Section 2: Strategic Framework

This section describes the logic and the key considerations on the path to defining the Department's IT strategy and IT strategic goals. The first portion of this section presents this process to justify the Department's choice of IT strategy. In the second portion (2.3, 2.4, and 2.5) the plan clarifies and articulates the Department-level mission goals, the Agency program goals, Agency-level needs, and the Federal Management reform goals that contribute to DOL's choice of IT strategy and IT strategic goals. The third portion defines the Department's specific IT strategy and its IT strategic goals.

2.1 Strategic Decision Making Process

The formulation of this IT Strategic Plan was outlined in the "DOL Information Technology Strategic Plan Formulation - January, 2005". In this document, the IT Program managers and the Office of the CIO presented their vision of how to employ the IT strategic decision making process. The Working Group adopted this process starting in March 2005.

The Department began with the premise that to be effective, any strategic framework or strategy must come from evaluating current conditions, scanning the environment, weighing strategic factors, and selecting the best strategy from among all possible options.

The Department's IT strategy, IT strategic goals and IT strategic framework are a direct result of its strategic decision making process. Appendix A diagrams this eight phase approach.

2.2 Hierarchical System of Organizing Goals and Programs

The IT Program at DOL orders the complex array of Department-level and Agency-level strategic goals and objectives into a hierarchical pyramid. The Department sets its mission, vision and goals first, and each Agency within the Department follows below. The IT initiatives exist primarily to support these goals. The hierarchy of organizing goals for the IT Program initiatives thus flows from the Department to the Agency to the sub-Agency level.
The strategic framework for the IT Program at DOL is largely defined by the scope of internal activities undertaken by the Department (discussed in section 2.4). Other factors influence these activities. The needs of the Department itself - as an integrated organization with an over-arching mission and vision also factor heavily in the selection of an appropriate framework. Similarly, the interests of other entities of the Federal government impact the choice of DOL's IT strategic framework. Many other Federal Departments have a stake in how DOL and its IT Program integrate themselves into the Federal IT enterprise structure.

The following pyramid, taken as a framework, defines the hierarchy of goals and objectives to provide a clear target for aligning the resources and activities of the IT Program with the Department's mission and vision.

Figure 2: Pyramid/Hierarchical Structure of Goals and Programs in the Department

This framework is an integral component of the IT Program's strategy. Its application and acceptance throughout DOL aids in IT operational and IT management processes.

• First, by accepting that IT strategic goals are directly linked to the Department's strategic goals, new measures of contribution and performance can be considered. In the past, when IT strategic goals were viewed solely as supportive functions, the performance measures were limited to Agency-specific outcomes.
  
  
• Second, by placing IT strategic goals parallel to the Agencies' strategic goals, Agency and IT Program management recognize that IT is no longer dispensable - it is indispensable to the Department and equally deserving of Agency and Departmental resource and attention. This aids during the establishment of Departmental priorities for resource allocation and capacity building activities.
  
  
• Third, by using IT initiatives as the pyramid's base, the Department recognizes that some federally-mandated targets, such as the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) of 2000, intend to use IT in the provision of service to Americans. This recognition means that IT resources become strategically managed resources as opposed to being directed in a reactive, isolated manner.
  

2.3 Department Mission Goals

In the hierarchy of goals that drive the selection of IT strategies at DOL, perhaps the most important strategic factors are those over-arching goals set by the Department to achieve the outcomes implied by its mission and vision. These strategic mission goals are described in the DOL Strategic Plan for Fiscal Year 2005. The DOL Strategic Plan identifies the following four high-level strategic goals that define Department mission priorities:

Goal 1: A Prepared Workforce: Enhance opportunities for America's workforce. American prosperity is inextricably linked with the state of the American workforce. Without a workforce equipped to perform the jobs offered by employers, America's economy will not maintain its competitive edge in the global marketplace. The Department's commitment to preparing American workers for the opportunities available to them is the focus of this strategic goal.

