DOL Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2003
Departmental Management Goals

Maintaining a Departmental Strategic Management Focus

The Department's Management Review Board, chaired by Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management Patrick Pizzella, meets monthly to discuss key management issues and challenges and DOL's process in meeting it's goals.

Photo Credit: Shawn T. Moore

The President's Management Agenda (PMA), announced in 2001, consists of reforms aimed at achieving a Government that is citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based. The five government-wide initiatives included in the agenda are Strategic Management of Human Capital, Competitive Sourcing, Improved Financial Performance, Expanded Electronic Government, and Budget and Performance Integration. The Department is committed to fully implementing these initiatives with the goal of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of DOL's programs.

For FY 2003, DOL had four outcome goals and eight performance goals associated with the PMA. The agencies with the leadership responsibility for accomplishing these goals are the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management. However, all DOL agencies necessarily play contributing roles in their internal management practices.

The Department's progress toward meeting the President's Management Agenda, as measured by the Administration's PMA Scorecard dated September 30, 2003, reflects the quality of our commitment. The Department achieved status scores of Yellow for four of the five Government-wide initiatives, and progress scores of Green for the same four initiatives – placing DOL near the top of all Cabinet agencies.

The President's Management Agenda Scorecard for DOL, as of September 30, 2003:

	Current Status		Progress
Human Capital		Yellow		Green
Competitive Sourcing		Red		Yellow
Financial Performance		Yellow		Green
E-Government		Yellow		Green
Budget & Performance Integration		Yellow		Green

It is within the framework of the PMA that we have established internal management goals in program support areas of Human Resources, Procurement, Financial Management, and Information Technology.

Highlights of progress are discussed below by PMA initiative.

Strategic Management of Human Capital

The Department achieved all three of its Human Resource performance goals. In FY 2003, DOL:

• Developed competencies for the final nine mission-critical occupations and developed/selected tools for workforce skills assessment based upon competencies. The other 18 mission-critical occupation competencies were developed in FY 2002.

• Improved diversity indicators for 38 percent of the professional and mission-critical occupations exhibiting under-representationin FY 2002.

• Continued improvement in the extent to which diversity in the DOL workforce reflects the civilian labor force by increasing the percentages of the two main under-represented groups – Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders.

• Reduced the rate of lost production days to 46.9 lost days per 100 employees.

• Reduced the overall occurrence of injuries and illnesses for DOL employees to 2.5 per 100 (projected)

• Achieved 83.6 percent on time filing of injury/illness claims with the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs.

• Initiated MBA and Management Development programs.

Competitive Sourcing

DOL achieved one of its Procurement performance goals and did not achieve the other. The Department directly converted to contract the commercial work performed by the equivalent of 168 full-time employees (FTE). This was short of the annual target, in part because the Administration eliminated the direct compensation process and replaced it with streamlined competitions. A goal to complete public-private competitions on a percentage of the positions listed on the Department's 2000 Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act inventory in FY 2004 has been established. After reaching the FY 2003 goal of awarding 30 percent of eligible service contracts over $25,000 using Performance-Based Service Contracting (PBSC) techniques, DOL has raised the target for FY 2004 to 40 percent. The Department also established the Office of Competitive Sourcing in FY 2003.

Improved financial performance

In FY 2003, DOL achieved both of its Financial Management performance goals. The Department met accelerated time frames for submission of quarterly and annual consolidated financial statements and launched an ambitious managerial cost accounting implementation project that included training over 130 DOL program and financial managers and creating cost models for almost half of all DOL agencies. In order to address a priority of the Administration, reduction of erroneous payments, the Department's largest benefit program, Unemployment Insurance (UI), targeted assistance to its State partners to improve payment accuracy. (In the UI program, States are responsible for issuing payments directly to eligible claimants.)

Expanding Electronic Government (E-government)

The Department did not achieve its Information Technology performance goal in FY 2003. However, DOL made substantial progress in enhancing security. Forty-four percent of DOL's IT systems have been certified and accredited, and successfully meet OMB IT security performance measures. An additional 40 percent of DOL's IT systems are operating under interim authority to operate and are on track for obtaining certification. The Department is ahead of schedule to obtain full operation authority for 90 percent of its IT systems by July 2004.

Budget and Performance Integration

DOL's commitment to performance-based management is evidenced by its quick acceptance of the challenge to prepare a budget request linking performance with resources, the goal of which is to better inform decision-makers about the public benefits to be achieved from the proposed levels of funding. During FY 2003, the Department piloted a new budget format for the FY 2004 Congressional Justification (final version of the President's Budget submitted in February 2003). For the FY 2005 budget, DOL agencies continued to refine the presentation of the relationship between resources and results and hone the precision of allocation of budget costs to performance goals

In the pages that follow, results and strategies for Departmental Management Outcome Goals and Performance Goals are discussed in more detail.