The President’s Management Agenda

The President’s Management Agenda (PMA) has helped GSA focus on achieving results based upon clear goals and challenging expectations. GSA is pleased with its progress in each of the initiatives under the PMA. The following pages provide a brief description of each initiative, provide the current status of the management program, and describe GSA’s progress to “get to green” as GSA implements the PMA with the ultimate goal of improving government performance and providing better service to citizens.

Strategic Management of Human Capital

Status Result: Green

Progress Result: Green

Background: The Human Capital Initiative requires Federal agencies to develop both a vision and a roadmap for strategically managing their workforces so they can better accomplish their missions on behalf of the American people. Agencies are required to build, sustain, and effectively deploy a skilled, knowledgeable, diverse workforce to meet the current and emerging needs of the Federal government.

Status: GSA achieved “green” status in FY 2007, completing all critical success factors. GSA demonstrated significant workforce planning and analysis in its efforts to support GSA’s strategic assessment and budget process, organizational structure and workforce restructuring efforts, requests for personnel flexibilities, and documenting progress with human capital initiatives. GSA continued the restructuring of the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), which resulted in realigning one-third of GSA’s workforce. GSA’s senior leaders worked closely with union officials to ensure an effective transition. GSA continued to focus on efforts to address mission critical workforce needs. Talent management strategies were implemented to improve hiring process results, expand the use of diverse recruitment sources and hiring flexibilities, address employee development and training needs, and address retention issues. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ranked GSA’s Associate Performance Plan and Appraisal System (APPAS) as an “effective strategy” which is the highest performing category. OPM approved GSA’s human capital accountability system. Based on employee survey results, OPM ranked GSA in the top 10 of 36 agencies in talent management, leadership and knowledge management, and job satisfaction.

Progress: GSA continued to be “green” in progress for Strategic Management of Human Capital, completing all deliverables effectively and efficiently. GSA verified its current human capital strategic goals and updated its Human Capital Strategic Plan (HCSP) to align with GSA’s new Strategic Plan. Strategic workforce planning efforts supported GSA’s Performance Management Process (PMP) in the Strategic Assessment and Budget assessment and analysis phases. Workforce planning and analysis also supported effective talent management strategies for GSA’s mission critical workforce. GSA used personnel flexibilities to drive organizational alignment and performance improvement. The Agency implemented effective actions to improve mission critical workforce competency levels through targeted hiring, training, development, and retention strategies. Recruitment, Workforce Development, and Retention Tools displaying historical workforce data, trends, and available flexibilities were established in an effort to centralize information for mission critical workforce hiring managers. GSA continued to improve its hiring process and outcomes by implementing recommendations from the Staff Acquisition Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) effort. Extensive workforce planning, standardized processes, and increased employee expertise have reduced processing time and improved hiring manager satisfaction to above 80 percent. GSA’s hiring process averaged 30 and 75 days for General Schedule and Senior Executive Service (SES) hires, respectively. To support its existing leadership programs, GSA implemented a national mentoring program as a means of providing additional leadership development to employees. GSA piloted the use of OPM Federal Competency Assessment Tool for Managers (FCAT-M) to assess leadership competencies. Under the Learning/Knowledge Management category, GSA was ranked third of 36 agencies for employees having electronic access to learning and training programs readily available at their desk. GSA ranked sixth of 36 agencies for employee satisfaction with the training received for their present job. In addition to the availability of training, GSA posts policy and guidance on the Web, uses online job tools and desk guides, and has a work environment that supports knowledge sharing.

Competitive Sourcing

Status Result: Yellow

Progress Result: Yellow

BACKGROUND: The goal of competitive sourcing is to improve agency performance by using the A-76 process to create processes that are more efficient. Public/private competitions, as described in OMB Circular A-76, are used to evaluate the efficiency of performing commercial activities with government personnel versus contract employees.

