Office of Compliance: Status of Management Control Efforts to
Improve Effectiveness (03-FEB-04, GAO-04-400).
The Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003 Conference
Report mandated that GAO review the Office of Compliance (OOC),
an independent legislative branch agency created by the
Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 (CAA). OOC, a 15-person
office with about $2 million in expenditures during fiscal year
2003, administers and enforces various CAA provisions related to
fair employment and occupational safety and health among certain
legislative branch agencies. OOC's current Executive Director has
been in place since April 2001 and its General Counsel joined the
Office in June 2003. The mandate directed GAO to assess the OOC's
overall effectiveness and efficiency and to make recommendations,
as appropriate.
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-04-400
ACCNO: A09217
TITLE: Office of Compliance: Status of Management Control
Efforts to Improve Effectiveness
DATE: 02/03/2004
SUBJECT: Fair employment programs
Federal law
Internal controls
Occupational health and safety programs
Occupational safety
Strategic planning
Federal employees
Office management
Systems management
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GAO-04-400
United States General Accounting Office
GAO Report to Congressional Committees
February 2004
OFFICE OF COMPLIANCE
Status of Management Control Efforts to Improve Effectiveness
a
GAO-04-400
Highlights of GAO-04-400, a report to the Subcommittee on Legislative
Branch, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate and Subcommittee on
Legislative, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives
The Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003 Conference Report
mandated that GAO review the Office of Compliance (OOC), an independent
legislative branch agency created by the Congressional Accountability Act
of 1995 (CAA). OOC, a 15-person office with about $2 million in
expenditures during fiscal year 2003, administers and enforces various CAA
provisions related to fair employment and occupational safety and health
among certain legislative branch agencies. OOC's current Executive
Director has been in place since April 2001 and its General Counsel joined
the Office in June 2003. The mandate directed GAO to assess the OOC's
overall effectiveness and efficiency and to make recommendations, as
appropriate.
GAO makes several recommendations to strengthen OOC's strategic planning
process, facilitate communications between OOC and its congressional and
legislative branch stakeholders, and build an enhanced control management
environment within OOC. This report also contains matters for
congressional consideration regarding statutory changes to the CAA to help
maintain institutional continuity for OOC.
In a joint response, OOC's Board of Directors, Executive Director, and
General Counsel all generally agreed with our recommendations and stated
that OOC is making progress toward their adoption and implementation.
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-400.
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
the link above. For more information, contact J. Christopher Mihm at (202)
512-6806 or [email protected].
February 2004
OFFICE OF COMPLIANCE
Status of Management Control Efforts To Improve Effectiveness
OOC is in the early stages of a concerted and vitally needed effort to
improve and strengthen management control across the Office and to carry
out its mission more effectively and efficiently while safeguarding its
institutional independence. OOC's success in completing this important
effort depends upon making significant progress on a number of key
management control areas:
Sharpen focus on results. OOC's current strategic planning initiative is
beginning to address the more fundamental question of the Office's
effectiveness rather than the Office's traditional focus on activities and
outputs, such as the number of cases processed and inspections conducted.
OOC's planning initiative can also provide a vehicle for engaging and
consulting with key congressional and other stakeholders on OOC's
purposes, how those purposes will be achieved, how progress will be
assessed, and for sustaining feedback on what progress is being made and
what additional improvement opportunities exist. The planning initiative
is still very much a work in progress and continued efforts are needed in
a number of key areas including developing resultsoriented performance
measures.
Ensuring an effective program structure. As OOC shifts its focus from
outputs and activities to results, it must put in place a more effective
program structure that includes new ways of doing business. OOC has taken
a number of actions to administer the CAA, such as managing a dispute
resolution process and conducting investigations and inspections to ensure
compliance with safety and health standards. However, OOC is not fully in
compliance with the CAA's requirement concerning biennial safety and
health inspections of legislative branch agency facilities. OOC also needs
to expand on recent efforts to develop programs that are based on
collaboration with legislative branch agencies.
Building effective communication emphasizing outreach and coordination.
OOC's congressional and other stakeholders whom we interviewed said that
OOC recently has used a more collaborative approach rather than the
"gotcha" approach of the past. On the other hand, several agency officials
said that current interactions with OOC could be improved. To facilitate
more effective communications, OOC should establish congressional and
agency protocols to document agreements between the Congress, legislative
branch agencies, and OOC on what can be expected as OOC carries out its
work.
Creating and sustaining an enhanced management control environment.
Since its creation, OOC has operated without having any formal performance
management system for its Executive Director and General Counsel. OOC
should establish an enhanced management control environment and strengthen
accountability by requiring performance agreements between the Board and
both the Executive Director and General Counsel, as well as expanding and
improving on OOC's performance management system for all staff. Another
important challenge concerns the lack of institutional continuity that may
occur due to statutory term limits on OOC's leadership positions. To
prevent the loss of critical organizational knowledge, the Congress should
consider changing the term limits contained in the CAA.
Contents
Letter
Results in Brief
Background
OOC Has Effort Under Way to Sharpen Focus on Results
Ensuring an Effective Program Structure
Building Effective Communication Emphasizing Outreach and
Coordination Creating and Sustaining an Enhanced Management Control
Environment Essential for Effective Operations Agency Comments
1 2 7 14 21
32
39 45
Appendixes
Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and Methodology 47
Appendix II: Comments from the Office of Compliance 49
Table 1: The 12 Civil Rights, Workplace, and
Table Labor Laws Included
under the CAA
Figures Figure 1: Figure 2:
Figure 3: Figure 4: Figure 5:
Organizational Structure of the Office of Compliance 10 Expenditures for
Fiscal Years 1997-2003 Covering OOC Functions under the Responsibility of
the Board of Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel 13 Dispute
Resolution Cases, by Stage, Reported by OOC for 1996-2003 22 Health and
Safety Cases Reported by OOC for 1997-2003
24 UnfairLabor Practice Charges Filed Reported by OOC for 1997-2003 26
Contents
Abbreviations
ADA Americans with Disabilities Act
AOC Office of the Architect of the Capitol
CAA Congressional Accountability Act
EEOC U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
GPO Government Printing Office
GPRA Government Performance and Results Act
LOC Library of Congress
OOC Office of Compliance
OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration
IT information technology
USCP United States Capitol Police
This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright
protection in the United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in
its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this
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copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material
separately.
A
United States General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548
February 3, 2004
The Honorable Ben Nighthorse Campbell
Chairman
The Honorable Richard Durbin
Ranking Minority Member
Subcommittee on Legislative Branch
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
The Honorable Jack Kingston
Chairman
The Honorable James P. Moran
Ranking Minority Member
Subcommittee on Legislative
Committee on Appropriations
House of Representatives
Congress established the Office of Compliance (OOC) in 1995 as an
independent office within the legislative branch to administer and enforce
various provisions of the Congressional Accountability Act (CAA) related
to fair employment and occupational safety and health. As mandated by the
Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003 Conference Report,1 we
examined OOC's effectiveness and efficiency in fulfilling its
responsibilities
and role as set out in the CAA. Our specific objective was to assess key
management controls in place at OOC and identify what improvements, if
any, could be made to strengthen OOC's effectiveness and efficiency.
Management controls, also known as internal controls, are a major part of
managing an organization.2 They comprise the plans, methods, and
procedures used to meet missions, goals, and objectives and, in doing so,
support performance-based management. Effective management control
also helps in managing change to cope with shifting environments and
evolving demands and priorities. As programs change and as agencies
strive to improve operational processes and implement new technological
developments, management must continually assess and evaluate its
1H. Rpt. 108-10, Feb. 13, 2003.
2U.S. General Accounting Office, Standards for Internal Control in the
Federal Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1 (Washington, D.C.: November 1999).
management control to assure that activities being used are effective and
updated when necessary.
To meet our objective, we analyzed applicable laws, legislative history,
rules, and regulations; obtained and analyzed written documentation of
guidance, policies, procedures, and performance of OOC; met with the OOC
Board of Directors; conducted interviews with OOC executives, managers,
and staff; met with key congressional stakeholders and officials in other
legislative branch agencies and offices; and performed selected
reliability and validity tests of OOC's administrative dispute resolution
database. We also drew on key management practices and guidance identified
in previously issued GAO reports, where appropriate.
In addition, to assist OOC in its management control improvement efforts,
we provided OOC with briefings, reports, and examples of best practices in
the areas we reviewed. For example, at OOC's request, GAO officials
provided briefings on our approach to strategic planning and provided
copies of GAO strategic planning documents. We plan to continue working
with OOC's leadership and to meet with them regularly to discuss the
progress of their management reform initiatives. We performed our work in
Washington, D.C., from January 2003 through January 2004 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards. See appendix I for
additional information on our scope and methodology.
Results in Brief OOC's Board of Directors, senior leadership, and
employees are in the early stages of a concerted and vitally needed effort
to improve and strengthen management control across the Office. This
effort will need to address a fundamental question-how effective are OOC's
efforts in contributing to achieving mission results such as fostering a
safer and healthier workplace that is free from discrimination and other
forms of conflict? OOC will also need to address concerns of congressional
and other stakeholders about whether the Office's scarce resources are
being targeted efficiently. OOC's ability to answer these critical issues
will depend on, among other things, its ability to make significant
progress in the following four key management control areas:
Sharpen focus on results: OOC has begun to more fully define the
fundamental results, or outcomes, that it seeks to achieve. Traditionally,
OOC's operations and reporting have emphasized activities or outputs,
focusing on measures such as the number of mediation requests received,
the number of health and safety inspections conducted, or the time taken
for particular phases of a process. While these types of measures provide
important information on the efficiency of its operations, OOC's current
strategic planning initiative will begin to address the more fundamental
question of OOC's effectiveness in achieving actual mission results. As
part of this process, OOC has defined its mission as working to "advance
safety, health, and workplace rights for employees and employers of the
Legislative Branch as mandated by the Congressional Accountability Act."
Towards that end, the OOC has identified three strategic objectives or
goals: (1) effectively enforce and administer the CAA, (2) educate,
collaborate, and facilitate its regulated community, and (3) maintain an
efficient and accountable workplace.
OOC's strategic planning initiative is an important and positive
development that is still very much a work in progress. OOC's planning
effort can provide a vehicle for engaging and consulting with key
congressional and other stakeholders on the fundamental purposes of OOC,
how those purposes will be achieved, how progress will be assessed, and
what progress is being made and improvement opportunities exist.
Congressional and other stakeholders also need to be engaged as OOC
develops results-oriented performance measures. By doing so, OOC will help
to improve its performance, assure its accountability, and provide for
more useful and transparent annual reports. Building on the planning
effort, OOC is in its early stages of developing work plans to ensure its
daily operations, programs, and activities are aligned with the goals and
priorities in its plan. The strategic use of information technology (IT)
provides a key and continuing opportunity to improve OOC efficiency and
effectiveness.
