ACF OPRE: ACF Annual Performance Plans and Reports

STRATEGIC GOAL 4:

BUILD A RESULTS-ORIENTED ORGANIZATION

Rationale

In order for ACF to provide assistance to America's most vulnerable populations, it is essential that the organization focus on results, provide high quality, cost-effective and efficient services, meet customers' needs and expectations, and use state-of-the-art information technology to improve management and data systems.

The objectives for this goal are:

Develop and retain a highly skilled, strongly motivated staff
Improve automated data and management systems

Program Description, Content, Legislative Intent, and Program Goals

ACF has endeavored to embrace the principles of GPRA reinventing the way we do business through partnership building, strategic planning, measurable outcomes, customer focus, streamlining of operations and devotion to quality. ACF's goal of becoming a more results-oriented organization has brought about changes in its internal management. Its efforts in recent years include:

Reinventing the regional office structure to locate resources where partners most need them;
Developing and implementing diversity and minority initiatives that allow for alignment of the workforce with the goals and priorities and help us achieve our diversity objectives that reflect all groups including our most under-represented populations;
Establishing a successful labor-management partnership with the National Treasury Employees Union (which represents the bargaining unit);
Investing in technology such as videoconferencing equipment and satellite linkages to bring regional and central offices and partnership closer together and save on travel costs;
Developing an agency training strategy and implementing a new Distance Learning training capability across the organization;
Establishing a presence on the World Wide Web;
Reengineering the grants management business process to improve service to partners and achieve greater efficiency;
Surveying partners and customers for assessment and guidance on the quality and appropriateness of ACF's services; and
Establishing an ACF-wide Workforce Analysis Workgroup which made recommendations to senior staff for the most efficient and effective utilization of the ACF workforce in accomplishing ACF's priority results and other mandates now and into the future; and
Participating inthe Workforce Planning Project workgroup (part of a larger DHHS effort), which identified crosscutting work processes with needed core and technical competencies for the next three to five years and provided recommendations for future training and expansion of staff based on a competency assessment of the ACF workforce.

Examples of strategies that have proven most successful in strengthening ACF as a results-oriented organization include:

Assurance that human services sector agencies transitioned their information systems to the Year 2000 without interruption of benefits or services to children and families; ACF focused specific attention on five of its own programs-child care, child support enforcement, child welfare, low income home energy assistance (LIHEAP) and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF);
Implementation of the Balanced Scorecard to expand its performance measurement system to include customer service feedback, employee satisfaction as well as its program measurement system focused on results;
Initiation of the FasTrac Distance Learning opportunities for ACF employees nationwide to address and sharpen professional developmental needs: every employee has access to nearly 700 technical and non-technical training courses at no cost;
Participation in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), an index which has measured customer satisfaction with goods and services in the private sector since 1994.

9. Develop and retain a highly skilled, strongly motivated staff

Approach for the Strategic Objective: Change the way ACF does business by maintaining or increasing values such as effectiveness, efficiency, and diversity while promoting continuous training opportunities.

A request to increase Federal Administration by $11 million above the FY 2001 enacted level will provide funds for mandatory pay raises, additional support for the on-going implementation of the child welfare monitoring initiative, and 15 additional FTE and associated funding to maintain a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in accordance with the President's recent Executive Order.

Program-wide Performance

The original objective for FY 1999 and 2000 was to change the way ACF does business by reducing bureaucratic levels and relying more on teams; maintaining or increasing values such as effectiveness, efficiency and diversity while reducing the number of managers. The FY 2000 target ratio of 1:9 was not attained. Progress towards this goal has been stymied by severe outside hiring limitations. During FY 1998-1999, we were unable to reduce supervisory personnel for demographic reasons and the number of non-supervisory personnel continued to decline. This resulted in an increase in manager to staff ratio of 1:5. ACF replaced measure 9.1a with measure 9.1b (the FY 2001-2002 measure) which better reflects ACF's commitment to improve employee knowledge and skills.

