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Collage showing the new U S P T O building during construction as well as people working in an office. Image is part of the header for the U S P T O Performance and Accountability Report for Fiscal Year 2003
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Performance and Accountability Report Fiscal Year 2003
Management Discussion and Analysis

Table of Contents |  Management |  Financial |  Supplemental |  Auditor |  IG |  Other

The President's Management Agenda

Strengthening management

The President has established a bold strategy to improve the Federal Government's management and performance by calling on Federal agencies to focus on and solve the most critical problems. The information below provides the USPTO's assessment of the five government-wide initiatives described in the President's Management Agenda. An assessment by OMB and Commerce has not been performed for the USPTO PMA initiatives.

Human Capital: The USPTO 21st Century Strategic Plan supports the human capital elements. We are providing the tools and the resources to ensure that the USPTO has a highly qualified, certified, knowledge-based, and accountable workforce. The 21st Century Strategic Plan, together with the USPTO Strategic Workforce/Restructure Plan lay out an explicit workforce planning strategy that is linked to the Agency’s strategic and program planning efforts. The Agency has projected its current and future human capital needs, including: the size of the workforce; deployment across the organization; and key competencies needed to fulfill its mission and strategic goals. The 21st Century Strategic Plan and the USPTO Strategic Workforce/Restructure Plan demonstrate that the USPTO is focused on building competencies in response to customer demands for enhanced quality, leveraging competitive sourcing and e-Gov to better manage time devoted to examination of patent and trademark applications. The 21st Century Strategic Plan also views workforce planning from an international perspective, as well as how work sharing can have an impact on human capital planning and management. In addition, the USPTO’s current organizational structure supports decision-making at the lowest appropriate level. In the primary examination units - the Patent Organization and the Trademark Organization - only one layer of management exists between the Senior Executive Service level and the patent examiner or trademark examining attorney. Primary patent examiners and trademark attorneys have full signatory authority to grant patents and register trademarks on behalf of the U.S. without further supervisory review.

Competitive Sourcing: The USPTO is committed to achieving performance enhancements and cost-savings through competitive sourcing. In this regard, we have already outsourced many administrative functions, such as payroll, mail processing/handling, clerical support, data transcription, systems maintenance and development, and help desk support. In particular, service contracts have presented an excellent opportunity to help us deal with fluctuating workloads and minimize the impact on our employees as the USPTO transitions to a fully electronic workplace. The 21st Century Strategic Plan offers new approaches for performing work that is currently accomplished by Federal employees. While preserving the inherently governmental responsibilities for examination, the USPTO is committed to increasing patent examiner output by relying on commercial entities for conducting prior art searches, classifying patent documents, and performing administrative reviews associated with the examination process. All decisions regarding patentability will remain the responsibility of patent examiners who are USPTO employees.

Improved Financial Management: The USPTO is in compliance with all Federal accounting principles and standards and has reported no instances of material weaknesses in internal controls or non-compliance with financial related laws and regulations. The USPTO will continue to maintain and strengthen its internal controls and improve the timeliness and usefulness of its financial management information. FY 2003 marked the eleventh consecutive year of an unqualified audit opinion and seventh consecutive year with no material weaknesses. The USPTO has a strong, fully integrated financial management system and uses a data warehouse to accommodate both financial and operational data. The data warehouse is used by managers for analyzing financial results and performance and by Supervisory Patent Examiners for managing patent processing timeframes. The USPTO also operates a mature ABC system that captures costs of core mission activities and both direct and indirect costs for the entire USPTO. Managers use data from the ABC system to analyze the cost of operations when making decisions regarding improving processes, setting fees, or developing budget requirements.

E-Government: The USPTO is accelerating deployment of critical automated information systems, particularly the electronic end-to-end processing of patent and trademark applications in conjunction with the e-Gov initiative. In addition, the USPTO is currently working on ways to improve delivery schedules, reliability, performance, security, and monitoring the cost of its automated information systems. In FY 2004, the USPTO will implement the Madrid Protocol along with the Trademark Information System, a trademark electronic file management system. The USPTO is also on target to deliver an operating pipeline to process patent applications electronically by October 1, 2004. At the center of the patent e-Gov strategy is the EPO ePHOENIX system. This collaboration will help to achieve common goals and share systems already in use or in development. The system implemented in October 2004 will be an IFW that includes an electronic image of all incoming and outgoing paper documents.

The USPTO chooses IT projects that best support its mission and comply with its enterprise architecture. Individual projects are evaluated in the broader context of technical alignment with other IT systems, as well as the investment’s impact to the USPTO IT portfolio’s performance, as measured by cost, benefit, and risk. As part of the Capital Planning and Investment Control process, the USPTO prioritizes each investment and decides which projects will be funded in subsequent fiscal years. Once selected, each project is managed and monitored consistently throughout its life cycle. At key milestone dates, progress reviews are conducted to compare the project’s status to planned benefit, cost, schedule, and technical efficiency and effectiveness measures.

Budget/Performance Integration: The USPTO develops an annual corporate plan that integrates the performance plan and budget so that program activities and new initiatives are aligned with outputs and targeted results. Budget resources are allocated to the programs based on the requirements identified for achieving organizational goals and forecasted incoming workload. Resource allocations are modified as workload projections and fee income change. The 21st Century Strategic Plan is a five-year plan with identified critical tasks designed to provide the USPTO and external organizations (e.g., Administration, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Congress, other stakeholders) with a long-term vision of Agency goals, potential funding levels, and planned outcomes. The USPTO allocates budget resources to the programs consistently, adhering to the concept of linking resources to achieving both enterprise-wide strategic goals and individual unit performance targets.

Photo showing Commissioner of Trademark Anne H. Chasser posing with members of the The Trademark Postal Team. The team received the General Services Administration’s coveted Interagency Resources Management Conference Team Award. The award was presented for developing a fully automated e-government system that generates and sends bulk mail to the U.S. Postal Service's NetPOST Web site for printing, stamping and mailing.

Commissioner of Trademark Anne H. Chasser poses with members of the The Trademark Postal Team. The team received the General Services Administration’s coveted Interagency Resources Management Conference Team Award. The award was presented for developing a fully automated e-government system that generates and sends bulk mail to the U.S. Postal Service's NetPOST Web site for printing, stamping and mailing.

 

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