We make several recommendations to OOC to help it continue and advance its
efforts to become more results-oriented. Specifically, we recommend that
OOC's strategic plan includes performance measures that link directly with
annual work plans, integrates IT planning and implementation, and is
developed with extensive collaboration and input from key congressional
and agency stakeholders. In addition, we recommend that OOC use its
completed strategic plan as the basis for future budget and staff
requests, as well as a basis for developing and implementing new program
initiatives and assessing the contributions of those initiatives to
achieving results. We further recommend that OOC's strategic plan provide
the foundation for developing an augmented and more results-oriented
annual report that provides data on the degree to which key goals are
being achieved, in addition to meeting existing statutory reporting
requirements, as is currently the case.
Ensuring an effective program structure: As OOC shifts its focus from
outputs and activities to the results of those outputs and activities, it
must put in place a program structure that meets its statutory
responsibilities, contributes to real improvements in the working
environment and workplaces of legislative branch employees, and safeguards
OOC's independence. The CAA contains a series of specific requirements for
OOC to meet as it carries out its responsibility to administer and enforce
the CAA. Toward this end, OOC has taken a number of actions, including
administering a dispute resolution process; conducting investigations and
inspections to ensure compliance with safety, health, and disability
access standards; investigating and managing matters concerning
labormanagement relations; and educating both employees and employing
offices about their rights and responsibilities under the CAA.
Leading organizations have found that as they shift their orientation to
results, new, different, and more effective ways of doing business will
emerge. OOC is beginning to experience such changes. For example, in light
of the increasing demands for health and safety inspections, and the very
small number of OOC staff available to conduct those inspections, OOC's
General Counsel and his staff have begun to explore possible approaches to
leverage OOC's limited resources through constructive engagement with
legislative branch agencies covered under the CAA. As an example of this
constructive approach, OOC will sponsor the first-ever Organizational
Health and Safety Program Conference for legislative agencies in February
2004.
We make a number of recommendations to help OOC accelerate this needed
shift in orientation and instill a more effective program structure.
Specifically, we identify several ways OOC can strengthen its
effectiveness using data including improving how the Office measures its
activities and performance. These include the possible use of benchmarks
to facilitate comparison and analysis; developing additional measures to
provide a more complete picture of its workload; using information on the
number and type of complaints it receives to better target education and
information distribution efforts; and increasing its capacity to use
occupational safety and health data to facilitate risk-based decision
making. We also recommend that OOC explore additional ways to better
disseminate information including establishing a clearinghouse for sharing
best practice information on topics covered by the CAA; reaching out to
relevant congressional groups, forums, and networks to ensure they are
aware of OOC's programs and activities; and working with the Congress to
determine the feasibility of using feedback surveys and focus groups to
provide information on awareness among legislative branch employees and
employers concerning their programs and activities. Finally, we recommend
that OOC work with the Congress to develop a strategy to ensure that all
facilities under OOC's jurisdiction and located in the Washington, D.C.
area-including the Senate and House page dormitories, and the National
Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of
Congress-receive occupational safety and health inspections at least
biennially, as required by the CAA. These facilities were not included in
the last biennial inspection conducted in 2002. OOC officials told us that
the decision not to inspect these facilities was largely due to resource
constraints.
Building effective communication emphasizing outreach and coordination:
OOC needs to develop a communications strategy to seek mutual
understanding among OOC's key congressional stakeholders and agencies
covered by the CAA concerning its mission and role as well as build trust
among its stakeholders and clients. Developing an effective communications
strategy could also assist OOC in becoming more collaborative and
partnerial. Our interviews with OOC's congressional stakeholders found
that OOC's efforts to consult with the Congress have been uneven and could
benefit from having a set of congressional protocols, which would document
agreements between the Congress and OOC on what congressional stakeholders
can expect as the Office carries out its work. Likewise, OOC could make
progress in achieving its mission by developing protocols for interacting
with legislative branch agencies covered by the CAA. Some congressional
staff members and agency officials said that OOC had recently shown a new
attitude and approach in its work that is characterized by greater
collaboration and cooperation rather than a "gotcha" approach that they
said often characterized OOC's past efforts. On the other hand, several
agency officials said that interactions with OOC were not good. They said,
for example, that OOC failed to always follow its own rules and procedures
when conducting investigations of health and safety complaints.
We recommend that OOC develop both congressional and agency protocols to
facilitate open and effective communications with stakeholders, clients,
and other recipients of the Office's services and activities. The purpose
of such protocols is to help create a basic understanding of OOC's goals,
functions, and procedures, what OOC will communicate to whom, when, and
how, and not to compromise the independence the Congress gave OOC to
enforce the CAA. In both cases, OOC should carefully pilot the protocols
before they are fully implemented so that OOC, the Congress, and
legislative agencies can gain experiences in their application and that
appropriate adjustments can be made. We also recommend that OOC review and
revise OOC's case-handling policies and procedures and ensure that they
are effectively communicated with appropriate legislative agency
officials.
Creating and sustaining an enhanced management control environment: OOC
also faces challenges in creating an enhanced control environment, which
forms the foundation for an organization's ability to put into place the
management controls necessary for effective and efficient operations. A
key factor that could affect OOC's management control is the lack of
institutional continuity due to the term limits of OOC's Board and senior
leadership positions and the impending required turnover of these
individuals. Specifically, because the CAA permits incumbents in these
positions to serve only a single, nonrenewable 5-year term, the Chair and
two members of the five-member Board will conclude their service in
September 2004, and the two remaining members will leave 8 months later in
May 2005. Similarly, the terms of all of OOC's senior executives, except
the General Counsel, will expire within 6 months of each other in 2006.
Taken together, eight out of nine of OOC's top officials will have left
the organization by September 2006.
Adding to this challenge is the fact that OOC has operated without any
formal performance management system for its Executive Director and
General Counsel since its creation in 1995, although as of 2003 these
officials prepare annual self-assessments. OOC's Board can strengthen
accountability for specific goals and help align daily operations with the
organization's programmatic goals by going the further step of requiring
performance agreements for the Executive Director and General Counsel. In
addition, while OOC established a performance management system for most
of its staff in 2002, some individuals continue to work without any formal
system to set goals, establish individual expectations, provide feedback,
and evaluate their performance. OOC's need to establish a modern,
effective, and credible performance management system with appropriate
safeguards for all its employees represents an additional human capital
challenge for OOC.
To address these concerns, we identify two matters for congressional
consideration and make several recommendations to OOC. To help prevent the
loss of critical organizational knowledge due to the impending loss of
most of OOC's leaders, the Congress should consider amending the CAA to
allow Board members to be reappointed by the Congress to an additional
term. In addition, the Congress should consider allowing OOC's Executive
Director, General Counsel, and two Deputy Executive Directors to be
reappointed to serve additional terms in either the same or a different
position, if warranted and desired. This would enable, for the first time,
the possibility of succession planning among these officials. However, any
such reappointments should be contingent on the ability to clearly assess
the performance of these officials and their achievement of OOC's goals.
Towards this end, we recommend that OOC's Board require performance
agreements for the Executive Director and General Counsel. The Executive
Director and General Counsel, in turn, should actively engage their staff
to build on and expand OOC's recent efforts in this area in order to
develop a more robust and effective approach to individual performance
management for all OOC employees.
OOC's Board of Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel, in a
joint response, all generally agreed with our recommendations and stated
that OOC is making progress toward their adoption and implementation.
Their written response is reprinted in appendix II.
Background Enacted on January 23, 1995, the CAA as amended, applies 12
federal civil rights, workplace, and labor laws to legislative branch
employees who were previously exempted from such coverage.3
Table 1: The 12 Civil Rights, Workplace, and Labor Laws Included under the CAA
CAA-covered federal law Summary of provisions
1. Title VII of the Civil Prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion,
and treatment Rights Act of 1964, of employees based on race, sex, color,
religion, or as amended national origin.
2. The Age Discrimination Prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion,
and treatment in Employment Act of of employees based on age. 1967, as
amended
3. The Rehabilitation Act of A precursor to the Americans with
Disabilities Act;
1973 prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with
disabilities with regard to federal employment.
4. The Family and Medical Provides that employees may use unpaid leave for
certain Leave Act of 1993 family and medical needs.
3Pub. L. No. 104-1, 2 U.S.C. S:S: 1301-1438.
(Continued From Previous Page)
CAA-covered federal law Summary of provisions
5. The Fair Labor Provides for fair compensation for employees for work
Standards Act of 1938, performed. as amended
6. The Employee Prohibits most private employers from requiring employees
Polygraph Protection Act and prospective employees to take a polygraph of
1988 examination.
7. The Worker Adjustment Requires employers to provide advance notice of
plant and Retraining closings and mass layoffs. Notification Act
8. Chapter 43 of title 38 of Provides reemployment rights for employees
who serve in the U.S. Code (relating the uniformed services. to veterans'
employment and reemployment)
9. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Prohibits discrimination
in hiring, promotions, and treatment of employees on the basis of
disability; requires full and equal access to public accommodations for
the disabled.
10. The Occupational Safety
Requires employers to provide a workplace that complies and Health Act of 1970
with occupational safety and health standards.
11. Chapter 71 of title 5 Protects the rights and obligations of employers
and U.S.C. (relating to employees in labor-management relations. federal
labormanagement relations)
12. Veterans' Employment Provides hiring preferences for veterans.
Opportunities Act of 1998
Source: GAO presentation based on the CAA and laws referenced above.
By passing the CAA, the Congress extended to approximately 30,000
employees of the legislative branch certain fair employment and
occupational safety safeguards. The CAA applies to current employees,
applicants for employment, and former employees of the following
organizations:
o Senate,
o House of Representatives,
o Capitol Guide Service,
o Capitol Police,
o Congressional Budget Office,
o Office of the Attending Physician,
o Office of the Architect of the Capitol, and
o Office of Compliance.
The CAA did not include GAO, the Library of Congress (LOC), and the
Government Printing Office (GPO) in many of its provisions because the
employees at these organizations already enjoyed the protections of many
of the civil rights laws extended to legislative branch staff by the CAA
prior to its enactment. For example, GAO, LOC, and GPO employees were
already protected against discrimination based on race, color, religion,
sex, and national origin (42 U.S.C. S: 2000e-16); discrimination based on
age (29 U.S.C. S: 633a); and discrimination based on disability (42 U.S.C.
S: 12209). In addition, GAO, LOC, and GPO employees already enjoyed the
protections provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S.C. S: 203)
and by the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act (5 U.S.C. S:
7103 for GPO and LOC employees; 31 U.S.C. S: 732(e) for GAO employees).
Furthermore, all three organizations have individualized processes for
resolving employee disputes. For example, GAO uses an independent entity,
the Personnel Appeals Board, to adjudicate employment disputes involving
GAO employees.
The CAA does extend the protections of the Employee Polygraph Protection
Act, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, the Uniform
Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, the Family and Medical
Leave Act, the public access provisions of the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Act to GAO and LOC
employees.
