Fiscal Year 2000 Performance Report and INTRODUCTION |
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This document combines the Department of Justice (DOJ) Performance Report for FY 2000 and Performance Plan for FY 2002. Combining our report on past accomplishments with our plans for the upcoming year provides the reader a useful, complete and integrated picture of our performance. It represents another step forward in the continuing efforts of the Department of Justice to implement the tenets of performance-based management at the heart of the Government Performance and Results Act. Further, this document satisfies the requirements for the Attorney General’s Annual Report. A separate Annual Report for FY 2000 will not be published.
The Department of Justice is headed by the Attorney General of the United States. It employs about 120,000 persons including attorneys, investigators, border patrol agents, deputy marshals, correctional officers, and others. It is comprised of 38 separate component organizations (see organization chart). These include the U. S. Attorneys, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Bureau of Prisons, the U. S. Marshals Service, and the Office of Justice Programs, among others. Although headquartered in Washington, DC, the Department conducts much of its work in offices located throughout the country and overseas.
"[To] enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law, provide Federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime, seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior, administer and enforce the Nation's immigration laws fairly and effectively, and ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans."
RELATIONSHIP TO THE STRATEGIC PLAN
The Department of Justice Strategic Plan (which is available on the Internet at http://www.usdoj.gov/05publications/05_4.html
) provides the overall framework for the Department’s planning, budgeting and reporting activities. The Strategic Plan identifies seven overarching strategic goals the Department pursues in carrying out its mission:- Keep America Safe by Enforcing Federal Criminal Laws;
- Prevent and Reduce Crime and Violence by Assisting State, Tribal, Local and Community Based Programs;
- Protect the Rights and Interest of the American People by Legal Representation, Enforcement of Federal Laws, and Defense of U.S. Interests;
- Fairly and Effectively Administer the Immigration and Naturalization Laws of the United States;
- Protect American Society by Providing for the Safe, Humane and Secure Confinement of Persons in Federal Custody;
- Protect the Federal Judiciary and Provide Critical Support to the Federal Justice System to Ensure it Operates Effectively; and
- Ensure Excellence, Accountability and Integrity in the Management and Conduct of Department of Justice Programs.
The Strategic Plan also sets forth long-term objectives and strategies, identifies cross cutting programs, and describes external factors that may affect goal achievement.
The combined FY 2000 Performance Report and FY 2002 Performance Plan is a companion document to the Department’s Strategic Plan. While the Strategic Plan is broad and long-range, the combined Report and Plan is more specific and short-term. It describes the goals and performance targets we will pursue in FY 2002 in support of our seven long term strategic goals, the resources and activities that will help us reach these targets, and the progress we achieved during the past year. It is also a companion document to the Department’s FY 2002 budget request, since it reflects the levels of performance the Department expects to achieve based on the resources it has requested.
While the combined report and plan covers each of the Department’s seven strategic goals, it provides a high-level view of the Department’s performance that, of necessity, does not reflect every program or activity of the Department. Readers seeking more comprehensive and detailed information should look to the budget submissions of the individual component organizations.
LINKAGE TO THE BUDGET
At the Department of Justice, performance planning and reporting is incorporated into the budget process. We recognize that performance information is vital to making resource allocation decisions and should be an integral part of the budget. In presenting performance information with the budget, individual Annual Performance Plans are prepared to accompany the budget request of specific Department components. These individual Annual Performance Plans provide more detailed information on respective programs and constitute the foundation of the Department
's plan. This Annual Performance Plan is attainable within the Department's FY 2002 budget request and the performance targets are attainable within the resource levels requested. Changes in resource levels from year to year are the result of budget adjustments and link to the appropriated amounts for the year with actual obligations reported in FY 2000, enacted levels for FY 2001 and requested levels for FY 2002.MEASURING LAW ENFORCEMENT PERFORMANCE
The Department of Justice is committed to performance-based management. Over the past several years, we have worked to improve our measures so that they are realistic and meaningful. We have established performance goals and indicators that reflect results, not just workload or processes. For example, we focus law enforcement efforts on disrupting and dismantling targeted criminal groups, such as major drug trafficking organizations, La Cosa Nostra membership, Asian and Eurasian criminal enterprises, and major violent gangs. For our debt collection activities, we measure estimated annual savings to consumers resulting from our efforts. For border control, we identify and project corridors where we have effectively controlled the border, determined after analyzing a variety of indicators such as crime rates along the borders and illegal alien apprehension rates. In those areas, such as litigation, where results-oriented measurement is particularly difficult, we will keep working to establish meaningful outcome goals and measures.
Measuring law enforcement performance presents unique challenges. First, "success" for the Department of Justice is when justice is served fairly and impartially. It cannot be reduced to simplistic numerical counts of activities such as arrests, cases, or convictions. Therefore, although the Department provides retrospective data on these activities, it does not target levels of performance. The Department is concerned that doing so would lead to unintended and potentially adverse consequences.
