EEOC's goal is to eradicate discrimination in the workplace. There are three documents that reflect EEOC's efforts to achieve this goal -- its strategic plan, the Chair's Five-Point Plan, and the PMA. Success in implementing the PMA will hinge on having an integrated strategy to achieve the five components--strategic management of human capital, competitive sourcing, improved financial performance, expanded electronic government, and budget and performance integration-assigning clear responsibility for action, and ensuring that the agreed-upon actions are carried out effectively and on schedule. In essence, the Five Point Plan has provided a framework for applying the PMA to agency operations. Its components are: proactive prevention, proficient resolution, strategic enforcement and litigation, expanded mediation, and EEOC as a model workplace.

The agency budget is the vehicle that translates the goals, performance standards, and measures of the Strategic and Annual GPRA plan and the Chair's Five-Point Plan into resource allocations. EEOC is now developing program performance measures that can be used to make management and budget decisions. The challenge will be to make this more than a paper effort, to help staff see that their daily work is directly related not only to achieving specific production or outreach goals but also to reducing discrimination through better performance as individuals and as an agency. In the short term, the chair's Five-Point Plan presents the broad priorities, but it is not a substitute for having the long-term strategic plan integrated with the budget.

USING BUDGET MANAGEMENT TO ENHANCE ACCOUNTABILITY

EEOC is developing stronger financial systems and has started relating the performance measures in its Annual Performance Plan to program results. Like most agencies, it does not yet have an integrated budget and performance process, and is in the early stages of defining and integrating performance measures into agency budget submissions and operations.

A high-performing organization builds the capacity of its senior managers to make program decisions and manage the budgets that relate to them and vests that authority in them, as appropriate. As capable managers gain more control over resources they will have more control over production and other results and EEOC can more readily hold them accountable for the work of their units.

The Academy Panel recommends that EEOC:

Delegate authorities to senior executives with accompanying budgets, management tools, and accountability.

· Include with the delegation for compensation funds such features as a requirement that the Office of Chief Financial Officer provide each year's funding level and an estimate for the following year, as well as the requirement that the funding for hiring, promotions, within-grade step increases and the like must be within budget allocation for the current year and the estimate for the following year.

· Train field and headquarters senior executives and associated staff to manage that portion of the EEOC budget for which they are accountable, and phase in additional delegations as appropriate.

· Periodically review program accomplishment against expenditures for which each senior executive is responsible.

· Annually assess the quality of budget and other resource deployment by each senior executive. Ensure that this assessment is a significant factor in performance appraisals, and withdraw or modify the delegation where circumstances indicate the need.

· Conduct a periodic review of spending by all offices to inform the reallocation of resources during the year to adjust for unanticipated imbalances in workload and new needs.

The salaries and benefits portion of the agency's budget is managed in OCFO and EEOC office directors in headquarters and the field manage such things as funds allocated for travel, supplies, and, in the case of the field, funds for mediation contracts. Even with delegated authority and accountability to office directors, the OCFO will monitor resource use to reallocate funds as needed to ensure that the Commission uses it resources effectively.

Seventeen directors and other senior field staff often mentioned that they would like more control over resources, as did three in headquarters. These numbers include seven of the fourteen office directors who responded to the Academy survey. District directors had proposed to headquarters that they manage their non-compensation budgets, and headquarters in turn offered, during summer 2002, to let them manage their full budget, including salaries and benefits, beginning October 1, 2002. Without trained staff or management systems in place to do this, the district directors did not want the responsibility, but a number of them would like to work toward that goal. Most of them are still interested in managing their non-compensation budget at any time.

This approach would be in keeping with another Academy Panel's recent recommendation, that to the Field Directorate of the Bureau of the Census. That Panel supported the Census Bureau efforts to decentralize some budget activities, but also recognized that shifting to a more decentralized budgeting system for the regional offices would require a carefully planned and coordinated transition from the current system, as well as proven analytical capability at the regional level. The Panel saw this as coming from regional staff training or new hires.(33)

It is also consistent with recommendations an Academy Panel made in the late 1980s to the federal judiciary.(34) The judiciary adopted the Panel's recommendations and implemented a system of budget delegation, with requisite training and checks and balances. The result is that the judiciary has migrated to a culture that makes strategic decisions about the use of compensation funds, one that values and rewards these strategic decisions. The judiciary conducts a quarterly review of its decentralized program and budget authority. The review provides an opportunity for the program manager to discuss progress on critical strategic objectives, anticipated and unanticipated expenditures, and for the program manager, the CFO and the associate director for management to come to mutual conclusions about progress. It is also the opportunity to make program and financial course corrections with all the involved parties at the discussion table. If the EEOC decides to implement these recommendations, the federal judiciary can provide substantial insight and experience on a successful transition.