OOC's duties are divided among a Board of Directors, an Executive
Director, and a General Counsel, as shown in figure 1.
Figure 1: Organizational Structure of the Office of Compliancea
Source: GAO presentation based on OOC documents and the CAA.
aOOC's Executive Director, General Counsel, Deputy Executive Director for
the Senate, and Deputy Executive Director for the House are statutory
positions mandated by the CAA. The post of Deputy General Counsel as well
as other OOC and General Counsel staff positions are not specifically
required by the CAA.
b The CAA limits the General Counsel's hiring authority to attorneys with
the General Counsel's Office. According to OOC's General Counsel, although
the Executive Director is responsible for hiring occupational safety and
health and ADA specialists who work with the General Counsel, it has been
the practice at OOC that the Executive Director approves the General
Counsel's hiring recommendations.
The five-member Board of Directors has the duty of administering appeals
for the CAA's dispute resolution process. Employees or employers covered
by the CAA who are dissatisfied with the final decision resulting from a
dispute resolution process hearing may request that the Board review the
decision. From 1996 through 2003, the Board has heard 20 appeal cases. The
Board is also responsible for appeals of decisions by hearing officers
with respect to complaints filed by the General Counsel regarding
occupational safety and health issues, disability access concerns, and
labor-management relations violations.
The CAA also assigns the Board the duties of developing and issuing
regulations to implement the rights and protections of employees for 9 of
the 12 laws included in the CAA. The Board has issued regulations, which
were approved by the Congress, for the Family and Medical Leave Act,
federal labor-management relations provisions found in Chapter 71 of title
5 U.S. Code, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and Worker Adjustment and
Re-Training Act. The CAA also provides that OOC may apply existing
regulations promulgated by executive branch agencies for regulations not
issued by the Board, except for regulations regarding labor-management
relations. Before the Board's adopted regulations can become effective,
they must first be placed in the Congressional Record for a comment period
and must subsequently be approved by the Congress. The Board has delegated
much of the work to complete these duties to OOC's Executive Director.
The Executive Director has overall responsibility for managing OOC's
education and dispute resolution processes as well as directing OOC's
staffing and budgeting functions. Reporting directly to the Executive
Director are two deputies, to whom the Executive Director has delegated
specific functional roles in addition to those identified in the CAA: the
Deputy Executive Director for the House is responsible for managing OOC's
education and information distribution functions, and the Deputy Executive
Director for the Senate is responsible for administering OOC's dispute
resolution process.
The OOC General Counsel's duties include investigation and enforcement of
the Occupational Safety and Health Act and ADA requirements and managing
labor-management relations unfair labor practice case processing and court
litigation. Assisting the General Counsel is an attorney and an inspector
detailed from the Department of Labor to investigate and enforce
occupational safety and health standards with the assistance of part-time
contractors on a limited basis.
In summary, OOC's organizational structure has a leadership hierarchy with
different top leadership functions shared among the Board of Directors,
Executive Director, and General Counsel. This organizational structure of
shared functions is largely due to statutory requirements that OOC carry
out a variety of different roles-including adjudication, education, and
enforcement-as it applies the 12 workplace laws covered by the CAA. In
order to provide for a degree of needed independence between these
different functions, the CAA established an organizational structure that,
among other things, gave the Board the responsibility for hearing appeals
of the dispute resolution process for cases that are initially within the
province of the Executive Director or General Counsel.
While the CAA gives the Board of Directors the authority to appoint and
remove OOC's four senior executives-the Executive Director, General
Counsel, and two Deputy Executive Directors-the Board does not play an
active role in the daily operational management of OOC. Instead, OOC's
part-time Board focuses on its adjudicatory and policy functions including
hearing appeals and issuing regulations. Although the CAA designates OOC's
Executive Director as the organization's chief operating officer, the law
provides the General Counsel with independent authority to investigate and
enforce matters concerning occupational safety and health, disability
access, and labor-management relations. In practice, this has resulted in
a division of OOC by function, with the Executive Director responsible for
hiring and managing staff to carry out the education and dispute
resolution process functions and the General Counsel responsible for
hiring attorneys and managing staff in his operational areas.
OOC is staffed by 15 employees, including 4 in statutorily appointed
positions. As figure 2 shows, OOC's annual expenditures have ranged from a
high of $2.15 million in fiscal year 1997 to a low of $1.80 million in
fiscal year 2001. Fiscal year 2003 expenditures were $2.02 million. In
general, these expenditures are allocated between the duties performed by
the Executive Director, General Counsel, and Board of Directors. Over the
past 7 fiscal years, functions that are the responsibility of the
Executive Director have accounted for most of OOC's expenditures.
Figure 2: Expenditures for Fiscal Years 1997-2003 Covering OOC Functions
under the Responsibility of the Board of Directors, Executive Director,
and General Counsel
Thousands of dollars
2500
2,146
2000
1500
1000
500
0 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Fiscal year
Executive Directora
General Counselb
Board of Directorsc
Source: GAO presentation of OOC data.
aExecutive Director: OOC's chief operating officer is responsible for all
OOC functions except those specifically delegated to the General Counsel.
These include OOC's education function and the administrative dispute
resolution process as well as directing staffing and budget functions. The
expenditures reported under this category also include officewide overhead
costs such as information technology, utilities, and supplies.
bOffice of General Counsel: Reports and manages compliance with
occupational safety and health standards and disability access
requirements, manages labor-management relations unfair labor practice
case processing, court litigation, and obtains staff resources. The
expenditures reported under the General Counsel do not reflect the salary
of OOC's occupational safety and health inspector on long-term detail from
the Department of Labor.
cBoard of Directors: Hears appeals of the dispute resolution process,
issues regulations and reports, and selects four statutory appointees to
OOC management positions.
OOC Has Effort Under Way to Sharpen Focus on Results
Since August 2003, the OOC Board, its senior leadership team, and OOC's
employees have been exerting a concerted effort-consistent with our
suggestions-to more fully define the fundamental results, or outcomes,
that OOC seeks to achieve. OOC's operations and reporting have
traditionally been activity or output focused (e.g., number of requests
for mediation received, time within phases of the process, and number of
occupational safety and health inspections conducted). Such information is
important to managing OOC and to ensuring that its scarce resources are
efficiently targeted. However, the current Board and OOC leadership have
undertaken OOC's first strategic planning initiative in recognition that
despite the real value from output information, such data do not address
the more fundamental question of the effectiveness of OOC's efforts. That
is, OOC's current planning effort is intended to help OOC and its
congressional and other stakeholders ensure that OOC's activities and
outputs are optimizing the Office's contribution to results, such as a
safer and healthier workplace and one free from discrimination and other
forms of conflict. Our discussions with OOC stakeholders across the
Congress and legislative branch agencies confirmed the need for and
importance of the current planning effort.
Effective management control requires that an organization establish its
organizational objectives in the form of a set of defined mission, goals,
and objectives. Furthermore, we found that leading organizations
consistently strive to ensure that their day-to-day activities support
their organizational missions and move them closer to accomplishing their
strategic goals.4 Thus, OOC is not alone among organizations in seeking to
answer critical questions about its overall effectiveness. Our assessments
over the last decade of executive agencies' implementation of the
Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) have consistently found that
executive agencies have struggled with shifting the focus of their
management and accountability from outputs to results. At OOC's
invitation, we have met with OOC's leadership to share our wealth of
information and perspective on executive agencies' efforts under GPRA, as
well as our own experiences in strategic planning, performance planning,
and accountability reporting at GAO. While maintaining our respective
4U.S. General Accounting Office, Executive Guide: Effectively Implementing
the Government Performance and Results Act, GAO/GGD-96-118 (Washington,
D.C.: June 1996) and GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
institutional independence, we are prepared to offer OOC continuing
support as its planning efforts proceed.
OOC's planning initiative is important to ensuring that OOC's programs,
activities, and limited resources are contributing to results that are
making improvements in the work and work environments of legislative
branch employees. OOC's efforts to achieve this goal are complicated by
the inevitable tension that arises between organizations charged with the
duty to implement and enforce regulations and the agencies subject to
those regulations. Under the current draft of its strategic plan, OOC
defines its mission as working to "advance safety, health, and workplace
rights for employees and employers of the Legislative Branch as mandated
by the Congressional Accountability Act." OOC is developing strategic
objectives (goals) in three areas: effectively enforce and administer the
CAA; educate, collaborate, and facilitate the regulated community; and
maintain an efficient and accountable workplace (within OOC). More
specifically:
o Effectively enforce and administer the CAA: Regulatory enforcement and
administration focuses on operation of dispute resolution procedures and
investigation and prosecution of alleged violations.
o Educate, collaborate, and facilitate for our regulated community: The
Office will encourage and facilitate positive change in the employment
cultures within the regulated community to stimulate compliance with the
entire CAA; and effectively communicate with the Congress regarding the
status quo and potential enhancement of the CAA.
o Maintain an efficient and accountable workplace: Efficiency involves
not only careful and wise use of appropriated funds, but also continued
utilization of resources in a way that allows for timely and expeditious
completion of office activities and functions in order to better serve our
regulated community.
OOC's effort to develop a results-oriented strategic plan is an important
and positive development that is still very much a work in progress-as the
Board and OOC's senior leadership clearly appreciate. Perhaps most
important is OOC's recognition that its planning effort provides a vehicle
for engaging and consulting with key congressional and other stakeholders
on the fundamental purposes of OOC (strategic goals), how those purposes
will be achieved (programs and strategies), how progress will be assessed
(performance measures), and what progress is being made and improvement
opportunities exist (accountability reporting). More
specifically, as OOC's draft plan and our discussions with the Board and
OOC's leadership have confirmed, OOC is committed to an approach that
meets its statutory responsibility by adopting a more cooperative and
collegial approach with legislative branch offices and agencies, while at
the same time maintaining its enforcement capability and safeguarding its
institutional independence. The planning effort underway provides the
opportunity to reach agreement with key congressional and other
stakeholders on the direction-and potential limits-of this new commitment.
OOC has held a series of discussions with selected congressional
stakeholders and plans additional outreach with them and other
stakeholders as the planning effort moves forward. In fact, as we have
found by looking at leading results-oriented organizations, the production
of the actual strategic planning document is one of the least important
parts of the planning process. Leading results-oriented organizations
understand that strategic planning is not a static or occasional event,
but rather a dynamic and inclusive process. By working with and actively
engaging key congressional and other stakeholders in its planning effort,
OOC can better justify to stakeholders its current budget and staff
resources allocation and program efforts then, as appropriate, OOC can
build a business case for additional resources and new initiatives that
OOC leadership may believe are necessary for an agreed-upon mission and
set of strategic goals.
In short, if done well, strategic planning is continuous and provides the
basis for everything that the organization does each day. Moving forward,
OOC plans to align key programs and strategies with each of these
objectives. In that regard, OOC managers have begun drafting several work
plans intended to link OOC's programs and activities to the strategic
objectives contained in the draft plan. Similar to the strategic plan,
these work plans are still in draft and therefore do not yet provide a
clear linkage between OOC's strategic objectives and the day-to-day
operations of these functions.