Goal 2: A Secure Workforce: Promote the economic security of workers and families. The Department is committed to achieving the highest level of protection for America's workforce. The Department's commitment to worker protection is expanding to provide assistance to employers who must comply with necessary regulations. Compliance assistance, along with targeted enforcement, will help prevent violations, leverage our resources, and position the Department to deal with 21st Century challenges.

Goal 3: Quality Workplaces: Foster quality workplaces that are safe, healthy and fair. All American workers are entitled to safe, healthy, and fair workplace environments. This Quality Workplaces goal commits DOL to promoting work sites where safety and health hazards are minimized and where equal opportunities and fairness to working people are fostered and ensured.

Goal 4: A Competitive Workforce: Maintain competitiveness in the 21st Century economy. Our country's future economic development and ability to be competitive in a global economy depends on the competitiveness of our workforce. To succeed, our policies must embrace the emerging changes in our economy - in how we actually work, where we work, what skills we need, and how we balance our professional and family lives. Department Mission goals are important strategic factors that have been given appropriately considerable weight in the IT strategy.

2.4 Agency Program Goals

In the hierarchy of goals that drive the development of the IT Strategy, the second most important factor is the highly specific program goals set by the Agencies to achieve their own specific missions.

These program goals are elaborate and differ greatly in scope. (Please see full detail in Appendix B). What is necessary in the IT strategy formation process is an understanding of the IT implications these Agency program goals create.

DOL catalogued Agency-level program goals. For each Agency-level program, the IT implications were researched and documented, drawing upon analysis from each Agency's enterprise architecture.

The results of this effort are illustrated by an example from Employee Benefits Security Administration in Table 2 below:

Table 2: Sample Agency Strategic Program Goals

For the IT Strategic Plan, it is not specificity of program goals that matters, but the universal or common needs across all internal groups for different types of IT initiatives. This Department-wide program goal analysis produced another milestone in this IT strategic decision making process: a set of commonly-shared Agency-level needs for different types of IT initiatives.

Table 3 presents the Agencies and the Agency-level common needs for IT initiatives that factor heavily in the IT strategy formation process.

Table 3: Agencies and the Agency-level common needs for IT initiatives

What this catalogue of needs provides is an understanding of the Department's IT initiative needs as a whole organization. By seeing IT needs in this way, it is possible to derive an IT strategy that is practical and applicable to the entire Department. How these IT initiative needs are serviced by the IT strategy, the IT strategic goals and the IT initiatives is explained in Section 2.6 and 2.7.

2.5 Federal Management Reform Goals

Among the most important drivers of change are the Federal Management Reform goals in the form of Presidential, legislative or OMB directives. What the President envisioned in management reforms is a government that is: citizen-centered, not bureaucracy-centered; results-oriented, not output oriented; and market-based, actively promoting, rather than stifling, innovation through competition.

There are five goals within the President's Management Agenda (PMA). The government-wide areas of focus for policy and practice development described in the agenda are:

• Strategic Management of Human Capital
• Competitive Sourcing
• Improved Financial Performance
• Expanding Electronic Government
• Budget & Performance Integration

In addition to these government-wide management reform focus areas, the President's Agenda calls on the Department of Labor to work with other Federal Agencies to achieve these goals.

More recently, two additional management reform focus areas were added to the Agenda:

• Eliminating Improper Payments
• Federal Real Property Asset Management

The Department continually reports its progress in achieving these goals and is ranked on a quarterly basis using a red, yellow, or green score on the OMB Management Scorecard.

To measure its progress, the Department has instituted regular external environment scans (reviews of legislative, Presidential directives, other Department activities) conducted as part of ongoing planning.

2.6 Department IT Strategy

Developing a Department-wide IT strategy that is useful and operationally practical for all internal stakeholders is a synergistic activity. As outlined within this section many different internal and external factors have been weighed and considered. The environment in the IT Program's case as described previously includes: a complex mission, a diverse collection of Agency needs, and rapidly changing external requirements.

The strategic question facing the Department was: Within this environment what are the strategy alternatives available?