EEOC needs to let its managers manage to a budget. This does not mean there is no centralized management of the overall EEOC budget, but does mean that EEOC should involve managers in budget development and uses its budget execution process as a tool for managers. A centrally managed budget process can work well. However, EEOC is an agency in which the mission-critical work is done in the field, and its top field executives need to be responsible for the resources related to the work undertaken there. As EEOC moves toward a smaller number of "lead" offices than the current 24 districts, it should seek to staff them with senior executives and associated staff who have the capability to manage budget and other resources.

There are plans underway with the OFP and OCFO to decentralize the salaries and benefits portion of the budget in FY 2004. They expect this will include training for field staff and probably a transfer of resources, since the OCFO will no longer handle day-to-day management of these funds.

ACHIEVING BALANCE IN CASE MANAGEMENT

Thirty-six of the 146 survey and interview responses (a number of which involved groups of respondents) said that EEOC puts more emphasis on closing a given number of cases than on the decisions made as the cases were closed. They thought that stressing quotas could lead to questionable "cause" findings. While this is difficult to verify, the concern seemed strong enough that it would be worthwhile to examine whether the Commission's emphasis on reducing case-processing time is having any adverse influence on the thoroughness of case investigation.

The Academy Panel recommends that:

· The Office of Field Programs routinely examine a random sample of closed cases from each office, on a rotating basis, to ensure that they were adequately investigated given the information the charging party and respondent provided.

· The Office of Field Programs circulate and discuss aggregate case-processing timeliness data from each field office and use it to: determine whether variations are the result of especially good or poor work methods or management styles; share the best practices with other field offices; and work closely with offices that have problems to correct them.

· The Commission stress that cases are to be closed with the most appropriate resolution at the most appropriate time.

Some managers were very clear that they set goals rather than quotas, and used these as a way to encourage staff to achieve top-level results. Staff throughout the organization were proud that EEOC's inventory of private sector charges had decreased and that many cases could be settled within 180 days. However, some were concerned that investigators sometimes did not adequately investigate all charges or dismissed them prematurely. Generally, this was seen as an issue related to meeting deadlines or quotas rather than one of employee performance, but there were a number of comments that some investigators who did not do thorough work faced no consequences for this. One district attorney said that some private attorneys complained about certain investigators and immediately asked for the right to sue if their charging party was assigned that investigator.

One district director thought that allocating resources to field offices based on numbers of charges received and resolved was a practice subject to abuse and could provide a disincentive to maintain low inventories. Specifically, the intake of charges could be inflated or deflated easily. This individual thought that considering total services rendered would be more accurate, and that upgraded databases would eventually let EEOC collect the data to track this. Another district director seconded this opinion, noting that basing staffing allocations on intake receipts resulted in "offices playing the intake numbers game. There are other measures to assess, such as proactive prevention, proficient, resolution, ADR, and strategic enforcement of litigation."

EEOC staff recommendations regarding closing cases were that the Commission:

· Use intake and resolution data as only one of several factors in allocating staff resources to field offices
· Fully implement the Priority Charge Handling Process plan of a cause determination being "more likely than not" clause(35)
· Provide equal emphasis on fully investigating cases rather than stressing the need to close cases quickly

Clearly, it is appropriate to set goals such as the 180-day target for investigating and resolving a case. However, at the same time, there will be factors that impede achieving this in some instances, such as case complexity or a language barrier, that do not permit the charging party to speedily answer EEOC's requests for additional information.