OOC's strategic planning also needs to include the development of
resultsoriented performance measures. OOC is committed to this effort and
has "place-markers" in its draft plan for these measures. OOC could
benefit from considering the experiences of leading organization in
resultsoriented performance measurement. Results-oriented organizations we
have studied, which were successful in measuring their performance,
developed measures that were:
o tied to program goals and demonstrated the degree to which the desired
results were achieved,
o limited to the vital few that were considered essential to producing
data for decision making,
o responsive to multiple priorities, and
o responsibility-linked to establish accountability for results.5
Similar to decisions about strategic goals, determining the appropriate
set of performance measures should also be based on input from key
stakeholders to determine what is important to them to determine OOC's
progress and assess its performance. Put most directly, agreed-upon
performance measures are the key to providing the Congress with the data
it needs to answer a key question that the current fiscal environment is
demanding of all agencies across the federal government: "What are we
getting for our investment in this agency, and is it worth it?"
OOC Is Beginning to Integrate Information Technology Planning into its
Strategic Plan
OOC officials said that they are committed to making better use of IT in
the future, and to ensuring that doing so is accomplished in a prudent and
systematic fashion. For example, OOC's draft strategic plan cites "fully
leveraging IT to complement and expand office activities" as one strategy
under its "maintain an efficient and accountable workplace" goal.
OOC has begun to take some action, but much remains to be accomplished.
For example, it established an Information Technology Task Force in May
2003, and consistent with our suggestions to OOC leadership, the task
force has been charged with developing parallel IT strategies: one
addressing near-term, stay-in-business IT needs and the other addressing
long-term IT modernization needs. Thus far, the task force has met
numerous times and has been guided in this initiative by a private
consultant. It has also, for example, reviewed the current IT environment
and has surveyed OOC staff about IT needs and preferences.
With respect to near-term needs, OOC is taking steps to address immediate
shortfalls in its ability to produce the information it needs to manage
5GAO/GGD-96-118.
current operations and workloads. For example, OOC is investing a few
weeks of staff time to create a new Access database to provide a temporary
solution to meet certain case-tracking information needs. In our view,
such relatively small, low-risk investments that provide immediate mission
value are appropriate near-term steps.
However, before pursuing strategic, modernized system solutions, it is
important that OOC first position itself for successfully doing so by
establishing certain basic IT management capabilities. These capabilities
include, among other things, developing a picture or description, based on
OOC's strategic plan, of what it wants its future IT environment to look
like, putting in place and following defined and disciplined processes for
allocating limited resources across competing IT investment options,
employing explicit and rigorous IT system acquisition management
processes, and ensuring that needed IT human capital knowledge and skill
needs and shortfalls are identified and systematically addressed.
According to OOC officials, each of these areas will be addressed. If they
are not, the risk of being unable to effectively leverage technology in
achieving strategic mission goals and outcomes will be increased.
OOC's current use of IT is limited. For example, OOC's automated
administrative dispute resolution case tracking system does not have the
capability to notify system users when a case closes or should be closed.
OOC's system manager said they must periodically review some cases
manually and update the system for closed cases. OOC officials told us
that they had experienced some data quality problems during early
implementation stages of the dispute resolution case tracking system, but
had tested the system in March 2003 to determine if corrective actions
were effective. According to OOC officials, the data accuracy test
demonstrated that the information was now reliable, although they said the
test was performed informally and they had no documentation on the
methodology and the test results. We performed our own independent test of
data quality for this system as part of this review and found that the
data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this report. (See app.
I for additional information on our reliability and validity reviews of
OOC's database.)
OOC also recognizes the need to make better use of IT when enforcing the
Occupational Safety and Health Act-related provisions of the CAA. For
example, OOC's Office of the General Counsel is considering the purchase
of specialized IT software that would centralize and automate a variety of
tasks concerning the occupational safety and health-related cases it
handles, including assessing risk, monitoring case status, and tracking
agency abatement efforts. In November 2003, after meeting with us to
discuss best practices in IT acquisition and planning, OOC's General
Counsel established a group to develop specific selection criteria to
assess potential IT case management software. As part of this process, the
group and an outside IT consultant gathered information from both
legislative and executive branch agencies including the Architect of the
Capitol (AOC), LOC, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) concerning their practices and experiences with similar IT
applications. OOC expects to complete this evaluation process by the end
of March 2004.
In regards to the accounting and budgeting system used by OOC, a 2003
audit by an independent accounting firm of LOC's financial statements
found that the system was reliable. LOC administers the accounting and
budgeting system and the accounting firm's findings were addressed to LOC.
Although the auditors reported the system was, overall, reliable, they
also reported that there were two IT-related deficiencies that could
adversely affect the user's ability to meet its financial management
objectives. The deficiencies were that (1) security practices over IT
systems need to be improved and (2) LOC needs to establish a comprehensive
disaster recovery program to maintain service continuity, minimize the
risk of unplanned interruptions, and recover critical operations should
interruptions occur. The audit recommended that the LOC address these
deficiencies as a high priority. LOC officials acknowledged the need to
address these deficiencies and have taken some preliminary actions
including drafting an officewide policy on IT security practices and
acquiring an off-site facility for their disaster recovery program.
Strategic Planning Provides Opportunity for More Useful Annual Reports
As required by section 301(h) of the CAA, OOC issues an annual report that
contains "statistics on the use of the Office by covered employees,
including the number and type of contacts made with the Office, on the
reason for such contacts, on the number of covered employees who initiated
proceedings with the Office under this Act and the result of such
proceedings, and on the number of covered employees who filed a complaint,
the basis for the complaint, and the action taken on the complaint."
Based on our reviews of the reports issued thus far, OOC is meeting this
annual report requirement. However, the information is almost entirely
output based, providing little sense of OOC's broader impact. Most of
OOC's congressional stakeholders with whom we spoke were not familiar with
OOC's annual reports and those congressional stakeholders who had seen the
report said that it was difficult to understand and could be more
user-friendly. For example, one congressional stakeholder said that it was
difficult to make decisions about OOC using the information contained in
the annual report.
As an outgrowth of its strategic planning effort to identify, measure, and
manage toward results, OOC can enhance its annual report and incorporate
elements that would make it a more useful and relied-upon accountability
report. New, results-oriented information, showing the extent to which
goals were met and suggesting improvement opportunities-including those
that may suggest the need for congressional concurrence or actions-could
be reported along with the activity and workload statistics required in
section 301(h) of the CAA.
Recommended Next Steps Building on the strategic planning efforts
underway, we recommend that the Board of Directors, Executive Director,
and General Counsel of OOC ensure that the planning effort:
o Is developed with extensive collaboration and input from key
congressional and agency stakeholders to ensure that there is a reasonable
and appropriate degree of agreement concerning OOC's overall direction and
that its programs are effectively coordinated with other efforts. To be
most effective, this stakeholder and agency input should be part of an
ongoing dialogue to ensure goals, objectives, and strategies are adjusted
as warranted.
o Includes performance measures that are linked to the strategic plan and
resulting annual work plans.
o Becomes the basis for OOC's budget and staff requests and developing
and implementing program efforts and for assessing the contributions of
those efforts to results.
o Makes information technology planning and implementation an integral
component of the process.
o Is used as a basis for an augmented and more results-oriented annual
report that provides data on the degree to which key goals are being
achieved, in addition to meeting important statutory reporting
requirements.
Ensuring an Effective Program Structure
Our work looking at leading organizations has often found that as
organizations shift their orientation from outputs and activities to the
results that those outputs and activities are intended to achieve, new,
different, and more effective ways of doing business will emerge.6 OOC is
in the midst of just such a shift in its orientation as was discussed
earlier in this report. This shift entails putting in place a program
structure at OOC that meets its statutory responsibilities, contributes to
improvement in the working environment and workplaces of legislative
branch employees, and safeguards OOC's independence.
OOC's Functions and Workload
The CAA contains a series of specific requirements for OOC to meet as it
carries out its responsibility to administer and enforce the CAA. Towards
this end, OOC has taken a number of actions including establishing and
administering a dispute resolution process for employees who allege
violations of civil rights, labor, and employment laws covered by the CAA;
conducting investigations and periodic inspections of legislative branch
facilities to ensure compliance with safety, health, and disability access
standards; adopting substantive regulations, many of which have been
approved by the Congress, to apply covered laws to the legislative branch;
educating both employees and employing offices about their rights and
responsibilities under the law; and regularly reporting to the Congress on
its activities in a variety of required reports and studies.
Dispute Resolution Dispute resolution is the largest of the functions
performed by OOC, available to any legislative branch employee in an
agency covered under the CAA's dispute resolution provisions who alleges
violations of certain sections of the CAA. OOC's dispute resolution
process consists of a series of statutorily prescribed steps beginning
with counseling and mediation. If these actions fail to resolve the
dispute, the employee may choose to either file a formal complaint with
OOC and proceed with an administrative hearing before an independent
hearing officer, or file suit in federal court. Both employees and covered
legislative agencies that are dissatisfied with
6GAO/GGD-96-118.
the decisions of their administrative hearings may appeal to OOC's Board
of Directors.
Figure 3: Dispute Resolution Cases, by Stage, Reported by OOC for
1996-2003 Number of cases
395
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0 1996a 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003b
Counseling
Mediation
Complaints filed with OC
Appeals to Board of Directors
Civil actions filed with District Court
Source: GAO presentation of OOC data.
aData for 1996 covers January 23-December 31.
bData for 2003 covers January 1-December 9.
Note: The number of cases closed in a given year may not equal the total
number of cases identified in each of the other categories for that year
because of other factors including cases carried over from previous years.
OOC told us that the large jumps in the number of cases in the dispute
resolution system in 1999, 2000, and 2001, were the result of two
singleissue large group requests involving employees from AOC and the
United States Capitol Police (USCP) as they worked their way through the
process. For example, 274 (or almost 70 percent) of the 395 requests for
counseling reported in 2001 pertained to a single USCP large group case.
Similarly, 272 of the cases that were closed that same year and were
reported as resulting in civil actions being filed with the district court
were also associated with this same single-issue group request. In fact,
OOC cites the absence of such group cases in its annual report to the
Congress on the use of the Office when describing the significant decrease
in total requests for counseling received in 2002.
These cases illustrate that OOC's approach to reporting case activity does
not provide a complete picture of OOC's workload since it reports each
individual included as part of the large group as an individual request
regardless of whether the individual personally requested or even
participated in services such as counseling or mediation. OOC could not
provide us with a specific number of the individuals included in these
group requests who actually received counseling or mediation services in
1999 or 2001. According to OOC, dispute resolution data is presented in
this manner because the CAA specifically requires the Office to report on
the total number of individuals requesting counseling or mediation. While
this information is needed to meet existing statutory reporting
requirements, other data, such as the actual number of counseling and
mediation sessions held, could provide a helpful complement to the data
which OOC currently reports, as well as a more useful indicator of its
actual workload.