Status: GSA received a status score of “yellow” on OMB’s Quarterly Scorecard for the fourth quarter of FY 2007. This was the first time GSA scored less than green since the fourth quarter of FY 2004. During the last half of FY 2007, GSA revised its long-term competitive sourcing plan to reschedule some of its competitive sourcing initiatives from FY 2007 to FY 2008. This revision required that some competitive sourcing initiatives be rescheduled later in FY 2008. The delay of these initiatives resulted in the downgrade on the OMB fourth quarter scorecard.

GSA has completed more than 80 competitions through FY 2006. Although there were no additional competitions completed in FY 2007, GSA spent FY 2007 implementing the competitions completed in the fourth quarter of FY 2006 and improving internally developed tools designed to facilitate the reporting requirements of OMB Circular A-76. GSA’s Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Inventory Tool (FIT) consolidated all GSA service and staff offices into one database. The improved FIT, a Web-based tool, allows for greater analysis and review at all levels within GSA and provided the first FAIR Act Inventory “upload” in FY 2007 as required by OMB. GSA also made progress in developing an automated post-competition accountability process utilizing the Activity Cost Tracking Tool (ACTT) System developed by the U.S. Air Force. Although still in the development stages, GSA has developed a process to provide the necessary data to OMB during the first quarter of FY 2008 as required. As discussed above, an update to GSA’s Competitive Sourcing Green Plan for FY 2008 - FY 2012 was sent to OMB as well as the FY 2007 FAIR Act Inventory, the GSA “Proud to Be as of July 1, 2009 Report” and the GSA “Report to Congress on Competitive Sourcing for FY 2006” in accordance with OMB requirements.

Progress: Although GSA did not complete any competitions in FY 2007, feasibility studies were conducted on the FAS maintenance control center function and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer’s (OCFO) financial operations function. Results of these studies were not available in time for this report. As GSA moves forward in the evaluation of functions to be subject to an A-76 competition, more and more attention must be paid to the residual impact a competition has on GSA. Line of Business (LoB) initiatives, Shared Service Provider (SSP) status, and internal restructuring of various organizations have placed a strain on the resources available for competitive sourcing activities. GSA continues to constantly reevaluate its priorities to insure it is focusing on its core mission, as well as striving towards the development of more efficient processes. Recognizing this dilemma, GSA revised future deliverables on its fourth quarter scorecard resulting in a downgrade from “green” to “yellow” in progress.

Improved Financial Performance

Status Result: Green

Progress Result: Green

Background: This initiative is intended to improve the quality of the Federal government’s financial information so agencies can improve the integrity and efficiency of their operations as well as improve financial performance by ensuring that Federal financial systems produce accurate and timely information critical to Federal managers for managing cost and making decisions.

Status: GSA successfully met the criteria for “green” status and is continuing to strengthen its internal control structure wherever it is cost beneficial to do so. GSA views strong internal control as another form of customer service. Given the facts that GSA has again received an unqualified audit opinion, has no repeat material weaknesses, is “green” in all but one Metric Tracking System performance measure, and, fully implemented OMB Circular A-123, GSA is confident that it is heading in the right direction. In addition, GSA submitted its Performance and Accountability Reports (PAR) in record time, once again received the CEAR award and has no material intragovernmental differences. These noteworthy accomplishments were successfully achieved while reducing overhead.

Progress: GSA’s progress rating is “green.” GSA has a number of initiatives underway to further strengthen its internal control environment and structure. GSA looks forward to realizing the benefits of these efforts through increased efficiency and timelier availability of financial information for decision-making and customer support. GSA’s goal is to ensure accurate data for reporting and greater flexibility to respond to information requests.

Expanded Electronic Government

Status Result: Yellow

Progress Result: Red

Background: The E-Gov initiatives and LoBs support specific goals to reduce redundancy of information technology (IT) investments, increase the effectiveness of outreach to citizens, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of IT investment management. As the E-Gov initiatives and LoBs continue to be integrated into the normal day-to-day operations of the Federal government, more opportunities for consolidation, increased maturity, and customer utilization will come.