As EEOC examines aggregate data more deliberately, it will undoubtedly discover that more thorough investigations led to better case development, but it will also notice that some office averages are raised or lowered because of individual investigators' average days per case. If this is because some more experienced investigators like to handle more complex cases and these take longer, that's one issue. If it is because some experienced investigators take much longer to process relatively simple cases than their peers, that may be an individual employee performance issue that needs to be addressed. In any such review of the impact of individuals' performance on aggregate office statistics, EEOC will want to ensure that it considers special circumstances, such as a disability that prevents an employee from operating at the same speed of others.

One agency that examines aggregate internal data and relates it to varied circumstances is the Bureau of the Census. For example, each month the Bureau conducts (for the Bureau of Labor Statistics) the Current Population Survey, which is an in-person interview that collects demographic data from about 70,000 households. It is the primary source of information on the labor force characteristics of the U.S. population, including the monthly unemployment statistics.

Each month for each office, the Bureau compares such things as overall response rate, proportion of interviews started that were able to be completed, and average time to complete an interview. By constantly reviewing these data, they know that it is harder to secure permission to do an interview in a large urban area, but there is less money spent on interviewer travel because interviewees are closer together. When they see lower response rates in one region, they study it to determine if this is because there are lower English-language skills in a community or one or two interviewers are less likely to convince people to participate. The former may mean they need more bilingual interviewers in an area, the latter may mean a couple people need more training in securing consent. The Bureau continually relates regional performance to individual production.

CREATING A MORE STRATEGIC FOCUS
BETWEEN ENFORCEMENT AND LITIGATION

In its section on Strategic Enforcement and Litigation, the Chair's Five-Point Plan notes that EEOC's enforcement, litigation and federal sector programs will identify emerging trends and issues to become better able to make informed decisions on what topics merit Commission attention and allow the Commission to better integrate its policy, guidance, investigative, litigation and federal coordination functions to prevent employment discrimination. The Commission established a Strategic Enforcement and Litigation Workgroup in late 2001, and that group coalesced EEOC's efforts and developed the FY 2002/2003 Strategic Enforcement and Litigation Plan. It also worked with districts to examine issues identified through outreach and public contacts and with ORIP to establish baseline information on investigation and litigation activities.

While EEOC had stressed the need for early attorney involvement for several years, in early 2002 it reiterated and crystallized this through a memorandum from the OFP director and General Counsel. The memorandum noted that not only would attorneys be involved in all A-1 cases but that they could even participate in intake interviews and should consult on all aspects of the investigation, including preparing case development plans, developing requests for information, preparing for onsite investigations, interviewing major witnesses, and reviewing responses to requests for information. OFP and OGC also encouraged attorney involvement in A-2 involvement so that they and the investigators could develop early in the process any A-2 charges that could develop litigation potential. In Academy staff interviews with EEOC staff, staff in offices in which investigators and attorneys worked closely on cases thought they developed better cases, and senior OGC staff said this was clearly the case.

As it made the link between litigation and enforcement stronger, the Commission also decided that some A-2 cases could be eligible for mediation. The decision to send an A-2 case to mediation would be made only if the parties expressed interest in mediation and it was likely that a neutral third party could facilitate discussion of the resolution. In addition, EEOC would consider the impact of mediation versus potential litigation.

Examining Litigation Workload

As EEOC examines the number of office locations, and as the amount of private sector litigation appears to be decreasing, there is an opportunity to examine attorney staffing levels and determine whether private sector litigation work could be aligned differently. Table 6-1 shows some FY 2001 data on the litigation workload and case resolutions. The FY 2001 litigation workload (which consists of active cases at the beginning of the year plus lawsuits filed during the year) among districts varied from 66 in New York to 19 in New Orleans. There were 405 cases resolved that year, and these represented a combination of consent decrees, settlement agreements, favorable and unfavorable court orders, and voluntary dismissals. These ranged from 7 in New Orleans to 30 in Philadelphia. During the same period, there were 15 trials, 9 of which EEOC won and six of which it lost.

Table 6-1 also shows the number of attorneys on staff in each district office that year, and computes a ratio of litigation workload per number of attorneys. As staffing levels and litigation workload vary some from year to year, it is important to note that these data are only a snapshot in time. For example, New York has 66 cases and 20 attorneys in 2001 for a ratio of 3.1 cases to 1 attorney, but in FY 2000 had 68 cases and 16 attorneys, for a ratio of 4.25 cases per attorney.

