These are challenging and demanding times for Administrative and Financial Management (AFM) and its customers in the Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area: Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), Economic Research Service (ERS), and National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The pace of change, which has accelerated rapidly, is expected to continue. Expectations for quality service will continue to grow despite tighter budgets, fewer staff, consolidations of functions, and continued regulatory constraints.
AFM's success depends on its leadership in anticipating, understanding, and responding to customer needs. AFM must continually improve its services through use of its quality partnership, business process reengineering, and streamlining initiatives. AFM services must be cost effective and add value for our customers.
The AFM strategic
plan is the mechanism for building a partnership with our customers and
a framework for future decision making, priority setting, and resource
allocation. It is a means of unifying various initiatives and planning
efforts. Customers have been involved in identifying critical core services
and services that they no longer need. Based on customer input and our
own assessment of the future, AFM's constrained resources will be better
focused on providing, or improving upon, critical core services while eliminating
those services that are no longer needed. This plan communicates clear
action plans with performance targets and indicators by which customers
and employees can measure AFM's overall performance.
