Required Reading: Agency Strategic Plans

Many agencies have been quietly posting their draft strategic plans on-line for public comments, such as the draft plan for the Department of Veterans Affairs.  But the full set of finalized agency plans will soon be available, along with their FY 2015 annual performance plans. These should be a treasure-trove of useful information if you are interested in understanding federal priorities and how cross-agency collaboration could be improved in coming years.

In addition, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will submit a government-wide performance plan covering an updated set of multi-year Cross-Agency Priority Goals.  This will be a first-time effort, also required by the same law requiring updated agency strategic and annual performance plans.   The governmentwide plan – and all the agency strategic and performance plans – will be posted on the governmentwide performance.gov website.

Agency-Specific Strategic Plans.  Strategic plans at the agency level have been required for years under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA).  However, updates to that law have changed the timetable for when agencies prepare them.  The 2010 GPRA Modernization Act requires all agencies to present revised strategic plans to Congress one year after a President is elected (or re-elected), and the plans need to cover at lease a four-year period.  So they all are required to submit plans under the new requirements for the first time in February 2014.  The OMB guidance for how agencies are to prepare their plans is flexible in terms of format, as it has been traditionally, to allow agencies to develop plans that work best for their needs and for their stakeholders. 

What is significant is that for the first time all agencies will provide an update of their strategic plans at the same time, and are expected to use some of the same definitions for key terms, such as “Strategic Goals” and “Strategic Objectives.”  The plans will also now be made available through Performance.gov, and according to OMB, the goals and objectives will be sortable electronically.  This means you will have easy access to supporting information from other agency performance plans and reports. 

Further, once these updated strategic plans are developed, agencies are required by OMB to begin conducting annual “strategic reviews" to determine progress against the plan.  A May 2013 memo from OMB Director Sylvia Burwell noted that the results of these reviews would be used to “inform the formulation of the 2016 Budget and efforts to improve the impact of agency programs.”

Governmentwide Strategic Planning.  The new law also directs OMB to develop a set of cross-agency priority goals.  To date, OMB has designated 15 such goals on an interim basis, and will designate a new round of goals along with the new agency Strategic Plans and the President’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, targeted for release in early 2014.  By law, OMB was required to designate goals for certain mission support functions (such as procurement, finance, and information technology) as well as for mission-related areas -- for example, the goal to double U.S. exports affects about 14 federal agencies and more than 40 programs administered by these agencies.  The new GPRA law requires agency strategic plans to reflect, where relevant, the cross-agency priority goals and explain their roles in contributing to these broader cross-agency goals.

The governmentwide performance plan for these cross-agency goals will need to include:

• Performance goals for each cross-cutting federal priority.
• For each performance goal, inventory all contributing programs, policies, regulations, and tax expenditures.
• Designation of a lead government official for each federal priority goal.
• Common indicators to measure progress toward shared goals.
• Management challenges to achieving shared goals, and plans to address them.

Once available on-line, you’ll be able to see the breadth and scope of what the federal government does from a strategic perspective for the first time – and track its progress on a regular basis.  The challenge, of course, is the scale and detail of it all.