These data come from a recent five-year study of the EEOC litigation program, which the OGC prepared.(36) Overall, district attorney staffing numbers grew from 196 in FY 1997 to 248 in FY 2002. During this time (starting in 1999), EEOC began putting attorneys in their area offices. The litigation workload has varied from 582 in 1997 to 750 in 1998, to 890 in 1999; it then drops to 875 in 2000 and 842 in 2001.

Table 6-1
FY 2001 Cases, Resolution, and Attorney Information, by District

A ratio of cases per attorneys, as in the final column of Table 6-1, can be deceptive. For example, Atlanta and Houston have approximately six attorneys per case, but perhaps they are working on complex class action suits that will go to trial in the next year. Also, with the relatively small number of cases, a change of one attorney (new hire or attrition) changes the ratio substantially. However, it does appear that there are consistently more than three attorneys per case in most offices.

EXPANDING CAPACITY TO APPLY BEST PRACTICES

EEOC will have greater potential to bring more consistency to its work methods as it moves toward having fewer field locations and a National Call Center. EEOC's anticipated electronic filing system will also contribute to this. All EEOC field offices do not need to function the same way any more than all headquarters managers should use the same methods to motivate staff. However, some methods clearly work better than others, and effective methods should be identified and applied.

The Academy Panel recommends that EEOC:

· Expand its capacity to analyze, validate, and disseminate information on best practices and take this one step further to correlate work methods or processes with results. If some methods are clearly better, the results achieved through them should be used in designing new standards of performance.

· Reinforce that the director of the Office of Field Programs is the individual who can determine which methods or operations appear most effective and require that all offices either use these methods or achieve similar results with the methods they use.

· Reward those offices or key staff within them when their work methods are selected as best practices that other offices can emulate, and ensure that those with poor practices are directed to improve and receive the support necessary to do so.

EEOC staff said that prior to 1995 the approach to field operations was rigid, and since then flexibility has been the key. This would account for the different approaches to some core functions that the Academy staff observed, and may allow EEOC to apply some best practices to organizations that are not now using them.

Some examples of variations observed are in mediation, intake procedures and issues related to litigation workload. These are presented at examples of the kinds of management analysis that can be overseen and acted upon by the more visible, senior-level staff the Panel recommended should handle the policy and analysis functions for prevention/technical assistance, private sector enforcement, and mediation.

Variations in Mediation Results

EEOC successfully mediated 6,987 charges in FY 2001. Of the FY 2001 successes, 5,248 were handled by EEOC staff, 1,739 by contractors, and 336 by pro-bono mediators. The average time to resolve a charge through voluntary mediation was 84 days, a drop of 12 days from the prior year. The number of successful mediations per district was not equal, and cannot be expected to be, since the number of opportunities for mediation relates to the number of charges, and those vary widely.

Table 6-2 shows the number of charges per district in FY 2001 and compares these to the number of successful mediations as well as the number of staff assigned to mediation. It shows wide variations among the ratio of mediations to charges, from one mediation per 19 charges in Albuquerque to a ratio of 1:4 in Denver; the average was 1:12. Some have more mediation staff, others use more contractors, and some have a lot more pro-bono resolutions.

Table 6-2
Number of Charges, Mediations, and Mediation Staff
FY 2001

* Part of the EEOC calculation for the number of available mediators considers the proportion of time the district mediation coordinator is available for mediation. If the coordinator supervises five to six on-board mediators, s/he is assumed to personally be available for mediation only one-tenth of the time. At the other extreme, if the coordinator supervises 0-2 mediators, s/he is assumed to be available for mediation half the time. In addition, these are actual "available mediators" for FY 2001. If, for example, OFP knew that one was pulled from mediation to investigation for half of the year, they deducted this half-year from the "available mediator" category.

Note: mediation results are presented by district rather than office. Some offices have only one mediator, and to show results by office would thus present individual production in a public document.

