PPP coordinates and monitors Interior’s progress toward achieving the President's Management Agenda goals for government-wide reform. In August 2001, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released the PMA, a five-point plan to improve Federal management and program performance. The PMA targets the government’s most apparent deficiencies in core management capabilities where the opportunity to improve performance is the greatest, and it applies to every Department and agency. The five elements of the PMA are:

 

• Strategic Management of Human Capital
• Competitive Sourcing
• Improved Financial Performance
• Expanded Electronic Government
• Budget and Performance Integration

 

Each of these shares a goal of enhancing citizen-centered governance focused on delivering results that matter to the American public.

OMB is using what is called an Executive Branch Management Scorecard to monitor the status and progress of agencies and Departments in attaining PMA goals. Interior has adapted this concept and developed a DOI Bureau Scorecard as a tool for promoting progress within these five components across the Department.

 

 

Interior’s Strategic Human Capital Management Plan

 

Interior's Strategic Human Capital Management Plan sets forth the actions that DOI will take from between 2003 and 2007 to ensure that our employees have the skills they need to carry out the mission of the Department. The Plan builds on the Department's GPRA Strategic Plan, which presents end outcomes and intermediate outcomes consistent with achieving our overall mission. The demographic features of our workforce, its geographic dispersion, and the wide diversity of skills needed to fulfill our mission are all explored in the Plan. The Plan describes several key challenges—an aging workforce; an insufficient number of people with pivotal business and information technology skills; and a need for negotiation and partnership skills among all employees in the field. In addition, it describes some of the internal and external “drivers” that are shaping the extent, complexity, and volume of our work. Interior’s PMA Tracking System is being used to help monitor our progress in meeting our Human Capital Plan goals.

 

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Competitive Sourcing at DOI
 
The PMA seeks to achieve efficient and effective competition between public and private sources to generate better value for our customers. The goal of Competitive Sourcing is not to decrease or arbitrarily contract Federal activities; instead, Competitive Sourcing focuses on bringing the best value for services to our citizens by opening up commercial functions to competition.
 
All Federal agencies, including the Department of the Interior, comply with the FAIR Act of 1998 by conducting an inventory to identify functions of the federal government that are not inherently governmental. Commercial activities performed by federal employees and listed in DOI's FAIR Act Inventory are reviewed for the purpose of deciding whether to continue them in-house or to outsource the performance of the activity.
 
In order to take a corporate approach to competitive sourcing, Interior established a one-stop competitive sourcing organization, The Center for Competitive Sourcing Excellence. The Center uses resources from a variety of disciplines, including human resources, budget, acquisition management, and program management to assist in accomplishing Competitive Sourcing.

 

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Improving Financial Performance

 

The Department first combined its performance and accountability reports in FY 2002, as called for by the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000. In assessing performance, Interior compares actual results against targets and goals established in our performance budget submission. The Department consistently earns an unqualified opinion for its consolidated financial statements.

 

The Department of the Interior's Financial Management Status Report and Strategic Plan FY 2004 - FY 2008 summarizes the Department's significant accomplishments, describes its approach to continued financial management improvement, and supports the financial management initiatives associated with the President's Management Agenda.

 

Over the past few years, Interior has significantly improved accountability and financial management. While we are pleased with our recent progress, we are very cognizant of the need to further enhance and improve our operations and program performance. The following three themes will guide our improvement over the next several years:

(1) Customer Value; (2) Accountability; and (3) Cooperation.

 

Link to DOI Office of Financial Management

 

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Expanded Electronic Government at Interior

 

E-Government uses improved Internet-based technology to make it easy for citizens and businesses to interact with the government, save taxpayer dollars, and streamline citizen-to-government communications. The President’s E-Government Strategy has identified several high-payoff, government-wide initiatives to integrate agency operations and information technology investments. The goal of these initiatives is to eliminate redundant systems and significantly improve the government’s quality of customer service for citizens and businesses. Interior has initiated an enterprise-wide E-Government process to provide internal and external customers with broader access to our services. The Department is developing a comprehensive E-Government strategic plan to provide a framework for providing citizen-based electronic services. Interior has launched several multi-agency E-Government projects aimed at making our services more citizen-centered, including Recreation One-Stop, Geospatial One-Stop, and Volunteer.gov/gov.

 

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Budget and Performance Integration

 

To provide a greater focus on performance, Interior is integrating performance information with budget requests. We are working to identify high-quality outcome measures, to accurately monitor the performance of programs, and to begin tying performance with associated costs. Various means are being used to meet these objectives, including the implementation of Activity-Based Costing/Management.

 

Examples of Interior's integrated performance and cost data include our GPRA Strategic Plan, Peformance and Accountability Reports, and Accent on Results. In 2001, we began shifting from a highly decentralized, strategic and annual planning approach (which produced nine separate bureau plans and a Departmental Overview), to a single, unified Departmental GPRA Strategic Plan. Intra-Departmental teams, with ideas from focus groups of interested citizens, created a mission framework—reconfirming our primary missions, and developing the outcomes, strategies, and performance measures for each of the mission areas. Our GPRA Strategic Plan took shape after a series of intense, multi-level internal reviews.

 

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DOI Bureau Scorecard

 

An adaptation of the President’s PMA scorecard, Interior’s scorecard is intended to be used internally to help Interior bureaus and offices assess their status and progress in realizing PMA goals. Criteria specific to Interior and its bureaus were developed through a cross-departmental effort. The criteria are applied using rating scales from 0-10 tied to color-rating bars (red for low scores, yellow for middle scores, and green for high scores) that visually indicate progress and status scores. Interior bureaus and offices use the scorecard to self-assess their progress every six months. Based upon the self-assessment, Department staff (including PPP staff), work with bureaus and offices to identify the next actions needed to be taken to “get to green.”

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Interior's Management Initiatives Tracking System (MITS)

The MITS is a web-based tool that helps Interior leadership track and monitor Department-wide progress in achieving our PMA goals and organizational performance goals. For more information on MITS, go to: http://www.doi.gov/ppp/mits.html.

Registered users of Interior's MITS may log on to the system here. If you are not a registered user, are a DOI employee, and would like an account, contact Sheri Harris . NOTE: Access to the MITS is currently limited to DOI employees.

 

 

Results.gov

In December 2002, the White House launched www.results.gov, a web site designed to help all Federal employees better serve the American people. This web site offers information about the President’s expectations, goals, and policies, and efforts to realize the President’s Management Agenda.