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Strategic Objective

Strengthen organizational capabilities to drive customer-focused, outcomes-driven mission performance. (OS, All Bureaus)

Strategic Objective

Themes:

Management

DOC.gov

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Overview
Progress Update

Overview

This objective focuses on the high-priority, cross-cutting (people, technology, and management) initiatives that are critical to mission success. First and foremost, the success of the Department depends on an engaged workforce that benefits from meaningful work, clear organizational direction, and a culture of excellence in serving customers and delivering results. Second, success during a time of rapidly-evolving technology is achieved only when employees have the right technology tools and information to do their job effectively. Third success requires managing

Progress Update

During FY 2014, the Department of Commerce (DOC) made progress in delivering better services, solutions and outcomes that benefit the American people by strengthening organizational capabilities to drive customer-focused, outcome-driven mission performance. DOC focused its efforts on bolstering employee engagement and customer service, building a learning organization, and managing for results. The Department also made strides towards improving facilities, support services and information technology products and services to drive mission success. The Department requires a 21st century work environment and IT infrastructure that supports collaborative problem solving, superior customer service and provides capabilities to share and transform data for decision making. Shared services across bureaus are central to an aggressive plan to achieve these ends, along with a continual focus on cybersecurity.

Unifying bureau CIO operations around shared principles, practices and systems has proven to be a significant challenge. The collaborative development of DOC IT Transformation Road Map has been a critical advance in addressing this challenge. A challenge for shared services has been determining how to focus early stages of the initiative to maximize service improvement and demonstrate proof of concept. The Shared Service Governance Board’s first priority will be to determine where to target efforts to maximize near term benefit to Department bureaus.

FY 2014 Accomplishments include:

The Partnership for Public Service ranked the Department as the 2nd Best Place to Work in the Federal Government for 2014 out of 19 large Federal agencies. The Patent Office was ranked 2nd out of 314 agency subcomponents.
In June, the Department convened the first Commerce Senior Executive Service (SES) Summit, which focused on engaging and empowering executives to achieve the Operational Excellence strategic goal. Over 300 members of the SES collaborated on identifying a shared mission, developing a values statement, and establishing core competencies for executives. A more robust SES community has increased camaraderie, collaboration and learning.
In March, DOC published its FY 2014-18 Strategic Plan that presents a new vision of the Commerce mission and operations. The five pillars of the vision (Trade and Investment; Innovation; Environment; Data; and Operational Excellence) all require management across bureaus toward cutting edge ends. For example, “Data” goes beyond developing reliable statistics to creating interoperable Federal databases that support analytics by US businesses and academics.
Review and monitoring systems have been established to continuously evolve the Department’s Strategic Plan and the strategies being used to implement it. Executive leadership review elements of plan execution no less than weekly, and progress on goals no less than monthly. Lessons learned from this process have already been incorporated into the Department’s governance structure and action plans.
A Leadership and Innovation Network (LINC) has been established at DOC. This group’s events and web presence connect employees invested in forwarding new/better approaches to accomplishing the Commerce mission. LINC sponsors training and discussion groups and keeps members informed about opportunities to initiate and participate in creative improvement efforts.
A comprehensive self-assessment and a rapid peer review assessment of IT operations were completed. A Rapid Response Team has been established to immediately manage system problems while longer term solutions are being affected. An IT Transformation Road Map was provided to the Secretary; it includes a description of the future state, performance measures, a schedule, and defined roles and responsibilities.
Revised floor plans for the renovation of the Herbert C. Hoover Building were drawn up, and are being pilot tested. The new design includes technology and space that facilitate collaboration and communication.

A Shared Service Governance Board has been created to lead efforts to improve mission support through common ownership of select service delivery systems (e.g., HR, Acquisition, IT, Financial Management). The Board benchmarked the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shared services approach, which is considered a best practice, and is defining a target state for the Department.

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