GSA’s goals include helping the government become more citizen-centric, assisting individuals and businesses to complete government transactions online, and working with other agencies on government-wide initiatives. GSA is also focused on its internal IT management to ensure the projects are well managed and that IT spending is not duplicative of the initiatives.

GSA’s IT team will continue to identify and retire redundant IT systems and ensure GSA associates have the technology needed to do their jobs and that GSA systems are secure.

Status: GSA’s status rating is “yellow.” Major accomplishments include GSA’s enterprise architecture receiving an OMB assessment rating of “4”; GSA’s 28 major IT programs have acceptable business cases; and an overall IT portfolio performance within 10 percent of planned cost, schedule, and performance. GSA continues to make progress toward improving its status rating to “green” through strengthening its earned value management practices along with ensuring that all major E-Gov milestones are completed and delivered on time.

Progress: GSA’s progress rating is “red.” GSA continues to deliver on the vast majority of the PMA goals and quarterly E-Gov planned actions. For FY 2007, GSA completed 31 out of 34 major E-Gov implementation milestones, a 91 percent overall performance rating, but missed a few of the major milestones, resulting in a “red” progress rating. GSA remains committed to ensure that all major milestones are completed in the future.

Key GSA E-Gov accomplishments include:

• Federal Asset Sales – Posting 100 percent of all GSA assets to the govsales.gov portal, the official site to buy US property. In addition, agencies such as the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Agricul-ture (USDA) have 100 percent of their assets posted to the portal.
• E-Travel – All major agencies have issued task orders through the e-Travel program helping the Federal government get closer to the promise of fully optimizing agency travel budgets while saving taxpayer dollars.
• USA Services – Partnered with the Departments of State to provide information to citizens regarding new passport regulations (Western Hemisphere Initiative). USA Services also completed a customer satisfaction survey with the overall rating result of 94 percent.
• USA.GOV – Time magazine honored usa.gov as one of the “25 Sites We Can’t Live Without.”

Performance Improvement

Status Result: Green

Progress Result: Green

BACKGROUND: This initiative is aimed at providing greater focus on performance. It is enhancing the quality of information on program results so that the government can make better-informed resource allocation decisions. The outcome will be better control over resources and accountability for results by program managers.

Status: GSA has remained “green” on the President’s quarterly scorecard for “current status.” The Agency has continued to work hard at completing all outstanding criteria for “green,” specifically by developing a new Strategic Plan, successfully removing the final program from the Results Not Demonstrat-ed list, having Long-Term Outcome Goals and efficiency measures for all Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) participating programs, reporting marginal costs that are satisfactory to OMB, and reporting success stories in the Results.gov Web site.

The new five-year Strategic Plan outlines the actions to be taken to improve customer service delivery and to better integrate the offerings of the Public Buildings Service (PBS) and the Federal Acquisition Services (FAS). It reflects the vision of One GSA—One Voice. The plan serves as a roadmap to acquisition excellence and provides direction for creatively moving forward. It serves as a guide for integrating performance and budget according to GSA’s Mission, Vision, and Strategic Goals.

In this year’s PART process, GSA rescored the Assisted Acquisition Services (AAS) Portfolio (previously scored as Regional IT and National IT). The program area developed long-term goals with attainable targets and efficiency measures and received an “adequate” rating. The Agency reassessed two programs: General Supplies and Services (GSS) portfolio, rated “adequate”; and Asset Management of Owned Real Property, rated “effective.” GSA completed the last remaining program to be included in the PART process, the Integrated Technology Services (ITS) Portfolio, and received a “moderately effective” rating. GSA now maintains a “green” status by having all of its programs successfully rated by the PART process.

Progress: The Agency continues to be “green” in progress. GSA successfully completed all of its fourth quarter deliverables. Through the Agency’s internal Performance Management Process (PMP), GSA has made great strides in identifying long-term outcome goals and efficiency measures for its programs. The Administrator continues to conduct quarterly reviews of each organization’s financial and performance results. GSA has also developed a Green Plan that includes specific actions the Agency will complete to maintain its “green” rating.

