improves efficiency and quality through workload and process management, reduces pendency, increases visibility and control through improved management reporting capabilities, and supports the expansion of the Trademark work-at-home program. Trademark Automation enables improved access to USPTO information by internal users and the public and facilitates the international exchange of information and protection of intellectual property.

The USPTO is improving the processing of trademark applications and registrations and providing improved support for the staff. This includes managing work items with computer systems that enforce routing work items through optimized processes and facilitate prompt and efficient communication with internal and external customers. The electronic workflow system will provide a consistent user interface, extensible across functions; coordination of specialized system components via Web Services and a middle component; migration of business logic from the database servers to web services; and increase the level of integration of the Trademark systems. These functions provide increased system flexibility to easily and quickly adapt to changing technology and add new capabilities such as accepting PDF formatted forms and attachments, resulting in reduced software enhancement and maintenance costs.

TEAS provides trademark customers the ability to submit their trademark applications electronically over the Internet. TEAS supports the receipt of all Trademark forms electronically through standardized transactions using XML formatted data. In addition, TEAS was enhanced in FY 2006 to be able to accept PDF formatted documents.

The USPTO completed the development of the First Action System for Trademarks (FAST) 2.0 Automated Information System in September 2006 to provide Trademark Legal Instrument Examiners with the functionality to perform actions from a unified client interface interacting with many disparate USPTO data sources and subsystems. Specifically, FAST 2.0 provides faster processing of applications and other correspondence by reducing many manual processes, improves the quality of work produced by integration of support tools and enforcing defined processing work steps, provides more efficient management of caseloads, reduces the number of misrouted correspondences, and improves process visibility.

The USPTO made significant strides in FY 2006 to expand remote access to its employees in support of Telework initiatives by providing the technical and logistical support to implement a complete equipment setup in an employee’s home or other remote location. Remote access involves providing USPTO equipment to employees to work-at-home so that they have the same capability as if they were working at the Alexandria campus. The Telework systems have many features to ensure security and the protection of sensitive data. The effective use of telecommuting will further provide for continued government operations during an emergency or disaster situation, increased efficiency and productivity in the federal government, and an increase in the quality of life of federal employees. The PHP was expanded in May 2006 to include all patent examiners who meet PHP telecommuting prerequisites as defined in the PHP Policy Guideline. The PHP was formerly open only to Patents Telework Program participants.

In May 2006, BPAI launched the USPTO’s first official remote duty station. Under the new program, a senior BPAI judge and a work-at-home participant will conduct official USPTO functions via a remote workstation and will not be required to periodically report to work on the USPTO’s Alexandria campus.

Budget and Performance Integration

Since FY 1999, the USPTO has developed an annual corporate plan that links the annual performance plan and budget request such that resource requirements for continuing programs and new initiatives are aligned with outputs and performance goals. The USPTO is in the process of updating our Strategic Plan. The new Plan will build on the infrastructure developed in the previous Plan and outline specific strategies to meet the goals of optimizing patent and trademark quality and timeliness. We have refined the Agency’s budget formulation process to better equate budgetary resources with both enterprise-wide strategic goals and individual organization performance targets. The annual integrated budget/performance plan is an effective and efficient way of establishing accountability of resources against performance. The agency routinely monitors program performance targets to ensure achievement of performance goals. Performance goals are evaluated regularly against stakeholder requirements, business conditions, and planned and actual resources available. Organizational goals and crosscutting performance measures are also included in senior executive members’ performance appraisal plans to ensure alignment with agency mission, goals, and Strategic Plan objectives.

The USPTO achieved notable success in support of the PMA by attaining Green in the Budget and Performance Integration initiative.

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