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U.S. Office of Personnel Management Congressional Budget |
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| RIS Goal 17: |
Ensure that all business systems and hardware are Year 2000 compliant. | |
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• | Complete remediation of the Agency's mission-critical systems and test on Year 2000 compliant platform. |
| • | Develop User Acceptance Test Plans and System Change Management Plans that will have utility beyond the needs of the Year 2000 Compliance project. | |
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• | Remediated systems meet quality assurance tests. |
| • | Project is completed on time and within budget. | |
| RIS Goal 18: |
By January 1999, complete a Business Processing Reengineering study to determine work process improvements to support the new Concept of Operations selected by agency management officials during FY 1998. | |
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• | Use contractor to conduct Business Processing Reengineering study. |
| • | Implement new concept of operations through a joint effort by the agencies and OPM. | |
| • | Implement new concept of operations in phases, thus allowing for measurable milestones and improvements along the path toward the endpoint concept of operation. | |
| • | Review and validate each phase with all key stakeholders. | |
| • | Maintain the active participation of the project's Executive Steering Committee, OPM users representatives, and the Agency Advisory Committee throughout the project. | |
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• | Project performance reports show that project proceeds on schedule and within budget. |
| • | Key stakeholders will be called upon to review contract deliverables at the appropriate points before OPM accepts the deliverables | |
| • | Collect feedback from stakeholder groups, user representatives, and the Agency Advisory Committee. | |
| RIS Goal 19: |
Begin the design, development and implementation of appropriate technology solutions to support changed work processes resulting from the Business Processing Reengineering activity. This activity will run through the year 2001. | |
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• | As the Business Processing Reengineering activity is completed, the appropriate technical structure will be developed to implement that function. |
| • | Staff will be trained at the appropriate points, to ensure that they posses the skills to work successfully in the redesigned environment and with any new systems developed to support the concept of operations. | |
| • | Phased implementation will allow OPM management to ensure that the effort keeps pace with proven technology developments. | |
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• | Stakeholder groups support redesigned retirement process and modernization plans |
| • | Project performance reports show that planned automation modules for redesigned retirement process are delivered on time and within budget, and that they pass required tests. | |
Verification and Validation
For RIS, meeting the goals identified in the OPM Strategic Plan means developing and maintaining a high quality work environment, making prudent investments in staff, suppliers, and technology, and continually measuring the results achieved against objectives linked to the Strategic Plan. These objectives are incorporated in RIS' Customer Service Standards, and in the annual work plans of each office. RIS maintains a comprehensive Management Information System to monitor and report output and outcome measures, and uses recurring customer satisfaction surveys as one means of measuring progress towards achieving established objectives.
Workload and Performance Tracking
RIS has a long history of tracking and evaluating the performance of the employee benefit programs. The RIS internal management information system monitors virtually all program inputs and outputs. For the Retirement Program, this involves outputs such as workload volumes for the full range of claims, customer service requests, and general inquires received and processed each day, and the remaining balances of unprocessed work. It also involves outputs such as timing and aging data, and program inputs such as the human and other resources expended on these operations. Data supporting this tracking is collected in weekly increments and accumulated during the fiscal year. These data are either downloaded from OPM mainframe databases and transaction systems, LAN-based databases, or are based on manual tracking performed by operations staff and reported each week in hard copy format. RIS currently has approximately 20 years of such data.
RIS also tracks the accuracy of its service delivery through periodic reviews of various program outputs. These reviews are based on statistically valid samples of those outputs. Similar statistically valid samples of new and ongoing annuitant customers are used to evaluate program outcomes through RIS' customer satisfaction survey program and are focused on customers for whom RIS offices have recently processed a transaction. The surveys performed under this program are conducted on an annual basis and executed by OPM staff.
For the Health Benefits (HB) and Life Insurance (LI) Programs, the quality, timeliness, and effectiveness of contract administration activities and the performance of the carriers under these contracts are evaluated through required carrier reports against established quality control/assurance standards. These reports are submitted by the carriers at the end of each contract year and are based on statistically valid samples of program customers whom the carriers have served and/or claims paid as a part of service delivery to those customers.
HB and LI Program outcomes are measured through annual surveys of customers comprised of statistically valid samples of both active employees and annuitants. These surveys are conducted by private contractors.
Virtually all of the data collected for the three earned benefit programs are used to support established families of performance indicators that measure program performance against annual and long term goals.
Internal Performance Reporting
The current status on many RIS workloads and program performance indicators is available to RIS executives, program managers, supervisors, and analytical staff on an on-going basis through a LAN-based, on-line Management Information System. Data in the system is updated as frequently as weekly. The status on other program performance indicators, primarily related to quality assurance and customer satisfaction, is made available to key staff in written reports on an ad-hoc basis.
Externally Reported Program Evaluations
The earned benefit programs performance is reported externally in OPM's annual Congressional and Presidential Budget Requests, the Program Overviews in the OPM Annual Financial Statements, and in annual Customer Service Reports to the National Performance Review. Also, the OPM Inspector General performs audits and reviews of the earned benefit programs' financial systems, program outputs, work processes, and performance measures and makes recommendations to OPM management to improve these areas as warranted.
FY 1999 Budget Changes:
No increases in budget authority are requested for FY 1999. Although we estimate a net increase of $3,978,000 in obligations in FY 1999 to support our business process reengineering activities, these will be funded through the unobligated balances of prior no-year appropriations.
Page Updated 13 June 1998