During FY 2000, ACF confronted dangerously shrinking staff levels and a waning knowledge and skills bank due to attrition and separations. Simultaneously, expanding workload demands continued to increase the need for technically and technologically advanced staff. These combined challenges, within an agency over half of whose workforce are eligible to retire in the next five years, refocused efforts from initiatives of streamlining staff and decreasing the manager to staff ratio to developing a highly skilled, diversified staff to carry out its mission in the twenty-first century. To address these issues, ACF developed an agency training strategy that provides training for new hires and increases and broadens training opportunities for existing staff, and a diversity and minority initiative to ensure that ACF's workforce reflects all groups including our most under-represented populations.

ACF participated in the 1999 Employee Satisfaction Survey sponsored by National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Following are highlights of the results:

Management and the Union(s) work cooperatively on mutual problems (17 points above government-wide average, ranking #4 of those surveyed).
ACF employees have electronic access to information needed to do their jobs. (21 points above government-wide average, ranking #3 of those surveyed).
ACF has worked to eliminate the policy of reporting employees' hours on a daily basis. (25 points above government-wide average, ranking #1 of those surveyed.)
ACF employees are increasingly satisfied with the recognition that they receive for doing a good job (8 points above government-wide average and 5 points above the private-sector average.)

ACF has selected four areas from the survey to concentrate where scores were significantly below the government-wide average. These four areas provide the core of our Reinvention Priority Work Plan that is focused on employee communication and performance management; diversity and minority initiatives and training and staff development.

During FY 2001, ACF is analyzing information gathered for work force planning purposes in order to accurately gauge and project for the next 3 to 5 years: current agency workload, current employees' competencies, estimated future workloads and future competency needs. ACF will develop and begin implementing an action plan to address any identified gaps in the staffing needed to complete core workloads or in employees' competencies. These efforts will help us identify additional measures for tracking progress in this area. Additional measures will be incorporated in future GPRA annual performance plans.

Summary Table

Performance Measures		Targets		Actual Performance	Reference (page # in printed document)
9.1a. In FY 2000, increase ACF's manager-to-staff ratio from 1:4.6 in FY 1993 to 1:8. (dropped)		FY 01:dropped FY 00: 1:8 FY 99: 1:9*		FY 00: 1.5 FY 99: 1:7 FY 93: 1:4.6	Px M-162
9.1b. Each ACF staff member participates in at least one Distance Learning or other training opportunity directly related to increasing his/her job skills.		FY 02: 100% FY 01: 100% FY 00: (new in FY 01)		FY 02: FY 01: FY 00: 93% (baseline)
Original performance goal and target for FY 1999. Staff separations have been primarily non-supervisory without full replacement. New legislation, such as TANF, and organizational realignments have also affected this target. FY's 1999 and 2000 target ratio of 1:9 was not attained. Progress towards this goal has been stymied by severe outside hiring limitations. During 1998, we were unable to reduce supervisory personnel for demographic reasons and the number of non-supervisory personnel continued to decline. This resulted in an increase in our manager to staff ratio. We have replaced 9.1a with 9.1b (the FY 2001 measure) which better reflects ACF's commitment to improve employee knowledge and skills. Availability of FY 2000 Data:* Data will be available March 2001.
Total Funding (dollars in millions) See detailed Budget Linkage Table in Appendix 6 for line items included in funding totals.	FY 02: $174.9 FY 01: $163.9 FY 00: $147.8 FY 99: $144.5		Bx: budget just. section H Px: page # performance plan

Performance Measures for FY 2002 and Final Measures for FY 2001

9.1b. FY 2001: Each ACF staff member participates in at least one training opportunity directly related to increasing his/her job skills (baseline=FY 2000).

FY 2002: Each ACF staff member participates in at least one training opportunity directly related to increasing his/her job skills (baseline=FY 2000).

Data Source: ACF Administrative Records

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