In addition to rethinking how it might supplement the way it currently
reports on single-issue large group requests, OOC should consider other
potential improvements on how it measures its activities and workload.
Such improvements can play an important role in helping organizations both
obtain a fuller understanding of the process and implications of its
activities as well as provide stakeholders with more transparent and
complete information. OOC is exploring options in this area and we have
offered our assistance in this regard. One possibility would be for OOC to
benchmark its data against that reported by other federal agencies, when
comparable measures exist, or against OOC's own past performance when such
measures do not. For example, following the practice of the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), OOC might consider using such
benchmarks to set both long-and short-term performance targets.
Occupational Safety and Health, The CAA assigns OOC's General Counsel with
a number of independent Disability Access, and Labor- investigative and
enforcement functions related to ensuring occupational Management
Relations health and safety, disability access, and labor-management
relations.
Occupational safety and health. Enforcement of occupational safety and
health standards accounts for the majority of the time spent by the
General Counsel and his staff, and roughly 30 percent of OOC's overall
workload. The CAA requires the General Counsel to perform this work in two
basic ways: (1) by conducting inspections and investigations of potential
hazards in response to requests by any covered employee or employing
office and (2) by performing periodic inspections of the facilities of all
entities covered by the act.
Figure 4: Health and Safety Cases Reported by OOC for 1997-2003
Number of cases
60
53
50
40
30
20
10
0 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003a
Year
Requests for inspections filed
Cases pending at end of reporting period
Cases closed
Source: GAO presentation of OOC data.
a Data for 2003 covers January 1-December 9.
Any covered legislative branch employee can file a complaint requesting
the General Counsel inspect and investigate a possible health and safety
hazard. As shown in figure 4, the annual workload of requested inspections
has risen dramatically since 2000, from 14 in 2000 to 39 in 2003 (as of
December 9, 2003). The General Counsel's resources, however, have not kept
pace with this growth. The General Counsel's financial expenditures
increased by less than 5 percent from fiscal year 2000 to fiscal year
2003. In
addition, during this same period the number of full-time staff assigned
to conduct the actual workplace health and safety investigations remained
steady at a single individual, an OSHA workplace safety specialist
assigned to OOC from the Department of Labor on long-term detail, with the
assistance of part-time contractors on a limited basis.
OOC also enforces health and safety regulations by conducting periodic
inspections of the facilities of all covered entities at least once each
Congress, as required by the CAA. These inspections are scheduled ahead of
time with legislative agencies and resemble the "walk around" inspections
conducted by OSHA. In contrast to most other CAA requirements, OOC is not
fully in compliance with the CAA requirement that it "conduct periodic
inspections of all facilities" of the agencies covered by the provision.7
Although OOC conducted periodic inspections at the majority of facilities
in the Washington, D.C. area including large structures such as all Senate
and House office buildings and the U.S. Capitol building, OOC did not
include 10 out of 46 facilities subject to its jurisdiction in its last
biennial inspection in 2002. For example, according to documents provided
by OOC, the Office did not perform safety and health inspections at the
Senate or House page dormitories, or at LOC's National Library Service for
the Blind and Physically Handicapped. OOC officials told us that the
decision not to inspect these facilities was largely due to resource
constraints.
Disability access. The CAA requires the General Counsel to both conduct
investigations of charges alleging discrimination in public services and
accommodations on the basis of disability, and to inspect covered
facilities in the legislative branch at least once each Congress for
compliance with the public services and accommodations provisions in the
ADA. From 1997 through December 9, 2003, five charges of discrimination
have been filed with the General Counsel. According to OOC documents, its
biennial inspections have included all public areas where constituents,
individuals on official business, and visitors have access-approximately 8
million square feet of space.
7This includes all facilities of the House of Representatives, the Senate,
the Capitol Guide Service, the Capitol Police, the Congressional Budget
Office, the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, the Office of the
Attending Physician, the Office of Compliance, the Library of Congress,
and the General Accounting Office. See 2 U.S.C. S: 1341(e)(1).
Labor-management relations. Under the CAA, OOC's General Counsel is
responsible for investigating charges of unfair labor practices and for
filing and prosecuting complaints in administrative hearings and before
the Board of Directors as appropriate. Since 2001, the number of charges
filed with the General Counsel has remained fairly constant, varying
between 18 and 19 per year, as shown in figure 5. In 2000, OOC experienced
a sharp spike in charges filed with the number jumping to 38 in that year.
OOC was unable to provide a definitive reason for this increase, but told
us that it was probably related to the large group cases going through
OOC's dispute resolution process as these cases raised issues that could
relate to charges of unfair labor practices. Despite the relatively stable
number of new unfair labor practice charges received by OOC since 2001,
the backlog of cases still pending at the end of the year has almost
doubled, increasing from 6 in 2001 to 11 in 2003 (as of December 9, 2003).
Figure 5: Unfair Labor Practice Charges Filed Reported by OOC for
1997-2003
Number of cases 40 38
35 30 25 20 15 10 5
3
0 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003a
Year
Charges filed Cases closed Cases pending at end of reporting period
Source: GAO presentation of OOC data.
aData for 2003 covers January1-December 9.
OOC's Executive Director is responsible for a variety of other functions
relating to labor-management relations including supervising union
elections and resolving issues involving such matters as good faith
bargaining. OOC has supervised 14 union elections since 1997, 12 of these
in 2000 or earlier.
Another duty of the General Counsel under the CAA is to represent OOC in
any judicial proceeding under the act, including cases before the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.8 In past years, the number of
such cases has been low, with no cases filed in 1997, 2001, and 2002 and
one case each filed in 1998, 1999, and 2000. However, in 2003 the number
of federal circuit review cases involving OOC and requiring attention from
the General Counsel and his staff unexpectedly increased to six. OOC's
General Counsel told us that this situation has been exacerbated by the
loss of two attorneys during 2003, reducing his previous staffing level of
four full-time OOC attorneys to only two, including the General Counsel,
by December 2003. According to the General Counsel, his office is
currently recruiting for a staff attorney and he expects to have that
individual hired by spring of 2004.
Education and Information OOC has a broad mandate under the CAA to provide
education and
Distribution information to the Congress, employing offices, and
legislative branch employees about their rights, protections, and
responsibilities under the act. To this end, OOC uses a variety of
approaches including distributing written material such as home mailings,
fliers, bulletins, fact sheets, and reports; conducting briefings with new
staff at agency-sponsored orientation sessions; holding seminars at the
offices of stakeholders and legislative agencies; maintaining a Web site
and information number; and responding to direct inquires. More recently,
OOC's education efforts have made increased use of technology including a
redesign of its Web site to make it more user friendly and increased use
of resources such as electronic news bulletins and online tools such as
its interactive template for creating an emergency action plan.
Despite such potentially promising initiatives, OOC's current approach to
tracking and reporting on its education efforts-its Education Program Year
End Report-remains firmly focused on counting products and activities
rather than focusing on results. Other approaches such as conducting
feedback surveys and focus groups could provide OOC with
8See 2 U.S.C. S: 1382(c)(3).
valuable mechanisms to increase its understanding of the actual level of
awareness specific target populations have of its programs and activities.
OOC can then use this knowledge to assess its effectiveness in actually
communicating its message rather than simply its diligence in distributing
documents.
Developing appropriate performance measures has the potential to help OOC
realize several significant benefits such as improving its ability to
understand and track its process toward achieving goals, giving managers
crucial information on which to base their organizational and management
decisions, and creating powerful incentives to influence organizational
and individual behavior. Of course, the benefits of such improvements will
need to be balanced against real-world considerations, such as the cost
and effort involved in gathering and analyzing performance data, and the
burden such data collection may present for stakeholders and covered
employees.
Opportunities to Strengthen OOC's Effectiveness by Ensuring Programs Are
Aligned with Results
We have previously reported that as agencies develop information systems
and capacities for analysis and evaluation, they discover that having a
better understanding of the facts and the relationship between their
activities and desired outcomes provides them with a solid foundation for
focusing their efforts and improving their performance.9 Facing an
increasing workload and scarce resources, OOC's leadership has begun the
process of asking these questions in an effort to find more effective ways
in which to do their work.
OOC's senior leadership has expressed a willingness to explore
opportunities to develop the technical and analytical capacity needed to
more effectively work toward results. For example, over the last several
years OOC has used a variety of methods for tracking and recording summary
information on its occupational safety and health related caseload in
order to manage its work in this area. These systems were generally basic
in design and ranged from several incompatibly designed databases to using
simple tables in a word processor to keep track of cases.
None of these approaches provided the General Counsel and his staff with
an easy way to systematically examine the approximately 50 open requests
9GAO/GGD-96-118.
for health and safety investigations, or the hundreds of inspections and
investigations conducted by OOC in the past, to look for patterns and
identify possible common or underlying causes of potential workplace
hazards. Toward this end, OOC is exploring the possibility of acquiring a
specialized regulatory case-tracking database application that would
enable the General Counsel and his staff to take a more strategic and
riskbased approach towards their work, including such decisions as
assigning cases, determining the appropriate amount of follow-up required,
and informing the selection of particular facilities for its biennial
inspections. Until OOC decides on whether, and which, permanent
case-tracking software system it may adopt, staff in the General Counsel's
office have been developing a new Microsoft Access database intended to
offer a shortterm solution to OOC's need to more effectively track basic
information related to its occupational safety and health related
caseload, such as case type, key dates, principal parties involved, and
actions planned and accomplished. According to the General Counsel, this
system should be operational in January 2004.
Ensuring that an organization is focusing on the right activities to
effectively achieve its goals is always an important part of good
management control. However, focusing on the right activities is
especially important in times of economic scarcity, when the benefit of
having programs that deliver a maximum impact towards achieving results is
particularly critical. For example, in light of increasing demands for
safety and health inspections, and the very small number of OOC staff
available to conduct those inspections, OOC's General Counsel and his
staff have begun to explore possible approaches to leverage OOC's limited
resources through constructive engagement with legislative agencies. This
approach seeks to obtain agency compliance with occupational safety and
health requirements by motivating them to do so out of a sense of common
purpose and mutual benefit rather than forcing them with the threat of
punitive citations.
Toward this end, in February 2004 OOC will sponsor its first-ever
Organizational Health and Safety Program Conference. The conference will
bring together congressional and agency staff involved in health and
safety issues from throughout the legislative branch in order to learn
about recent thinking and practice in workplace health and safety and to
discuss issues of mutual concern. The conference will include
presentations by outside safety experts from a variety of organizations
from the legislative branch and elsewhere. Tentatively scheduled
presenters include representatives from AOC, organized labor, OSHA, and
the National Safety Council.