Real Property

Status Result: Green

Progress Result: Green

BACKGROUND: On February 4, 2004, the President signed Executive Order 13227 addressing Federal Real Property Asset Management. Real Property was added to the PMA in August 2004. The goal of the Executive Order and this initiative is to promote the efficient and economical use of U.S. real property assets and to assure management accountability for implementing Federal real property management reforms.

Status: In the last quarter of FY 2006, GSA was the first agency to achieve “green” on the President’s quarterly Executive scorecard for “current status.” Through its continued progress in rightsizing its portfolio, GSA has continued to maintain its “green” status throughout FY 2007.

In FY 2007, GSA continued to demonstrate to OMB results in implementing the right-sizing goals of utilization, disposal, operation and maintenance, and physical condition. GSA has maintained a utilization rate in government-owned assets of over 90 percent for the past six years, disposed of 281 underutilized assets since FY 2002, and maintained operating costs below the private sector.

Progress: GSA maintained “green” in progress for real property throughout the entirety of FY 2007 by completing all deliverables and all milestones identified in the three-year timeline and the “Proud to Be” document.

Specifically in FY 2007, GSA reviewed and updated its asset level strategies to identify opportunities for improvement, reported excess over 250,000 rentable square feet (RSF) reducing GSA’s reinvestment liability by over $24 million, received proceeds from the sale of vacant and underutilized property in excess of $69 million, and targeted seven percent of capital investment dollars on energy projects.

GSA will continue to play a leadership role in advancing real property asset management through both its example and its leadership on the Federal Real Property Council (FRPC).

Transportation Management

Status Result: Red

Progress Result: Green

BACKGROUND: The Transportation Management Initiative requires Federal agencies to develop a strategy and long-term plan to improve the efficiency and performance of their motor vehicle fleets. Executive Order 13423, dated January 24, 2007, “Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy and Transportation Management,” provides that agencies with 20 or more motor vehicles, relative to their FY 2005 baseline, reduce the total consumption of petroleum products by two percent annually through the end of FY 2015; increase the total fuel consumption that is non-petroleum based by 10 percent annually; and use plug-in hybrid (PIH) vehicles when they are commercially available at a cost reasonably comparable, on the basis of life-cycle cost, to non-PIH vehicles.

Status: GSA continued to achieve an overall “red” status through the end of FY 2007, but moved from “red” to “green” in progress for the management of its internal nationwide motor vehicle fleet on the President’s Executive scorecard for “current status.”

This dramatic improvement is due to the development of internal and government-wide partnerships to address obstacles impeding the collection and analysis of information underpinning performance data on GSA’s internal nationwide vehicle fleet.

Progress: Continuing actions since January 1, 2007 by GSA to improve transportation management include:

• Development of an Automated Fuel Reporting System. GSA developed an internal Agency-wide Fuel Information System (FIS) to track the use of petroleum and non-petroleum fuels. Beginning in FY 2008, all motor vehicle operators will be required to report fuel usage data contemporaneously using either a telephone/cell phone, or Internet-based application. The deployment of the FIS addresses the most significant obstacle facing GSA in the collection of credible data to document its progress in achieving the goals established by Executive Order 13423.
• Identification of Opportunities for Increased Use of Non-Petroleum Fuels. GSA has consistently scored “green” in its efforts to acquire alternative fuel vehicles (AFV). During FY 2007, GSA analyzed its internal fleet to identify the proximity of AFVs to fueling stations offering E-85 (mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline) products. The results of this analysis were submitted to the Department of Energy (DOE).
• Development of a vehicle allocation methodology. GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy (OGP), in partnership with the Agency’s internal fleet manager, issued a contract to develop a vehicle allocation methodology. The new vehicle allocation methodology tool will be deployed in FY 2008 to match future vehicle acquisitions with the long-term goals established by Executive Order 13423. Supported by data generated by the new FIS, the vehicle allocation methodology will help match vehicle requirements with environmentally preferable transportation management options.