Strategy Alternatives were considered and evaluated. The Department sought a strategy that took into account both internal and external drivers of change, while capitalizing on Department strengths in IT governance, implementation experience and business knowledge.

Conclusion

The best option for DOL is a blended IT strategy that includes the adoption of a Department-wide IT strategic framework, an IT strategy, and the establishment of five Department IT strategic goals.

An IT Strategic Framework: Section 2.0 noted that the Department-wide agreement on the IT strategic framework (Figure 2: Pyramid/ Hierarchical Structure of Goals and Programs in the Department) was an important milestone. Here the inherent value of that framework can be better understood.
To achieve the efficiency required of the Department in the areas of IT infrastructure and management, consistency in approach and understanding across the Department must be a prerequisite. In the environment that was described, it was understood that common areas of agreement were going to be achieved. Through this structured strategic decision making process and through the activities of devising and agreeing upon a strategic framework, some common agreement areas were found. This common understanding and the process used to achieve these agreements are major contributors to the future implementation of the IT strategy. As this strategic framework is deployed throughout the IT Program and in subsequent IT initiatives and IT planning efforts, it will become a standard operating aspect to the Department as a whole.

A blended IT Strategy: The Department of Labor's IT strategy calls for the leveraging of universally-accepted processes and forums to build a common body of best practice knowledge of IT initiative development and federated IT operations. These existing operational processes and forums, coupled with the common body of knowledge, will be applied to better manage new IT initiatives thereby achieving the Department's IT strategic goals.

The IT Program will continue to use common areas of agreement to create forums where individual Agency IT interests and operational processes are reworked into a federation of IT initiatives. The value of this IT strategy is that efficiency and cost effectiveness will be achieved when each IT Initiative undertaken anywhere within the Department follows some agreeable set of common standards in proposing, developing, managing, implementing, and performance reporting. This strategy will evolve and sharpen to improve business delivery through the use of information technology.

The IT strategy is directly tied to the achievement of the IT Program vision in two fundamental ways. First, the strategy describes how to use existing processes and forums to create a strong IT governance framework. Second, in seeking to incorporate innovative technological processes, the strategy identifies how the Department will build and apply the necessary body of knowledge through existing collaborative forums.

Department IT Strategic Goals: Similar to the IT strategic framework, the deliberation and ultimate agreement on five IT strategic goals is both a milestone and important prerequisite to future performance of the IT Program and its IT initiatives. These goals are an element of the strategy. They represent both an implied universally-accepted process and an element within the best practices body of knowledge. Similar to a strategy, these goals give the Department a consistent guiding direction against which it can evaluate the current and any future IT initiative(s). These goals and their application are discussed in the following section.

Together these three elements comprise the core of the Department's IT strategy being recommended. They are major contributors to the achievement of the IT Program's mission and vision and represent the drivers of future performance in the areas of IT initiative development, implementation, management, evaluation and control.

2.7 Department IT Strategic Goals

The following strategic goals contribute to the framework as providers of enabling products and services:

1. E-Government: Ensure IT initiatives and investments are customer-focused, results-oriented, market-based, and cost-effective.
2. Enterprise Architecture: Develop and maintain an Enterprise Architecture that is reliable, adaptable, scalable and driven by business and technology requirements.
3. IT Management and Governance: Promote cost-effective IT solutions by sharing and implementing best practices, collaborating on projects and initiatives and ensuring interoperability where appropriate.
4. Security: Provide a secure IT infrastructure that proactively assures integrity, confidentiality, and availability of DOL data and information systems.
5. Human Capital: Develop and maintain a high quality, competitive IT workforce.
   

DOL has selected these goals for four primary reasons:

• They are practical.
• They are essential to the Department's progress.
• They will elicit the attention and support of the senior staff of the Department who can be held accountable.
• They address areas for which measurements can and will be specified.

These IT strategic goals when implemented, will truly make the Department of Labor more effective and efficient in the short term and increasingly so in the long term. The Department's mission, vision and strategic goals cannot be fully achieved unless the IT Program's strategic goals are achieved.