The recent experiences of AOC provide another example of the potential
benefits of sharing lessons learned concerning health and safety
practices. AOC is undertaking a major effort to augment and make more
strategic its approach to worker safety and health.10 This effort
obviously has important implications for AOC and its employees. Equally
important, by sharing AOC's experiences and leveraging its efforts in such
areas as incident reporting and follow-up and risk mitigation, AOC's
efforts can potentially have great value across legislative branch
agencies. Building on this idea, OOC should explore the possibility of
playing a more active role as a central repository for good practices
developed by agencies throughout the legislative branch on topics covered
under the CAA.
OOC's recent experience with USCP to offer fire safety training for its
officers provides a lesson in the importance of carefully targeting such
initiatives to the intended audience. The impact of OOC's initiative may
be somewhat limited until OOC develops a deeper understanding of what
would make this type of supplemental training useful in the view of USCP's
management and officers. Specifically, a senior USCP official who was
directly aware of this effort informed us that although the training
contained some good material, it was not sufficiently tailored to USCP to
be very useful.
The value of thinking about outcomes and the relationship between
activities and outcomes can also help OOC make determinations about
whether it is providing the right mix of services and activities to
achieve its overall goals. For example, until recently OOC's education
efforts have been largely focused on activities such as sending mass
mailings of written material to the homes of legislative branch employees,
distributing fliers and bulletins to legislative agencies for subsequent
distribution, and conducting general information sessions for new
employees. Moreover, OOC's education efforts would benefit from better
analysis of the types of complaints that have been made. As noted above,
OOC tracks the number of cases it handles and how they proceed through
established processes. It does not, however, currently gather data on the
nature of complaints. While protecting the confidentiality of OOC's case
files must continue to be of primary concern, OOC could also seek ways to
examine if common issues
10U.S. General Accounting Office, Architect of the Capitol: Status Report
on Implementation of Management Review Recommendations, GAO-04-299
(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 30, 2004).
are being raised. Such information could prove very valuable in targeting
OOC's education efforts.
In addition, OOC's current leadership team recognizes the importance of
looking for new ways to get information about the CAA and OOC out to
employees. They are also experimenting with new approaches such as posting
e-bulletins and other ways to use the Internet creatively. On the basis of
our work, ample opportunities exist for continued progress in this area.
For example, in our conversations with congressional stakeholders,
representatives from the Senate Administrative Office Managers Group told
us that they would welcome additional contact with OOC. These Senate
office managers are senior staff responsible for working with Members to
ensure the efficient and effective operation of each member's personal
office. As such, office managers are key clients of OOC. Office managers
meet periodically to discuss issues of mutual interest and concern-an
ideal opportunity for OOC outreach. However, representatives from the
Senate Administrative Office Managers Group told us that they had not had
contact with OOC for several years. OOC should consider whether there are
similar groups that it might reach out to as part of its effort to
establish consistent and ongoing relationships with its clients.
Recommended Next Steps We recommend that OOC's Executive Director and
General Counsel:
o identify potential improvements to how the Office measures its
activities and performance, including the possibility of using benchmark
data from federal agencies with similar functions for purposes of
comparison and analysis;
o provide a more complete picture of OOC's workload by improving how it
tracks and reports on single-issue large group requests for counseling and
mediation;
o work with the Congress to develop a strategy to ensure that all
facilities under OOC's jurisdiction and located in the Capitol Hill
complex and the surrounding Washington, D.C. area-including the Senate and
House page dormitories, and LOC's National Library Service for the Blind
and Physically Handicapped-are covered as part of the biennial safety
inspections required by the CAA;
o establish a clearinghouse for sharing best practice information on
topics covered by the CAA;
o work with the Congress to determine the feasibility of using such
mechanisms as feedback surveys and focus groups to provide valuable
information on the actual level of awareness among target populations
concerning OOC's programs and activities;
o outreach to other groups and forums such as the Senate Administrative
Managers-Chief Clerks Steering Committee;
o use data on the number and type of complaints received by OOC to better
target education and information distribution efforts; and
o develop capacity to use safety and health data to facilitate risk-based
decision making.
Building Effective Communication Emphasizing Outreach and Coordination
Effective communication and coordination with both stakeholders and
clients is essential for organizations to operate effectively, manage
risks, and achieve results. We have previously identified the ability of
federal agencies to engage in relevant, reliable, and timely communication
relating to internal and external events as fundamental for effective
management control.11 At OOC, an effective communications strategy could
provide a powerful tool to seek mutual understanding among OOC, key
stakeholders, and legislative agencies concerning its mission and role,
convey OOC's recent initiatives and improvement efforts, obtain
information about the external environment that may affect the Office's
ability to achieve its mission, as well as build up trust among the
stakeholders and clients that is necessary for the Office to realize its
goal of becoming more collaborative and partnerial.
OOC has recently undertaken a number of important initiatives to improve
communications and coordination. Consistent with, and building upon those
initiatives, we identified two specific areas where OOC can continue to
make improvements in the way in which it communicates with other entities
and organizations including:
11GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
o ensuring clear, regular, and timely consultation with congressional
stakeholders; and
o communicating and coordinating with agencies openly and effectively.
Ensuring Clear, Regular, and Timely Consultation with Congressional
Stakeholders
A key component of an effective communications strategy is communicating
with, and obtaining information from, external stakeholders.12 OOC's
leaders recognize the importance of communicating with stakeholders and
have taken steps to expand their efforts in this area. However, our
interviews with a wide range of congressional stakeholders, including
majority and minority staff in both the Senate and the House, indicate
that OOC's efforts to effectively consult with the Congress have been
uneven and additional efforts are needed.
On the one hand, some congressional staff-but by no means all-told us that
they believed OOC has made efforts to develop more transparent and
collegial working relationships with congressional stakeholders. For
example, a congressional staff member cited the efforts of OOC's General
Counsel to reach out to congressional staff shortly after he joined the
Office in May 2003. Another staff member cited an example where OOC worked
constructively with his office to resolve a potential fire safety problem
involving the placement of furniture. This staff member appreciated OOC's
willingness to discuss the issue with his office and work to find a
satisfactory solution that would both comply with safety requirements and
take into account the need of his office to continue to conduct business
and the physical limitations of the space involved.
On the other hand, a number of staff, including some who acknowledged and
appreciated OOC's recent efforts, said that they remained unclear about
the office's role and services, how it makes decisions, and related
matters. Moreover, several congressional staff members told us that they
have not seen much outreach from OOC, or that the outreach they did
experience was inconsistent and could be more effective. For example, one
individual told us that he only received information from OOC when it was
interested in proposing a legislative change that would require the
cooperation of the Congress. Another concern cited by several staff was
the perception that OOC did not make an effort to ensure that they were
12GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
informed "at the front end" concerning significant activities and
initiatives. Thus, the concern is not so much the existence of OOC's
operating procedures. Rather, the concern is communication as those
procedures are being applied and OOC undertakes its daily operations.
Effective communications strategies take into account how to most
effectively communicate the message given their intended audience. For
example, in September 2003 OOC initiated a formal rulemaking process to
amend parts of its operating procedures. As required by the CAA, OOC's
Board of Directors submitted an announcement for inclusion in the
Congressional Record announcing proposed changes in OOC's procedural rules
and inviting comment. A key staff member said that it would have been more
helpful-and could have avoided, or at least limited, subsequent concerns
with the process used to issue the draft rules-if OOC had more fully
reached out to key committees and Members before the draft proposal was
announced publicly. Another staff member told us that, at a minimum, it
would have been helpful if OOC followed the notice by contacting them
directly to ensure that they were aware of the proposed rules and the
subsequent 30-day comment period, explaining that such announcements are
easy to miss if one is not looking for them. Although OOC's initial
posting met its legal obligations, the Office decided to place another
notice and extend the comment period.
To encourage additional feedback from stakeholders and other interested
parties, OOC's Board decided to hold a public hearing on the proposed
changes even though the CAA does not require it. According to OOC, the
decision to hold the hearing was consistent with feedback OOC had received
several years earlier from some congressional stakeholders. However,
instead of creating an opportunity for stakeholders to provide additional
feedback, the Board had to cancel the session because only one person had
agreed to speak at the hearing. Congressional staff told us that the
Congress' lack of participation in the hearing was not an indication of a
lack of interest in the issues to be discussed, but was due to concerns
about the nature and structure of the forum. OOC had not informed
congressional staff of its intention to seek additional comment in this
way. Moreover, one congressional stakeholder said that OOC's approach to
solicit additional comments through a public hearing was inappropriate.
Communication protocols provide a potentially valuable tool that
organizations can use to avoid such surprises and help foster clearer
understanding with stakeholders. For example, after working closely with
the Congress and after a trial phase, GAO implemented congressional
protocols in November 2000.13 From our experiences in developing the
protocols, we have identified key lessons and success factors-that
developing protocols is a time-consuming process which involves (1)
personal commitment and direction from the agency head, (2) senior
management participation and buy-in, and (3) continuous outreach to and
feedback from external stakeholders. Despite the time and the effort,
however, our experience using protocols as a transparent, documented, and
consistent way to set priorities has been very positive for us as well as
our congressional clients. Similarly, for OOC such protocols could help
foster an understanding of its goals, functions, and procedures with its
congressional stakeholders.
Communicating and Coordinating with Agencies Openly and Effectively
Open and effective coordination with legislative agencies and other
stakeholders including employee groups is another critical component of an
effective communications strategy at OOC. We have previously reported that
organizations can develop and refine their operations and better achieve
results by establishing channels that facilitate open and effective
communication with clients and other recipients of their services and
activities.14
Several officials at legislative branch agencies covered by the CAA told
us that at points over the more than 8 years since OOC's has been in
operation, communications and interactions among the Office and their
agencies have not been good. These agency officials told us that some of
OOC's past actions had created distrust and had fostered the belief among
some staff that OOC was more interested in making them look bad (by using
a "gotcha" approach) rather than working with agencies to comply with the
CAA and create a better workplace. In contrast, the union groups we met
with generally characterized their interactions with OOC as positive
throughout this period.
OOC's Board and leadership are aware of the concerns expressed by some
legislative agencies and have taken steps to address them. As a result,
officials we interviewed at these agencies generally agreed that over the
13U.S. General Accounting Office, GAO's Congressional Protocols,
GAO-01-145G (Washington, D.C.: November 2000).
14U.S. General Accounting Office, Internal Control Management and
Evaluation Tool, GAO-01-1008G (Washington, D.C.: August 2001).
last year or two, OOC has taken steps to improve the working relationships
with their respective offices. These officials cited efforts by OOC's
senior executives to reach out to them through a series of meetings held
by the Executive Director and General Counsel as evidence of a new, more
constructive attitude towards legislative agencies. For example, in the
area of occupational safety and health enforcement, an AOC official told
us that OOC's General Counsel had initiated several meetings with AOC to
discuss possible initiatives to improve health and safety on Capitol Hill.
Included in these discussions was AOC's recent decision to adopt an
internal IT application to assist the agency in tracking and monitoring
potential safety and health problems before complaints are made to OOC.