Reasons for the variations are many and could include the emphasis the district places on mediation, the extent to which some industries are more likely to use it than others and whether certain industries predominate in a district, the number of on-board mediation staff in a district, and the extent to which contract staff are used. On-board staffing would not be the sole factor in having a low ratio, but it probably made a difference in Albuquerque and the Washington Field office, which had the highest ratios and the lowest number of on-board staff. Emphasis on on-board staff over contractors may or may not make a difference, though there were a number of comments that contractors could not be used when funding was delayed. In looking for benchmark data for mediation, Academy staff talked to the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the only other federal agency that mediates private sector charges. Internal staff do all their mediations.

Variations in Intake Procedures

Some offices permitted potential charging parties to arrive as walk-ins, others took only appointments, and one office did all intake via phone. Most EEOC staff expressed strong opinions that offices needed a central intake unit so that investigators could focus on ongoing cases. On the other hand, some saw value in being vested in a case from initial intake interview forward. Given the Academy' Panel's recommendations that a great deal of initial intake move out of offices to a National Call Center or electronic charge filing, EEOC would benefit from knowing which of the in-person methods (or which combination of them) are most effective.

A key question is whether intake procedures affect how private sector charges are categorized. In reviewing CDS data on charge receipts Academy staff noted that some districts have no Category C charges, while others have a substantial number. During interviews, Academy staff were told that some districts do not enter Category C charges into CDS. That could be an area where consistency is more important than flexibility, since the charges go into a national database and are used to support decisions.

Variation in Issues Related to Litigation

Table 6-1 showed litigation workload, the ratio of the number of attorneys to the workload, and case resolutions for cases that go to each district's regional attorney. While there is nothing wrong with variations, there should be information on the reasons for them. Many cases are closed without litigation, and EEOC tracks the reasons for closures, as shown in Table 6-3 for the 90,106 cases closed in FY 2001.(37)

Are there variations, for example, in the proportion of successful versus unsuccessful conciliations per office, and does that have to do with staff training or some other factor? Another area for exploration would be the quality of case preparation when investigators work with attorneys throughout the process versus when they do not. Staff in OGC said they perceive a substantial rise in quality when the two disciplines work together.

Table 6-3
How Cases Were Resolved in FY 2001

Note: Percent does not add to 100% because of rounding.

A focus on process or methods can make a major difference in performance. After hearing numerous complaints in the field about the amount of time it takes OGC to approve regional cases for litigation, the Academy staff asked to review data in OGC.

There are two types of litigation proposals. The first type (20% of cases) requires a presentation memorandum from the regional attorney and goes to the Commission for approval. For the second type (80% of cases) the regional attorney is delegated the authority to decide and is required to provide OGC a 5-day notice before filing the case. Until recently, there was substantial delay on the 20% of cases that required presentation memoranda. However, that process has changed. The average days to close presentation memoranda has decreased from 194 days in FY 2000, to 102 in FY 2001, to 80 as of late August 2002. A key reason for the change is that the Acting General Counsel asked for quarterly reports on presentation-memo cases that were received and remained in OGC, and meets with supervisors to set priorities for these cases.

For the other 80% that are delegated to regional attorneys, initially the regional attorney would send the case to OGC for approval, and if they did not get a negative response in five days, they could litigate. In interviews and on mailed surveys, a number of attorneys and district directors said the regional attorney now cannot litigate until they receive approval for what should be five-day notice cases, and that approval can take weeks or months.

However, OGC began a tracking database for the "five-day cases" in July 2002. As of early September, there had been 74 cases received and entered. Sixty-four of the 74 were completed, and 75% were completed in seven calendar days or less. Of the ten not completed, seven had been in OGC less than five days and three had been put on hold. Academy staff asked OGC to pull prior cases from FY 1999 and 2000 for three of the offices staff visited, to get a sense of the basis for the many comments about the delays in processing five-day cases. While there were occasional cases processed in less than 10 days, the timeframes were significantly longer than those now reported. For the three separate offices they were 48 days, 99 days, and 132 days. Thus, the perception was valid, but if Academy staff interviews were held today, the opinions might be different.

DEVELOPING THE CAPACITY TO LINK PERFORMANCE TO OUTCOMES

EEOC has done a great deal to assess and improve its operations, such as its charge-handling task force review that led to the Priority Charge Handling Process, and its review of best EEO practices of private sector employers. As EEOC processes charges faster, its work may have made more of a difference in the lives of charging parties. It is harder to document EEOC's impact on reducing discrimination overall.

