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FY 2005 Director's House Statement on Management |
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Fiscal Year 2005 Budget Request Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, Director Day 2: NIH Management Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee. Let me begin by thanking you for the opportunity to be here this morning to talk about how we are transforming the management of NIH. By taking a separate day for this presentation, you have shown how seriously you take the efficient management of science and business practices at the NIH. Let me assure you that I, along with all the leadership of the NIH, share that commitment with you. As any organization grows, it is imperative that it review its effectiveness.
Since I became Director, my colleagues and I have not only focused on
our scientific strategies (which we discussed yesterday), but have also
made bold innovations in the management of NIH. We have continually sought
new opportunities to improve our management, and find efficiencies in
our organization, infrastructure and information technology, consistent
with the President's Management Agenda, which includes Strategic Management
of Human Capital, Competitive Sourcing, Improved Financial Performance,
Expanded E-Government, and Budget and Performance Integration. Managing Our Corporate Responsibilities The Steering Committee and its Working Groups are greatly improving NIH's
corporate decision-making, streamlining and simplifying our management
processes. The IC Directors continue to formulate their specific scientific
directions and priorities, as well as maintain operational oversight of
their respective Institutes and Centers, while the Steering Committee
and its Working Groups focus on NIH-wide policies and necessary operational
decisions, including budgeting for common campus services, FTE allocation,
etc. This has led to greater clarity regarding NIH policy and its development,
and more efficient use of our time and resources. By embracing innovative new technologies and streamlining governance structures, we will continue to enhance the agency's management and administrative functions. Remarkably, because of improvements in productivity over the past ten years, while NIH funding has grown by 141 percent, our FTEs have increased by only 16 percent. As a further testament to the progress we have made, we have received numerous management awards. In October 2003 the NIH received a CEO Leadership Award from Diversity Best Practices, in recognition of our efforts to ensure a diverse medical research workforce. NIH was the only Federal Government agency to receive one of these awards. Also, the NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center program received the Government Solutions Center, E-Gov, Pioneer Award in 2002 for demonstrating innovative strategies and technologies required to deliver IT services in the digital world. NIH's environmental efforts have been recognized with three awards: the 2002 Significant Achievement Award for a Government Facility from Businesses for the Bay, and two Arbor awards in 2003 from Montgomery County for our Tree Preservation Program. NIH's activity-based management approach to charging Institutes and Centers for space received a 2003 GSA Achievement Award for Real Property Innovation. Our corporate responsibilities also include such topics as the real and
perceived conflicts of interest among NIH's researchers and Institute
Directors. I want to assure you that we take this matter with the utmost
seriousness, and are addressing it aggressively. I have put together a
Blue Ribbon Panel as a working group of NIH's Advisory Committee to the
Director (ACD). The charge of the Panel is to review and make recommendations
for improving the existing rules and procedures under which NIH currently
operates regarding real and apparent financial conflict of interest of
NIH staff and requirements and policies for the reporting of NIH staff's
financial interests. The panel is co-chaired by Bruce Alberts, Ph.D.,
President of the National Academy of Sciences, and Norman R. Augustine,
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Lockheed Martin Corporation.
The ACD will be receiving its report on May 6, and I will inform you of
the conclusions of the ACD as well as mine, next month. Managing Our Busines Practices In addition to these initiatives that are underway or nearing completion,
we are continuing to look for opportunities to transform our management
and administrative functions. We are continuing to develop and apply modern
management tools, to increase trans-NIH planning structures, to rationalize
a complex disease funding tracking system through the application of advanced
data mining management technologies, and to strengthen our most powerful
asset, our human resources and leadership. We are acutely aware of the
need to recruit and retain the best researchers and administrators to
accomplish our mission, and have begun to develop strategies for succession
planning for our scientific and administrative leadership positions. As we have transformed the NIH administrative structure to support world-class scientific research, we have also managed the transformation of the NIH physical infrastructure that supports this research. This investment in the physical infrastructure needed to support the NIH's on-campus research is exemplified by the new Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center (CRC), which will make its transformation from construction project to open-for-business status in December this year, when the facility becomes home to new inpatient units, outpatient facilities and research labs. The CRC combines state-of-the-art laboratories with patient care and procedure areas in one tightly integrated facility — the NIH Clinical Center created this successful model for translational research 50 years ago. The new CRC will be the largest hospital in the world totally dedicated to clinical research. The CRC will be the working environment for an unparalleled confluence of laboratory research and hospital care professionals with a breadth of expertise that spans many disciplines and diseases, and its physical and intellectual resources and environment are unique in the Nation. The distance from the bench to the bedside is, literally, just a few steps down the hall. The resulting combination of intellectual and physical resources fosters quick and formidable responses to new research opportunities and to emerging public health problems. I would like to invite all of you to come and tour the facility at your convenience, and see for yourselves the result of the years of planning and funding the Federal Government has made in the construction of this twenty-first century, state-of-the-art research facility. This facility, the culmination of years of transforming clinical research, will also foster interactive collaboration among clinicians and other researchers, and will benefit our nation for years to come. Managing Science These committees and task forces, of which I have mentioned but a few from among numerous possible examples, are a vital component of our ongoing active efforts to coordinate research programs and resources. Through these combined efforts, we are able to work together across NIH's Institutes and Centers to maximize our resources and accelerate research progress, spurring the translation of research findings into interventions for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease. One exciting tool we have developed to help manage the complexity of the scientific and disease challenges is a matrix that we have begun to use to categorize research efforts on the basis of their relative risk (in terms of payoff) and whether these efforts will be in the short- or long-term. We have successfully applied this matrix to diseases such as Autism and Parkinson's disease (about which Dr. Landis will speak), to our Roadmap planning, and to the development of our Government Performance and Results Act research outcome goals. Our next speakers, Drs. Allen Spiegel and Story Landis, will talk about some of these trans-NIH collaborations in which they are engaged, after they spend a few moments talking to you about how they put the funding you entrust to them to good use within their institutes. At NIH, our Institutes and Centers work hard to effectively manage our scientific portfolios, weighing emergent scientific opportunities for quality, depth and breadth of public health impact, and stage of research — all to benefit the health of the society we serve. We hope that their testimony will give you additional insights into how we accomplish management in relation to our scientific mission. Once they have completed their testimony, we would all be pleased to answer any questions that you may have. As science is entering its next revolutionary period, we are keenly aware
of the need to transform NIH's management in parallel with the progress
being made in science, so that we can successfully meet the challenges
raised by the inherent complexity of an agency that is now considerably
larger than it was even a few years ago. Thank you again for the opportunity
to testify on NIH's management initiatives.
William R. Beldon, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget, HHS
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This page was last reviewed on April 23, 2004 . |
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National Institutes of Health (NIH) |
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