According to both the AOC official and OOC's General Counsel, the two
organizations have had preliminary discussions on the possibility of
sharing such health and safety data, although they have yet to come to an
agreement on whether or how to do so.
Despite some advances, our interviews with agency officials identified
several areas where OOC needs to make improvements in how it communicates
and coordinates with agencies covered by the CAA. Among the continuing
problems officials mentioned were (1) OOC's failure to always follow its
own rules and procedures when conducting investigations of health and
safety complaints and (2) the lack of timely and consistent follow-up on
the status and disposition of investigations conducted by the Office and
clear communication with agency officials.
For example, several agency officials told us that OOC was not always
consistent in the manner in which it conducts investigations of
occupational safety and health-related complaints, occasionally failing to
follow its own processes and procedures. The CAA gives OOC's General
Counsel considerable authority to inspect and investigate places of
employment under the jurisdiction of employing agencies covered by the CAA
and does not require him to provide advance notice before starting an
investigation or visiting buildings or facilities.15 However, to foster a
constructive working relationship with the agencies they regulate, OOC's
General Counsel and a staff member told us that it has been a
long-standing policy of OOC to immediately notify the agency involved when
the Office receives a safety and health-related complaint. In addition,
except in cases of emergency or when any delay might pose a danger, it is
also OOC's policy to give agencies the option of attending an opening
conference
15See 2 U.S.C S: 1341(c)(1).
before proceeding with the investigation. However, officials at two
agencies told us that there have been cases, including some within the
past year, where OOC has failed to follow its policy on agency
notification. They said these instances have contributed to
misunderstandings, confusion, and, in at least one case, the perception
among senior agency officials "that a `gotcha' mentality still exists at
OOC." While OOC and the agency involved in this last case do not agree
concerning the facts and significance of OOC's actions that led to this
comment on the part of the agency, the situation provides an illustration
of the differences that exist in perceptions between OOC and some agency
officials.
In addition, agency officials told us that often OOC would not follow up
with agency officials on the status and disposition of investigations in a
timely or consistent manner. For example, agency officials told us of
cases where, after meeting with OOC staff to discuss the findings of a
particular investigation and responding with a plan to address the issues,
they did not hear back from OOC for months, or in several instances, for a
year or more. The agency official we spoke with explained that this
absence of closure complicated efforts to resolve the current status of
cases.
Our review of OOC's procedure manual for handling safety and healthrelated
complaints found that it did not provide a clear, complete, and upto-date
source of OOC's policies and procedures on how the Office responds to such
complaints. In addition, the manual did not provide clear time frames on
when OOC would communicate to agencies during this process. For example,
the manual has not been updated since 1997 and does not contain any
specific language on the Office's policy of providing agencies with
opening conferences as described to us by OOC's General Counsel and his
staff. In response to follow-up requests, OOC staff did provide us with a
separate one-page document, dated May 1999, which described topics
discussed at an opening conference. However, this document also did not
clearly set forth OOC's policy on agency notification, and it was not
clear how it was used and how widely it had been distributed. OOC's
General Counsel has recently acknowledged the need to revise and update
these procedures, but he told us that because of other needs he has not
given this a high priority.
To establish channels that facilitate open and effective communication,
organizations need to clearly set out procedures-such as communication
protocols-that they will consistently follow when doing their work. For
example, building on the foundation of the congressional protocols we
developed in 2000, GAO launched the pilot phase of our agency protocols
in 2002 that contain clearly defined and transparent policies and
practices on how we carry out our work at federal agencies.16 These
protocols identify what agencies can expect from GAO and what GAO expects
of agencies. Toward this end, our protocols present information on the
framework of GAO's engagement and audit activities-including communication
between GAO and agencies, interactions during the course of GAO's work,
and follow-up on GAO's recommendations-and contain a description of the
specific actions and activities we will take at each stage as well as
specific time frames when appropriate. In this way the protocols are
intended to help ensure the consistency, fairness, and effectiveness of
interactions between GAO and the agencies with which it works. Rather than
being just a paperwork exercise, the development of agency protocols that
clearly and accurately communicate OOC's current policies and procedures
can be an important tool to assist OOC's management achieve its commitment
to communicate more openly and effectively with legislative agencies. In
addition, protocols can have a significant impact on OOC's ability to work
constructively and fairly with the agencies it regulates, and to
accomplish its overall mission goals.
Recommended Next Steps Both OOC's Board of Directors and its senior
executives recognize the importance of communicating with stakeholders and
have begun to make efforts in this area. Consistent with that commitment,
we recommend that OOC take the following steps:
o Develop congressional protocols, in close consultation with
congressional stakeholders, that would document agreements between the
Congress and OOC on what congressional stakeholders can expect as the
Office carries out its work. Protocols help to ensure that OOC deals with
its congressional stakeholders using clearly defined, consistently
applied, and transparent policies and procedures. They can also help OOC
reach agreement on the best mix of products and services to achieve its
mission. It is important to note that consulting with stakeholders is not
the same as seeking their acceptance or approval on matters where that
would not be appropriate. The purpose of such protocols is to help create
a basic understanding of OOC's goals, functions, and procedures; and what
OOC will communicate to whom,
16U.S. General Accounting Office, GAO's Agency Protocols, GAO-03-232SP
(Washington, D.C.: December 2002).
when, and how, without compromising the independence the Congress gave OOC
to enforce the CAA.
o Develop agency protocols, in cooperation with legislative agencies,
that would clarify and clearly communicate the procedures OOC will follow
when interacting with agencies while carrying out its work.
In both cases OOC should carefully pilot the protocols before they are
fully implemented so that OOC, the Congress, and legislative agencies can
gain valuable experiences in their application and that appropriate
adjustments can be made.
We also recommend that the Executive Director and the General Counsel
review and revise OOC's case handling policies and procedures, such as
OOC's procedure manual for handling safety and health-related complaints,
and ensure that they are effectively communicated to appropriate
legislative agency officials.
Creating and Sustaining an Enhanced Management Control Environment Essential
for Effective Operations
The creation of an enhanced control environment forms the foundation for
an organization's ability to put in place the management controls
necessary for effective and efficient operations. Well-managed
organizations establish and maintain an environment that sets a positive
and supportive attitude toward internal control and conscientious
management. In our previous work, we have identified several key factors
that affect an organization's ability to create such an environment
including its organizational and leadership structure and its ability to
effectively manage and develop its human capital.17 OOC faces challenges
in both of these areas, which it needs to successfully overcome in order
to exercise effective management control.
Performance Agreements We have previously reported that federal agencies
have used performance Offer a Potential Tool to agreements between senior
political and career executives as a tool to Increase Accountability of
define accountability for specific goals, monitor progress, and contribute
to
Top Leaders and Focus on Organizational Goals
17GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
performance evaluations.18 Congress has also recognized the role that
performance agreements can play in holding organizations and executives
accountable for results. For example, in 1998, the Congress chartered the
Office of Student Financial Assistance as a performance-based organization
and required the agency to implement performance agreements. In addition
to providing OOC's Board with a mechanism to increase accountability,
performance agreements would also provide the platform for ongoing
dialogue to help ensure that the goals and priorities contained in OOC's
strategic plan are carried out by its top executives and help ensure the
proper alignment among daily operations and activities and the broader
results OOC strives to achieve.
Since it was created in 1995, OOC has operated without having any formal
performance management system for its Executive Director and General
Counsel. Starting in 2003, OOC's Board of Directors required these
officials to prepare an annual self-assessment that they submit to the
Board for review. The Executive Director and General Counsel prepare
narratives assessing themselves in five performance categories:
operational management, external relations, ethics, strategic planning,
and Board relations. These narratives then form the basis for a subsequent
informal review session with the Board. The development of these
self-assessments is an important first step in improving the performance
and assuring the accountability of OOC and its executive team.
OOC's current efforts to develop a strategic plan provide an ideal
opportunity for the Office to build on this first step. Once OOC has
reached agreement with its stakeholders and has completed its strategic
plan, it can take the next step and develop results-oriented performance
agreements with its senior executives that are directly linked to
organizational goals embodied in its strategic plan-the absence of which
is a major limitation of the current effort. We have reported on a number
of benefits of performance agreements that may have direct importance to
achieving improved performance at OOC. Performance agreements have:
o Strengthened alignment of results-oriented goals with daily operations.
Performance agreements define accountability for specific goals and help
to align daily operations with agencies' results-oriented, programmatic
goals.
18U.S. General Accounting Office, Managing for Results: Emerging Benefits
From Selected Agencies' Use of Performance Agreements, GAO-01-115
(Washington, D.C.: Oct. 30, 2000).
o Fostered collaboration across organizational boundaries. Performance
agreements encourage executives to work across traditional organizational
boundaries or "silos" by focusing on the achievement of results-oriented
goals.
o Enhanced opportunities to discuss and routinely use performance
information to make program improvements. Performance agreements
facilitate communication about organizational performance, and provide
opportunities to pinpoint improved performance.
o Provided a results-oriented basis for individual accountability.
Performance agreements provide results-oriented performance information to
serve as the basis for executive performance evaluations.
o Maintained continuity of program goals during leadership transitions.
Performance agreements help to maintain a consistent focus on a set of
broad programmatic priorities during changes in leadership.19
In addition to assuring accountability and alignment of operations to
results, performance agreements could help OOC ensure it maintains a
common and consistent vision and approach to the implementation of the
CAA. In the past, a lack of such a common vision on how OOC should
approach the enforcement of workplace health and safety requirements or
interact with stakeholders resulted in clashes between the Executive
Director and the previous General Counsel. Specifically, a number of
congressional and legislative agency officials we interviewed had the
perception that a previous General Counsel's emphasis on a strict "gotcha"
approach toward enforcement led to a combative and adversarial
relationship with legislative agencies and other stakeholders that was at
odds with the more collaborative approach supported by OOC's Executive
Director.
OOC's current Board, Executive Director, and General Counsel told us that
they share a common commitment to pursuing a collaborative and
constructive approach towards enforcing the CAA. OOC's recent effort to
develop a strategic plan is a reflection of the common vision of the
organization's mission, goals, and operational approach shared by OOC's
current leaders. In addition, they appear to enjoy good working
19GAO-01-115.
relationships among themselves. However, the standards of effective
management control and OOC's own past experience demonstrate the need for
the office to take appropriate steps to address the OOC's organizational
structure and presents a challenge to effective management control.
Effective Human Capital Management Is Also a Key Factor in Management
Control
Leadership Continuity Is Key to Management Control
Effective human capital management is an important factor contributing to
management control as well as an organization's ability to achieve
results. We have identified two human capital challenges currently facing
OOC: (1) the need to ensure leadership continuity and preserve critical
organizational knowledge in the face of the impending loss of a large
number of leaders over the next 2 years and (2) the need to establish a
modern, effective, and credible performance management system with
appropriate safeguards for all OOC employees.
