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The Bureau of Land Management, Management Information System was
one of seven finalists out of over 100 nominated.
The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) mission is “to sustain
the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation's public lands
for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.”
The Bureau manages nearly 262 million acres of public lands, about
one-eighth of the land area of the United States, and approximately
700 million acres of the subsurface mineral estate underlying both
Federal surface ownerships and privately owned lands. BLM accomplishes
this mission with a workforce of approximately 13,000 permanent,
part-time, and seasonal employees, and 20,000 volunteers.
In 1997, BLM began an activity-based cost management effort that
integrates strategic planning, program administration, and budget
management into a coherent business management framework. This activity,
supported by a management information system, enables BLM to track
actual costs by work activity and facilitates the collection and
reporting of performance information. This framework provides a
disciplined approach to collecting both financial and performance
information in a comprehensive, integrated, and cohesive manner.
It also enables the Bureau to make periodic reviews of performance
and associated expenditures to ensure that its mission goals are
being accomplished and resources effectively allocated.
As part of the budget execution process, BLM conducts management
and executive level reviews of budget, financial, and performance
status quarterly. During these reviews, budget and program staffs
examine planned and completed work to determine whether they are
likely to meet their planned targets. If targets are not likely
to be met, the staff will recommend whether funding should be increased,
reduced, or reallocated to other priority programs consistent with
national targets. Adjustments are then made to priority programs
based on current financial and performance information.
By aligning resources to outputs and outputs with organizational
goals, BLM is able to ensure its resources support the accomplishment
of its goals. Moreover, the cost management information provides
additional insight, which can highlight a mismatch of resources
and outputs, and therefore provide the basis for resource alignment,
workforce adjustments, service rationalization, and reengineering
work processes.
The BLM maintains strong financial operations as evidenced by seven
consecutive years of unqualified audit opinions on its financial
statements. The management information system provides all employees
with up-to-date financial information (as of the previous day) from
which to make management decisions. The cost management capabilities
compare planned and budgetary resources with actual expenditures
and provide accurate information on the cost of outputs and performance
goals. This alignment of cost and performance information has also
supported the development of sound business cases when justifying
funding for realigning existing business process to meet mission
goals.
Advanced DataTools provided the software design, development and
implementation consulting support to BLM to build the award winning
Management Information System data warehouse and implement their
solution. |