Success for the Department is also when crime or wrong-doing is deterred due to the presence of a highly effective enforcement capacity. Although measuring deterrence may be impossible, we have introduced the concept of "optimal deterrence" and "maximum feasible capacity" as indices of our state of readiness to thwart present and future threats.
Finally, it is extremely difficult to isolate the effects of our work from other factors that affect outcomes and over which the Department of Justice has little or no control. Although we are encouraged when the national crime rate falls, as it has for the past eight years, the Department does not rely on macro level indicators, such as national crime rates, in measuring its performance. Many factors contribute to the rise and fall of the crime rates, including federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement activities and sociological, economic, and other factors. Instead, we have focused on more targeted and narrowly defined indicators such as those described above.
MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES AND INITIATIVES
The combined FY 2000 Performance Report and FY 2002 Performance Plan gives particular attention to the major management challenges confronting the Department. Management challenges run the gamut from maintaining the security of information systems to ensuring sound financial management. They are areas of concern that bear significantly on how well the Department carries out its mission and meets its responsibilities as stewards of public funds. Management challenges have been identified based on the Department’s FY 2000 Management Controls Report as well as work conducted by the Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the General Accounting Office. Specific goals and measures are listed for each of these management challenges.
In addition, FY 2002 goals and measures have been established for each of the Administration’s management reform initiatives. These include delayering management levels to streamline our organizations, making better use of performance based contracts, expanding the application of on-line procurement and other e-government services and information, and expanding Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 competitions and more accurate FAIR Act inventories.
The Department of Justice views data reliability and validity as critically important in the planning and assessment of our performance. This document contains a discussion of data validation and verification for each performance measure. In addition, to ensure that data contained in this document are reliable, each reporting component was surveyed to ensure that data reported met the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standard for data reliability. Data that do not meet this standard were not included in the Report and Plan. The OMB standard is as follows:
"Performance data is acceptably reliable when there is neither a refusal nor a marked reluctance by agency managers or government decision makers to use the data in carrying our their responsibilities. Performance data need not be perfect to be reliable, and the cost and effort to secure the performance data possibly can exceed the value of any data so obtained."
This document presents to the President, the Congress, and the public a clear picture of how the DOJ has used, and is planning to use, its resources to accomplish its mission. The body of the document is divided into seven sections, one for each of the seven strategic goals listed above. Under each strategic goal is an introduction to that goal, a discussion of the major management challenges associated with that goal, a description of any evaluations that have been or are planned for programs supporting that goal, and all strategic objectives that are the underpinnings for achieving that goal.
Each strategic objective is further divided into two primary sections. The first subsection begins with an annual goal that reflects the strategic objective. Under it are the over-arching strategies we plan to use to meet the strategic goal, as well as a description of the means (resources) we need for meeting that goal. The second subsection addresses our performance both past and anticipated in meeting the strategic objective. This subsection divides the strategic objective into manageable "performance clusters" that can be measured and described in detail. We discuss our performance in FY 2000, evaluate our FY 2001 performance plan based on that performance, and describe our planned performance for FY 2002. Each performance subsection ends with a discussion of any crosscutting activities that affect that performance cluster.
Performance planning is an iterative process. As we learn, we continue to refine our goals and measures; some goals and measures, therefore, will change from year to year. All FY 2000 discontinued measures are included in Appendix A, since they have little relevancy to our current programmatic emphasis. In addition, the charts labeled "discontinued measure" within the Strategic Goal sections are discontinued FY 2001 indicators. They are displayed next to the newly developed indicators to show the maturation of our measurement process. Finally, we have reported FY 2000 actual performance for all indicators, whether they are discontinued, continued, or new. This provides a complete and comprehensive picture of our program accomplishments.
The management challenges described under each strategic goal include those issues that the Department regards as "material weaknesses" or "material nonconformances" (see Appendix B), and that the Attorney General has reported to the President in the DOJ FY 2000 Management Controls Report (available to the public on the Internet at http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/mps/fy2000mngmnt_control.htm
). We have also included as management challenges those issues that the DOJ OIG considers the ten most serious management challenges for the Department (see Appendix B). Although there is some overlap, note that the OIG’s ten issues may or may not be considered material weaknesses by the Department. The OIG list includes issues, such as grants management, that are inherently risky. Even though they may not be a problem for DOJ at this time, they require a high level of continuing attention to ensure the resources involved are used appropriately.The Appendix include (A) Report on FY 2000 discontinued performance measures; (B) a list of DOJ FY 2000 material weaknesses and nonconformances; (C) the DOJ OIG’s letter to Congress listing the ten most serious management challenges facing the DOJ; (D) a glossary of abbreviations and acronyms; (E) a list of DOJ component web sites; and (F) a report on Intellectual Property, which is required to be included in the Attorney General’s Annual Report.
This document is available on the Internet at www.usdoj.gov.
COMPONENT ORGANIZATIONS