Sustained focus and direction from top leadership is a key component of
effective management. Management control requires that organizations
consider the effect upon their operations if a large number of employees-
including executives and other leaders-are expected to leave and then
establish criteria for a retention or mitigation strategy.
OOC currently faces a considerable loss of knowledge and leadership
capacity due to impending turnover of its Board of Directors. This
expected loss is the result of CAA provisions that limit current Board
members to a single 5-year term. For example, within the next
year-and-ahalf all five members of the current Board will reach the end of
their terms. When the Congress crafted the CAA, it included a provision to
provide for staggered terms for OOC's Board. However, delays in the
appointment of successors to the original group of board members resulted
in the appointment of several new members at the same time. Specifically,
the Chair and two members of the five-member Board were appointed in
October 1999 and are scheduled to complete their terms in September 2004.
The terms of the two remaining Board members will end eight months later
in May 2005.
The situation is only slightly better for OOC's four appointed executives.
Similar to the Board, the CAA restricts OOC's four appointed executives to
nonrenewable 5-year terms of service. In addition, this restriction also
prevents the possibility of having a deputy executive director serve in
the role of executive director, making the potential of succession
planning among this group of executives impossible. The terms of all but
the General Counsel will expire within 6 months of each other in 2006. If
one considers
both OOC's Board and its senior executives together, eight out of nine of
the organization's top officials will have left by September 2006. The
loss of such a large proportion of OOC's senior leadership within a
relatively short period will likely result in a loss of leadership
continuity, institutional knowledge, and expertise that has the potential
of adversely impacting OOC's performance at least in the short term.
Other federal agencies with functions similar to OOC do not restrict their
board members from serving subsequent terms. For example, there are no
statutory restrictions on the five board members of the EEOC and the three
board members of the Federal Labor Relations Authority from serving
addition terms. In addition, the statute governing the National Labor
Relations Board permits the five board members to be reappointed.
Need for Modern, Effective, and We have previously reported that
performance management systems can
Credible Approach to Performance Management
create a "line of sight" showing how team, unit, and individual
performance can contribute to overall organizational results.20 An
explicit alignment of daily activities with broader results is one of the
defining features of effective performance management systems in
high-performing organizations. Organizations naturally need to develop
performance management systems that reflect their specific structures and
priorities. Given OOC's small size and specific situation, it is important
that it considers these and other key practices in the context of its own
needs, capabilities, and circumstances.
In September 2002, OOC rolled out its first formal performance management
system to staff who report to the Executive Director. OOC assesses
employees on eight performance dimensions: (1) job knowledge and technical
skills, (2) overall quality of work, (3) employee and professional
relationships, (4) planning and organization, (5) work habits, (6)
judgment, (7) initiative and creativity, and (8) development. Supervisors
are to meet with their staff twice a year to provide ratings and feedback
on the previous 6-month assessment period. They also are to hold an
interim meeting halfway through each assessment period. For these eight
performance dimensions, supervisors give each employee two separate
20U.S. General Accounting Office, Results-Oriented Cultures: Creating a
Clear Linkage between Individual Performance and Organizational Success,
GAO-03-488 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 14, 2003); Results-Oriented Cultures:
Insights for U.S. Agencies from Other Countries' Performance Management
Initiatives, GAO-02-862 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 2, 2002); and GAO-01-115.
ratings-the first describes the employee's overall achievement in the
performance dimension, and the second represents the progress of the
employee toward achieving specific goals established at the start of the
evaluation cycle.
On one hand, OOC's decision to establish a formal performance management
system covering at least some of its employees represents a good first
step and its performance management system exhibits some positive
characteristics. For example, OOC's requirement that supervisors and
employees meet at least four times a year to discuss the employees' recent
performance and individual goals provides regular opportunities for staff
to discuss and act on feedback. On the other hand, there are areas where
the system can be improved as OOC's efforts in this area move forward. For
example, OOC's current performance management system assesses staff
against the eight performance dimensions identified above without
providing specific standards or detailed descriptions of the behaviors
associated with varying levels of performance. For instance, for the
performance dimension "overall quality of work," the only descriptive
standard provided is "consistently produces competent work." OOC should
explore the usefulness of including descriptions of competencies-those
specific skills or supporting behaviors that employees are expected to
demonstrate as they carry out their work-in its performance management
system to provide a basis for making judgements about an individual's
performance and contribution to OOC's results.
In addition, OOC's current performance management system does not apply to
the General Counsel or any OOC attorneys who report to him. These
employees continue to work without any formal performance management
system in place. Moving forward, the involvement of employees will be
crucial to the success of any efforts by OOC to create a new performance
management system or reform and expand its existing one.21 Given OOC's
small size, the cost in time and effort to obtain such feedback likely
could be minimal.
Matters for Congressional Congress should consider making legislative
changes to the CAA to help Consideration ensure that OOC maintains
institutional continuity into the future. Specifically, the Congress
should consider amending the CAA to allow:
21U.S. General Accounting Office, A Model of Strategic Human Capital
Management, GAO02-373SP (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 15, 2002) and GAO-02-862.
o Board members to be reappointed to an additional term, and
o the Executive Director, General Counsel, and the two Deputy Executive
Directors to be reappointed to serve subsequent terms in either the same
or a different position, if warranted and the Congress so desires. Any
reappointments should be contingent on an individual's demonstrated
performance and achievement of goals as documented in executive
performance agreements for OOC's Executive Director and General Counsel,
as recommended below, or another performance management system in the case
of OOC's two Deputy Executive Directors.
Recommended Next Steps We recommend that OOC's Board:
o Require performance agreements between the Board of Directors and OOC's
Executive Director and General Counsel to help translate the Office's
strategic goals into day-to-day operations and to hold these executives
accountable for achieving program results.
We recommend that OOC's Executive Director and General Counsel:
o Establish a modern, effective, and credible performance management
system with appropriate safeguards for all OOC employees. OOC should build
on the first step of establishing a basic performance management system
for employees reporting to the Executive Director by ensuring that all
employees, including those who report to the General Counsel, participate
in an individual performance management system. In addition, OOC should
look for ways to develop a more robust and effective approach to
individual performance management by considering key practices employed by
leading organizations.
o Actively involve all OOC's employees in this process, whether it
entails the revision and expansion of its existing performance management
system or the creation of an entirely new initiative.
Agency Comments On January 22, 2004, we provided a draft of this report to
OOC's Board of Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel for
their review and comment. We received written comments prepared jointly by
the Board of Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel on January
26, 2004. In
their joint response, OOC generally agreed with the contents of this
report, noting that the Office has begun to adopt many of our
recommendations as part of its strategic planning process and current
programmatic initiatives. Furthermore, the Board of Directors strongly
supports our statement that the Congress should consider amending the CAA
to allow OOC's Board members to serve an additional term and to allow the
Executive Director, General Counsel, and the two Deputy Executive
Directors to be reappointed to serve additional terms in either the same
or a different position, if warranted and desired. As mentioned in their
response and as acknowledged in our report, we have provided information
and assistance to OOC regarding their management control improvement
efforts and we plan to continue working with OOC's leadership and meet
with them regularly to discuss their progress. Their written response is
reprinted in appendix II. In addition, OOC's Executive Director and
General Counsel provided minor technical clarifications, and we made those
changes where appropriate.
We will provide copies of this report to other interested congressional
committees, and the Office of Compliance. In addition, we will make copies
available to others upon request. The report will be available at no
charge on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.
If you have any questions about this report, please contact me or Steven
Lozano on (202) 512-6806 or on [email protected] and [email protected]. Major
contributors to this report were Jeff Dawson, Peter J. Del Toro, Jeffery
Bass, Bruce Goddard, and Jeff McDermott.
J. Christopher Mihm Managing Director, Strategic Issues
Appendix I
Objective, Scope, and Methodology
To meet our objective of assessing key management controls in place at the
Office of Compliance (OOC) and identify what improvements, if any, could
be taken to strengthen OOC's effectiveness and efficiency, we followed a
multipronged approach. First, we analyzed applicable laws, legislative
history, rules, and regulations; and obtained and analyzed written
documentation of guidance, policies, procedures, and performance of OOC.
Second, to understand the complex operating environment and longstanding
challenges facing the agency, we conducted a series of interviews with
agency officials, key stakeholders, and officials from agencies covered by
the Congressional Accountability Act (CAA). To obtain OOC's perspectives
on its operations and the challenges it faces, we interviewed OOC's Board
of Directors as well as each of its top executives-the Executive Director,
General Counsel, Deputy Executive Director for the Senate, and Deputy
Executive Director for the House. We also met with all of OOC's managers
including the Deputy General Counsel, Director of Counseling, and Budget
and Administrative Officer.
To understand how key stakeholders perceive the OOC, we conducted 19
interviews with selected majority and minority congressional staff from
both the Senate and House. Among those we interviewed were staff from
Senate and House leadership offices, Senate and House Subcommittees on
Legislative Branch Appropriations, Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Committee on House Administration, Office of the Senate Employment
Counsel, Senate Sergeant-At-Arms, Senate Administrative Managers Group,
Office of the Clerk of the House, Office of the House Employment Counsel,
Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the House, House Inspector
General, as well as personal staff of several senators and
representatives.
We also spoke with cognizant officials from agencies covered by the CAA to
obtain their views of the performance of the Office. These included the
Architect of the Capitol, the Congressional Budget Office, the United
States Capitol Police, the Office of the Attending Physician, the Library
of Congress, and GAO. To obtain the perspectives of organized labor and
employee groups we spoke with two of the largest unions representing
employees in legislative agencies-the Association of Federal, State,
County, and Municipal Employees, and the Fraternal Order of Police.
In addition, we conducted selected reliability and validity reviews of
OOC's dispute resolution process database. For these reviews, we
questioned OOC staff about their internal controls for their dispute
resolution
Appendix I Objective, Scope, and Methodology
database. We then drew a random sample of 5 cases out of a total field of
44 cases reported as closed in the database for 2002 and compared the
electronic data to source documents. We also examined whether OOC was
processing cases within statutorily defined thresholds for key process
phases. The OOC's responses to our questions and the results of this
comparison led us to conclude that the data were sufficiently reliable for
the purposes of our report.
We also drew on key management practices and guidance identified in
previously-issued GAO reports, where appropriate. As part of a process of
constructive engagement, we provided OOC with briefings, reports, and
examples of best practices in the areas we reviewed. For example, at the
OOC's request, GAO officials provided briefings on our approach to
strategic planning and we provided copies of our strategic planning
documents.
On January 22, 2004, we provided a draft of this report to OOC's Board of
Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel for their review and
comment. We received written comments prepared jointly by the Board of
Directors, Executive Director, and General Counsel on January 26, 2004.
Their written response is reprinted in appendix II. OOC also provided
technical comments that we have incorporated where appropriate. We
performed our work in Washington, D.C., from January 2003 through January
2004 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Appendix II
Comments from the Office of Compliance
Appendix II
Comments from the Office of Compliance
Appendix II
Comments from the Office of Compliance
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