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
Department of Labor Strategic and Outcome Goals FY
2005 |
Goal 1 - A
Prepared Workforce |
- Enhance opportunities for America's
workforce
- Increase Employment, Earning and
Retention
- Increase Opportunities for Youth
Employment
- Improve the Effectiveness of Information
and Analysis on the U.S. Economy
|
Goal 2 - A
Secure Workforce |
- Promote the economic security of workers
and families
- Increase Compliance with Worker
Protection Laws
- Protect Worker Benefits
|
Goal 3 -
Quality Workplaces |
- Foster quality workplaces that are safe,
healthy and fair
- Reduce Workplace Fatalities, Injuries and
Illnesses
- Foster Equal Opportunity
Workplaces
- Reduce Exploitation of Child Labor,
Protect the Basic Rights of Workers, and Strengthen Labor Markets
|
Goal 4 - A
Competitive Workforce |
- Maintain competitiveness in the 21st
Century
- Address Demand for New Replacement and
Skilled Workers
- Promote Job Flexibility and Minimize
Regulatory Burden
Figure 3: DOL Strategic
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:
Agency |
Strategic Program
Goal |
Agency-Level Needs for IT
Initiatives |
Employee Benefits Security
Administration (EBSA) |
Enhance Employee Pension &
Health Benefits Security |
- IT initiatives substantially supporting an Agency's action plan
for efficient and timely delivery of service to public.
- IT initiatives that directly provide solutions for the
organization and automation of the dissemination of information.
- IT initiatives that ensure confidentiality and/or privacy
requirements.
- IT initiatives that directly improve Agency's data
integrity.
- IT initiatives that directly or indirectly contribute to
increasing DOL's effectiveness in building stakeholder relationships.
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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.
Agencies, Bureaus & Offices
reviewed |
Agency-level Common Needs for IT
Initiatives |
Administrative
Review Board (ARB) Benefits Review Board (BRB) Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) Employee Benefit Security Administration (EBSA)
Employees' Compensation Appeals Board (ECAB) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) Employment Standards
Administration (ESA) International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB) Mine Safety
and Health Administration (MSHA) Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA) Office of the Administrative Law Judges
(OALJ) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management
(OASAM) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy (OASP) Office of
Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) Office of the Inspector General
(OIG) Office of Public Affairs (OPA) Office of the Solicitor (SOL)
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) Veterans' Employment and
Training Service (VETS) Women's Bureau (WB) |
- 1. IT initiatives substantially supporting an Agency's action
plan for efficient and timely delivery of service to public.
- IT initiatives that directly support the Agency's effort to
streamline communications.
- IT initiatives to be used to provide a foundation/solution for
accelerated case processing.
- IT initiatives offering a processing/sorting or record storing
solution that can be leveraged government wide.
- IT initiatives that directly support efforts/solutions that
increase customer service performance and customer satisfaction levels.
- IT initiatives directly contributing to increased Agency
productivity and performance.
- IT initiatives that directly increase an Agency's cost
avoidance strategy.
- IT initiatives that allow an Agency to measurably enhance
communication with citizens.
- IT initiatives that directly provide solutions for the
organization and automation of the dissemination of information.
- IT initiatives that directly support identification and
authentication requirements and targets.
- IT initiatives that directly support increased confidentiality
and/or privacy requirements.
- IT initiatives that directly improve an Agency's data
integrity.
- IT initiatives directly supporting non-repudiation
targets.
- IT initiatives that directly or indirectly contribute to
increasing DOL's effectiveness in building stakeholder relationships.
- IT initiatives that allow Agencies or Department to achieve
economies of scale.
- IT initiatives directly contributing to increased security.
- IT initiatives that directly or indirectly support the
achievement of goals geared towards Accessibility for the Disabled.
- IT initiatives that enhance IT skills and capacity within
specific Agencies.
- IT initiatives that provide Agencies with greater processing
speed, increased process reliability, and increase the ease of IT use.
- IT initiatives that expand the range of data collection
methods for respondents.
- IT initiatives that solve data-warehousing
problems/requirements.
- IT initiatives that secure and protect information technology
resources for Agencies and the Department
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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:
- E-Government: Ensure IT
initiatives and investments are customer-focused, results-oriented,
market-based, and cost-effective.
- Enterprise Architecture: Develop
and maintain an Enterprise Architecture that is reliable, adaptable, scalable
and driven by business and technology requirements.
- 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.
- Security: Provide a secure IT
infrastructure that proactively assures integrity, confidentiality, and
availability of DOL data and information systems.
- 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.
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