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October 8, 2008 DOL Home > About DOL > 2007 PAR > Management's Discussion & Analysis |
DOL Annual Report, Fiscal Year
2007 Management's Discussion & Analysis The President’s Management Agenda In FY 2007, the Department continued its focus on implementing the President's Management Agenda (PMA) and securing the taxpayer benefits tied to PMA success. Announced in 2001, the PMA remains the key strategy for improving the management and performance of the Federal government. The objective is to ensure a Federal government that is citizen-centered, not bureaucracy-centered; results-oriented, not output-oriented; and market-based actively promoting rather than stifling innovation through competition. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regularly assesses all Federal agencies' implementation of the PMA, issuing a quarterly Executive Branch Management Scorecard rating of green, yellow or red for both status and progress on each initiative. On June 30, 2005, the U.S. Department of Labor became the first Executive Branch department or agency to achieve green status scores on all five government-wide PMA initiatives. While not an end in itself, this achievement represents an ongoing commitment to good management to bring quality services to the American people. As noted on the table below, as of September 30, 2007 DOL is pleased to have again achieved all-green status scores on the five government-wide initiatives as well as on two of the three PMA program initiatives managed by DOL. Government-wide PMA results can be found at www.results.gov.
We are now into the OMB-led Proud to Be V campaign, which runs through June 30, 2008 with other goals linked to June 30, 2009 and DOL intends to maintain its dedication to improve its performance through PMA implementation. To ensure that the good-government principles are used in day-to-day management, the Department uses a similar scorecard on a semi-annual basis to measure DOL individual agency progress on the PMA. Strategic Management of Human Capital DOL's successful MBA Fellows program welcomed its sixth class of 15 Fellows in the summer of 2007 Increasing the total to 92 participants. Of the 49 Fellows who have completed the program, 48 have been placed in permanent positions within the Department. Competitive Sourcing The Department encourages the development of a government "most efficient organization" (MEO) to compete with bids which may be received from the private sector. The MEO is designed to find innovative solutions to existing work processes that can be made more efficient to improve the Department's chances of retaining the work in-house when competing against private-sector firms. The competition process generally results in savings regardless of whether the performance decision is in favor of the government or the private sector. The following four recently-completed competitions involving 117 FTE will save the government approximately $5.4 million:
All four competitions resulted in the work being retained in-house, which means that the work continues to be performed by DOL employees. Improved Financial Performance DOL's managerial cost accounting system, Cost Analysis Manager (CAM), provides program managers with costs of outputs and activities to better understand how those costs affect the operations of their programs. This tool collects and allocates costs to activities and ties these costs to performance. In doing so, it improves accountability and transparency by showing the results for the tax dollars spent. CAM generated the goal costing information at the strategic and performance goal levels for this report and for the second year straight year CAM generated costing information at the performance indicator level. Last year, costs were allocated at the indicator for about half of DOL's performance goals. This year, most DOL programs were able to associate costs with their performance indicators. Expanded Electronic Government (E-government) DOL also continues to seek other creative strategies and efficiencies to better serve our stakeholders. In April 2002, GovBenefits.gov was launched with DOL serving as the managing partner. GovBenefits' mission is to use the Internet to connect citizens to government benefit program eligibility information; increase access to information, particularly for people with disabilities; reduce the burden and difficulty of doing business with the government; and continue to add programs to become the single source for Federal, State, and local government benefit programs. In April 2005, DOL launched GovBenefits en Espanol and in April 2007, GovBenefits.gov was named as one of the Top 50 most innovative government programs in the Innovations in American Government Award program of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In fact, GovBenefits.gov was one of only six Federal programs so recognized. Since its 2002 launch, GovBenefits.gov has had over 25 million visits and now includes over 1,000 programs, both Federal and State. Performance Improvement Initiative
Strategic Planning and Program Performance In addition, the Department's commitment to the new Performance Improvement Initiative continues through the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) process and implementation of PART program improvement plans. To date, 35 DOL programs have been reviewed under the PART process. FY 2007 was the first year of in which previously reviewed programs were reassessed to determine the impact of program improvements identified in the first review. DOL has implemented nearly half of the non-legislative PART recommendations. Agency-specific PMA Program Initiatives In addition, DOL is responsible for three of the PMA components found in selected departments: Eliminating Improper Payments, Faith-Based and Community Initiative, and Federal Real Property Asset Management. Eliminating Improper Payments At DOL, developing strategies and the means to reduce improper payments is good stewardship and good business. Accurate payments lower program costs, thereby improving efficiency. The Department has three programs classified as high-risk for improper payments. Two are benefit programs Unemployment Insurance in ETA and the Federal Employees Compensation Act program in ESA and the third is an ETA grant program administered under the Workforce Investment Act. While Eliminating Improper Payments is still a fairly new PMA initiative, DOL is making progress and achieving results. Through the efforts of the Department's Office of the Chief Financial Officer and ETA, 35 States now use a cross-match of National Directory of New Hires data with State UI claimant data to identify individuals no longer eligible to receive UI benefits. In 2008, all States will be required to do so. Faith-Based and Community Initiative In 2007, DOL's Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiative worked with the Employment and Training Administration to fund a sixth year of Grassroots grants, which feature simplified application and reporting requirements. These modest $25,000 grants allow DOL to draw upon the unique assets FBCOs bring to the task of assisting individuals looking for training and employment. This is particularly true with hard-to-serve populations who often need long-term, in-depth assistance to find and retain jobs. In Program Year 2006, the grantees reported impressive results. Forty-three Grassroots grantees, in partnership with One-Stop Career Centers, provided an expansive range of services, including enabling 1,460 high-need individuals to enter employment. Significantly, 1,007 of these individuals ranging from ex-offenders to homeless individuals to persons with disabilities were helped to retain their jobs for at least six months. Part of the partnerships' success came through the efforts of the grantees to leverage a remarkable 14,275 volunteer hours! In FY 2008, we look forward to reporting greater achievements. Federal Real Property Asset Management As demonstrated above, the Department has continued to make solid progress in improving DOL's effectiveness and accountability to the American public. This is reflected in the fact that, since 2004, DOL has been honored with four President's Quality Awards for management excellence. More important than the awards are the results for the taxpayers highlighted in this report. We are dedicated to ensuring that our programs achieve the best possible results, are managed effectively, and provide high quality services. ![]()
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