The President's Management Agenda
Under Secretary Dudas reviews enterprise goals with executive level managers during an executive retreat.
Strategic Management of Human Capital — The USPTO’s 21st Century Strategic Plan , together with the USPTO Strategic Workforce/Restructuring 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 and its deployment across the organization; and has identified key competencies needed to fulfill the agency’s mission and strategic goals. The 21st Century Strategic Plan and the USPTO Strategic Workforce/Restructuring Plan demonstrate that the USPTO is focused on building competencies in response to customer demands for enhanced quality. We have continued both the primary patent examiner recertification program and the testing of junior examiners to ensure that patent examiners have the requisite knowledge and skills to be promoted to the GS-13 level and to be granted certification of legal competency. The Agency is leveraging competitive sourcing and e-government to better manage time devoted to examination of patent and trademark applications.
The USPTO has become a recognized leader in federal government telework programs, and has received numerous awards for its accomplishments in this regard. The Office was the recipient of the 2003 Mid-Atlantic Telecommuting Advisory Council’s Best Company/Organization for Teleworkers Award because of its leadership in telework policy, and active promotion of telework programs. In FY 2005, the Patent organization launched a patent hoteling program pilot providing participants the ability to work at home fully supported with complete access to online USPTO-provided resources in conducting their assigned duties. The pilot program incorporates the concept of “hoteling” where telecommuting participants reserve time in designated shared “hotel” offices at the Alexandria campus to conduct activities such as personal interviews with applicants, and attending meetings or training classes. Pilot participants received special training to enable them to work as effectively at home as in the office. Feedback from participants and reviews of the technologies used in the pilot will be used to finalize designs for a vastly expanded Telework program that could potentially allow virtually any USPTO employee to participate.
The 21st Century Strategic Plan also views workforce planning from an international perspective, and incorporates how work sharing can have an impact on USPTO’s human capital planning and management. In addition, the USPTO’s current organizational structure supports decision-making at the lowest appropriate level.
Competitive Sourcing — During FY 2005, the USPTO, in support of the President's Management Agenda, continued to competitively source those activities that have been identified as commercial in nature. The USPTO's 21st Century Strategic Plan , with the goal of increasing quality and productivity and decreasing pendency, identified new approaches for performing work that is currently accomplished by federal employees. The USPTO is currently in the process of and plans to successfully compete the implementation of competitive sourcing activities, to include a pilot of prior art searches in PCT applications, and classification of patent documents.
Improved Financial Performance — Again, in FY 2005, the USPTO is in compliance with all federal accounting principles and standards and has encountered no instances of material weaknesses in internal controls or non-compliance with financial related laws and regulations. We will continue to maintain and strengthen our internal controls and improve the timeliness and usefulness of our financial management information. In fact, for FY 2005, the USPTO met all quarterly financial reporting requirements instituted by the OMB. Again, the USPTO sustained its clean audit opinion, with FY 2005 marking the 13th consecutive unqualified audit opinion and the ninth consecutive year with no material weaknesses. The USPTO has a certified and accredited, 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 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 technical efficiency, and effectiveness measures. All major IT system investments are included in FY 2005 Exhibit 53 and Exhibit 300 business cases.
The USPTO is accelerating deployment of critical automated information systems, particularly the electronic end-to-end processing of patent and trademark applications. Deployment of the patent IFW system was successfully completed in FY 2004, facilitating the electronic processing and management of Patent application files. Electronic capture of all pending paper applications was completed in FY 2005, enabling the electronic management of 96.7 percent of applications undergoing examination and the designation of the electronic file as the official file. The USPTO Capital Planning and Investment Control Process (CPIC) governance process describes how and by whom transformation will be implemented within the agency. Among other things, the CPIC is a management vehicle designed to ensure execution, guidance, and oversight for capital programming and capital asset plans to achieve business transformation and compliance activities, and describes the guidance and management processes that support program management, execution and oversight.
The Supplemental Complex Repository for Examiners (SCORE), which was deployed in FY 2005, represents another component in electronic end-to-end processing. SCORE is a data repository system designed to augment IFW with the capture and retrieval of non-standard application content such as drawings, chemical files, and DNA sequence files. Examiners are provided immediate access to this data and the system includes features that provide efficient means of reviewing the information, such as a “find” feature to detect peptide strings with a within sequence ID’s. The Automatic Routing Tool was launched to assist in directing newly captured applications to the appropriate Technology Center. Additionally, EFS underwent major reengineering to a web-based architecture.
Activities aimed at providing the public with improved access to government includes the implementation of the PAIR in FY 2004. For the first time, anyone with Internet access could use the USPTO’s website to track the status of a public patent application as it moved from pre-grant publication to final disposition, and to review documents in the official application file. The system offered the public an advanced electronic portal for PDF viewing, downloading and printing an array of information and documents for patent applications. In FY 2005, the Patent organization began development of Private PAIR to provide applicants with secure private access to their unpublished application documents via the Internet as soon as the application is internally processed. Significant upgrades were made to eDAN to provide added user functionality and enhanced interface with other systems such as PALM, Private PAIR, and Public PAIR.
The USPTO has established additional options for filing a trademark application, consistent with the 21st Century Strategic Plan . By offering financial and market-based incentives, Trademark owners can now select the option that best meets their needs – with higher fees for filing on paper, and lower fees for filing and processing electronically. Changes in the fee structure and system improvements have led to an increase in the number of trademark applications that are filed through the award winning TEAS. More than 85 percent of applications for registration are now submitted electronically, making it easier than ever to file for federal trademark registration. Electronic communications also make it possible to conduct a preliminary search prior to filing an application, determine the status of pending and registered trademarks, respond to office actions, access general information on marks published, registered and renewed, file initial applications and maintain a registered mark through the USPTO website. The USPTO has continued to enhance this system and expand the number and type of transactions that can be completed on-line. Twenty-six TEAS forms are available and provide the means to handle most trademark transactions electronically.
Budget and Performance Integration — Since FY 1999, the USPTO has developed an annual corporate plan that links the annual performance plan and budget request, so that resource requirements for continuing programs and new initiatives are aligned with outputs and performance goals. In June 2002, the USPTO introduced the 21st Century Strategic Plan and an updated version of the plan in February 2003, in order to address issues raised by intellectual property stakeholders. The 21st Century Strategic Plan is a five-year plan that identifies critical tasks designed to provide the USPTO and external stakeholders with a long-term vision of agency goals, potential funding levels, and planned outcomes. The USPTO has refined its budget formulation process to better equate budgetary resources with both enterprise-wide strategic goals and individual unit performance targets. The annual integrated budget/performance plan is an effective and efficient way of establishing accountability of resources against performance. The agency routinely monitors program performance targets to ensure achievement of performance goals. Performance goals are evaluated regularly against stakeholder requirements, business conditions, and planned and actual resources available. Organizational goals and crosscutting performance measures are also included in senior executive members’ performance appraisal plans to ensure alignment with agency mission, goals, and strategic plan objectives.
The "Wave Wall" of the new USPTO Museum located in the Madison Building.