As with most other federal agencies, it is easier to examine work processes rather than the results or impact of the work. For EEOC, this is in part because there are a number of factors that can affect employment discrimination besides EEOC activities, such as the economy, employers' organizational cultures, the growth of the immigrant population, personal biases, and many others. In addition, actions EEOC takes in one area affect others, and can be interpreted differently. For example, if EEOC does more outreach, charge filings may rise. While a higher volume of charges may appear to indicate more employment discrimination, they may simply mean more individuals know how to seek redress to discrimination they believe they have experienced. A reduced number of EEOC court filings as charge filings increase may appear to show lax enforcement. However, a larger proportion of cases may be resolved through mediation, therefore allowing EEOC to concentrate on more complex litigation and use its attorneys to help investigators develop better cases.

The Academy Panel recommends that EEOC develop methods to demonstrate the impact its work has on reducing employment discrimination in the workplace. This would be a multi-phased process, including:

· Developing baseline discrimination metrics for certain industries, nationwide firms, or geographic areas
· Planning specific EEOC activities to direct toward the industries, firms, or areas that are implementing the activities and recording the level of effort
· Tracking discrimination levels in the selected industries, firms, or geographic areas

This will have to be a very focused approach. For example, EEOC could target a given industry or nationwide firms based on factors of EEOC's choosing (such as past practices, proportion of workforce that has low literacy or English-language capabilities and thus may not understand their rights) and establish the current baseline for charge filing with FEPAs and EEOC. EEOC could then develop an enhanced education and outreach efforts for employers and employees, and monitor charges over time. In theory, the increased exposure would lead to more charges in early years and reduced charges over time. The words "over time" are important. Impact assessments are longitudinal studies, not short-term assessments.

Examining Current Performance Measures

EEOC's annual performance reports measure such things as private sector charging parties who receive some kind of benefit, percent of cases resolved in 180 days, number of outreach sessions conducted, and number of consultations with employee and employer stakeholders. These kinds of data do provide useful information for management decisions and oversight. However, they are very different from true outcome measures.

For example, EEOC's Strategic Goal 2.1 is to "Encourage and facilitate voluntary compliance with equal employment opportunity laws among employers and employer groups in the private and federal sectors." Below is a presentation of some of the measures of this work, as shown in EEOC's FY 2001 Annual Program Performance Report, followed by a discussion of "next steps" in considering the impact of EEOC's actions.

· Held 251 outreach events to employers to encourage participation in mediation programs

The next step would be to see, for example, if holding a certain number of events related to mediation means that more employers sign universal mediation agreements the next year. However, even that is an intermediate result. In the long term, if there is more mediation does it lead to greater employer understanding of better EEO practices and do charges from industries that have universal mediation agreements go down?

· Conducted 224 outreach, education, or other technical assistance activities to assist federal agencies make EEO program improvements, including establishing ADR programs throughout the EEO process

The next step would be to determine if agencies that participated not only established or expanded their ADR programs but resolved more employee complaints through their mediation process, thus having a smaller proportion move to EEOC for hearings with administrative judges.

EEOC Strategic Objective 1.1 is to "Improve the effectiveness of the private sector enforcement program, including the use of charge prioritization, mediation, and litigation." Some of the EEOC measures (and suggested next steps) are:

· At least 70% of A-1 charges would have on-site investigations. (A-1 charges are those that EEOC believes most likely to succeed in litigation. In FY 2001, 30% had on-site investigation, which are those conducted at the employer location as opposed to having all work done via phone or document review.)

The next step, from an enforcement standpoint, would be to determine if those charges for which there were on-site reviews were most likely to lead to litigation that EEOC won. From a prevention standpoint, did the on-site work lead to better employer understanding of what constitute discriminatory practices and thus a drop in charges filed from that employer's employees?

EEOC may not be able to link every statistic collected to a specific outcome, but if it targets a few outcomes it can begin to demonstrate how its programs make a difference not just in serving people who come to the agency but also in assisting employers and employees nationwide in reducing discrimination.