Environmental Stewardship

Status Result: Yellow

Progress Result: Yellow

BACKGROUND: On January 25, 2006, OMB introduced the Executive Management Scorecard (EMS) for Environmental Stewardship. This scorecard covers five areas: Environmental Management System implementation, green purchasing, sustainable design, electronic product stewardship, and compliance management. The scorecard tracks the progress and status of departments and major agencies in implementing statutory and Executive Order requirements in each area.

Status: GSA maintained its “yellow” status for FY 2007. Fewer than 20 percent of the EMS facility metrics were rated “red” on the EMS (incorporated into the Environmental Stewardship Scorecard in FY 2007). PBS’s EMS continues to improve and is being expanded to two regions with a third planned for FY 2008. A draft Green Purchasing Policy is undergoing review and will replace the existing Affirmative Procurement Policy. GSA continues its long-standing commitment to designing green buildings. It has completed new green language to strengthen GSA leases, and new build-to-suit leases will require Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) “silver” certification. GSA has also developed optional language for tenants wishing to pursue LEED for commercial interiors. As signatories of the Memorandum of Understanding on Electronics Stewardship, GSA is committed to reducing the environmental impact of its electronic product management practices. A draft Electronics Stewardship Action Plan is under review. The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) also issued a new hardware shutdown policy that will help reduce energy usage of GSA computers. The GSA Compliance Management Plan and implementation strategy has been developed, and is actively managed by PBS. As part of this strategy, 21 federally owned buildings have completed environmental compliance audits.

Progress: GSA’s progress fell from “green” to “yellow.” According to the Office of the Federal Environmental Executive, this is primarily due to insufficient progress in finalizing the Green Procurement Policy and Electronics Stewardship Action Plan. It is expected that this review will be complete by November 2007. Strong progress continues in all other areas. EMS implementation in GSA’s Region 11 and Region 9 is nearly complete, hazardous waste compliance training was provided to over 1,000 building managers, GSA has developed a dashboard for reporting LEED certification progress, 40 additional compliance audits are scheduled for FY 2008, and “green language” has been fully integrated into the national operations and maintenance and janitorial services contracts.

Energy Management

Status Result: Green

Progress Result: Yellow

BACKGROUND: This initiative supports specific goals to reduce energy consumption in Federal buildings mandated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and Executive Order 13423. The goal is to ensure GSA utilizes cost effective energy management strategies that will result in a reduction of energy and water consumption, increase use of renewable energy, and utilize advanced metering technology in the buildings GSA operates.

Status: GSA maintained its “green” status by successfully meeting all criteria for the energy management scorecard in FY 2007. Specifically, GSA was successful in reducing energy intensity by 3.76 percent over the FY 2003 baseline without incorporating any renewable purchase Btu reduction credits. This reduction increases to 8.3 percent with the application of the purchased renewable energy credit. GSA increased its use of renewable energy equivalent to 7.49 percent of its purchased electricity used in FY 2007, so GSA is on track to meet renewable purchase goals. Additionally, GSA is implementing its approved metering plan in appropriate facilities and met 100 percent of current milestones in its approved plan. GSA distributed advanced metering funding to the regional level to move the Agency metering plan forward. GSA upgraded an advanced metering analytical software program to a newer version with better reporting tools to enable users to share template analysis giving GSA enhanced ability to monitor all advanced meters in its inventory from an enterprise-wide Web-based tool.

Progress: GSA previously received a “green” score on progress but dropped to “yellow” because it did not submit required information identifying new design starts for FY 2007, and is striving to demonstrate that 100 percent of new building designs started after October 1, 2006, are 30 percent more efficient than the 2004 International Energy Conservation Code (residential buildings) or the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 90.1-2004 (non-residential buildings).

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