The Patent and Trademark Office has made sustained efforts to design outcome measures. PTO began with a dialogue with stakeholders and a review of existing measures.(38) It then used a team of graduate students to conduct an in-depth academic review of intellectual property measures. Concurrent with these efforts, PTO created self-assessment teams from throughout the organization and with participants from the Maxwell School of Public Administration. The teams used the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, over a two-month period, to focus on leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, information and analysis, human resources, process management, and business results.

PTO made a substantial staff investment: three days of training in the Baldrige criteria, a two-day planning session for conducting the assessment, four weeks of data collection, two days to present findings to all other team members, and another half-day to go over key strengths and finalize opportunities for improvement. That was three years ago, and this level of effort over a sustained period is one of the reasons PTO has a "green" rating from OMB in budget and performance integration and is known as a leader in strategic planning that relates to results.

MEASURING MAKES A DIFFERENCE

The expression "that which is measured gets done" can seem trite, but for better or for worse it is true in many respects. This is reflected on as broad a scale as the Government Performance and Results Act or as small a scale as an EEOC district office that has developed internal systems to track case progress.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is a federal agency that also receives charges from the public (theirs on unfair labor practices) using a dispersed group of regional offices as the primary point of contact for charging parties.(39) After criticism about the time it took to process complaints about unfair labor practices, NLRB created a system that has 10 performance factors for regional directors. NLRB compiles performance statistics that serve as the basis to rate and rank regional director performance. These include settlement rate, median days to process different kinds of cases, and number of compliance actions overdue. The approach was used as an example of federal productivity and remains in use.(40)

The Bureau of the Census has a detailed set of comparisons for each of the dozens of surveys their twelve regional offices conduct each year. They measure such things as cost per unit, success rate in securing personal interviews, interview time per survey, and many more. Through a focus on best practices, the bureau's Field Directorate facilitates having regions that excel in one area share their methods with others. At the same time, the bureau recognizes that there are many differences among regions that account for variations, and there is not a "one-size-fits-all" approach.

The challenge is threefold-determining what to measure and ensuring that what is measured relates some to work processes and more to results, recording the measurements, and relating individual performance management systems and actions to the broad performance measurement system.

_______________

33. National Academy of Public Administration, Budget Decentralization in the Federal Courts: Evaluation Plan (July 1988) and First Annual Evaluation Report (July 1989), Washington, DC.(return to text)
34. In the March 1995 report of the Charge Processing Task Force, one recommendation was that a new policy be that, "A wide variety of cases may be dismissed after the intake investigation is completed, or at a later stage after some additional examination if the evidence obtained does not establish that it is "more likely than not that discrimination occurred." p. 11.(return to text)
35. Office of General Counsel, A Study of the Litigation Program: Fiscal Years 1997-2001, July 23, 2002. The number of attorneys per office includes RAs, supervisory trial attorneys, and staff attorneys. Information on the Washington Field Office is in the report, but was not included here because that office's legal unit was formed in the 4th quarter of 2001.(return to text)
36. EEOC total workload includes charges carried over from previous fiscal years, new charge receipts, and charges transferred to EEOC from Fair Employment Practice Agencies. Thus, charge resolution may exceed receipts for that year. For example, new receipts in FY 2001 were 80,840 and there were 90,106 resolutions.(return to text)
37. National Academy of Public Administration, Designing Outcome Measures at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Volume I, A Dialogue with Stakeholders and a Review of Existing Measures, Washington, DC, October 1999.(return to text)
38. NLRB has 32 regions, 3 sub-regions, and 16 resident offices. The latter have fewer than five people and are located in areas where there is less work but NLRB wants a small staff so there are fewer travel costs for investigations. All filings are done via paper, though a claimant can enter an appeal to a regional director's ruling via the web.(return to text)
39. Office of Personnel Management, "Exemplary Practices in Federal Productivity: Case Management in NLRB's Office of General Counsel, 1980. (return to text)
40. In the March 1995 report of the Charge Processing Task Force, one recommendation was that a new policy be that, "A wide variety of cases may be dismissed after the intake investigation is completed, or at a later stage after some additional examination if the evidence obtained does not establish that it is "more likely than not that discrimination occurred." p. 11.(return to text)

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