The Bureau of Land Management presents live\...

from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix Arizona\... \"Managing
for Excellence‑ A Vision for BLM.\"

And now the host of your program, Tony Garrett.

\>\> T. GARRETT: Hello, and welcome to our all‑employees broadcast on
the future of BLM. In this program you\'ll be hearing about some of the
challenges and opportunities facing the agency, and the initiative
called \"Managing for Excellence\" that will help BLM position itself
for the future. With us here in the studio are two of the people who
have been leading this initiative over the past 18 months, BLM Deputy
Director for Operations Henri Bisson. Welcome, Henri.

\>\> H. BISSON: Thanks, Tony. I\'m very excited about my new assignment.
We have some very difficult challenges in front of us, and I look
forward to working with everyone to meet these challenges. That\'s what
we will be talking about today.

\>\> T. GARRETT: Also with us is Arizona State Director Elaine
Zielinski, who has also played a central role in this initiative.
Welcome, Elaine.

\>\> E. ZIELINSKI: Thanks, Tony. It\'s good to be here. I\'m looking
forward to sharing these concepts that have been developed over the last
few month with all of you out there. And I think this is an exciting
time for BLM and we\'re ready to roll.

\>\> T. GARRETT: This week BLM Director Kathleen Clarke is in Washington
D.C. engaged in some important budget deliberations so she was not able
to travel to NTC for this telecast. This morning she prepared some
remarks for us. Let\'s take a look.

\>\> DIR. CLARKE: Hello, Tony. Hello Elaine and Henri. Good morning to
all of you who are joining us today from the west and to those of you
joining us in Washington. I am joining you from our Washington Office
today because we are at a very critical stage in the budget process.
Representing BLM\'s interest in this budget process is one of my most
important responsibilities as director. At the same time, the issues
that will be discussed today are also of great consequence for the BLM
and our future. Please accept my apology for not joining you for the
live broadcast. You\'ll be hearing shortly about some ideas and concepts
for change that are part of an initiative we\'re calling \"Managing for
Excellence.\" I want to assure you that we\'re not interested in change
for the sake of change, but change is inevitable. The fact is the world
around us is changing, and we have to be prepared to adapt to those
changes to ensure that the BLM remains a strong and effective
organization into the future that. The continuing growth and
urbanization of the west have serious implications for all of us. We are
seeing more demand for the commodity‑based resources under our
stewardship, including energy, minerals, livestock, wood and fiber. And
we are seeing increasing pressures on the ground for all forms of
outdoor recreation. In addition, we\'re looking at serious federal
budget constraints and major changes in our own workforce. The many
challenges resulting from change are clear. It\'s up to us to recognize
and embrace the opportunities within these changes. We have to consider
how we\'re going to adapt to ensure that we can continue to do what we
do best\... that is, to manage the land. I\'ve often said that BLM\'s
best days still lie ahead. I truly believe that. With your continuing
dedication and support, we can all work together to ensure that the BLM
of the 21st century continues to be a strong and effective organization.
A model agency that we can all take pride in. Thank you so much for your
time and happy holidays.

\>\> T. GARRETT: We appreciate Director Clarke taking the time to
prepare those remarks for us this morning. Henri, why don\'t you set the
stage for us now and tell our viewers about the general objectives of
the \"Managing for Excellence\" initiative.

\>\> H. BISSON: Sure, Tony. Elaine and I are pleased to speak with all
of you today about a number of ideas, your colleagues and managers have
worked on over the last year, and we want to invite you into that
conversation about how to prepare BLM for the future and manage for
excellence. The concepts and proposals we\'re going to discuss this
morning with you are intended to achieve four purposes: to improve
service externally and internally; to focus heavily on leadership
succession and leadership development opportunities; to take full
advantage of technological changes that may allow us to shrink in some
areas; a to reduce costs so we can better absorb reductions in our
budget and maintain our capabilities on the ground. We cannot achieve
any of the things that we do in this regard without your involvement.

\>\> T. GARRETT: Elaine, you, Henri, Eastern States director Mike Nedd
in particular, many others, have been leading the efforts that grew out
of the National Leadership Forum 18 months ago, so tell us a little bit
about the work that\'s been done since then and brought us to this
point.

\>\> E. ZIELINSKI: Okay. Let me talk a little bit about the National
Leadership Forum. That occurred in June of 2005, and hopefully many of
you remember that event. It was a broadcast where we talked about the
priorities of BLM and how we do business. As part of that event, we had
the state leadership teams, the center teams and the Washington Office
leadership teams come together and come up with suggestions on how to
help BLM prepare for the future and do an even better job of
accomplishing our mission. A team was then put together, and as Tony
said, it was led by Mike Nedd, the Eastern States State Director, and it
got the name of the Futuring Team, and what the Futuring Team did was
they looked at all of the recommendations that came out of that National
Leadership Forum, and the team worked on those initiatives, and the
first priorities were to look at the proposals that dealt with the
organizational structures and the workforce priorities. So after that,
the ‑‑ in November of 2005, the executive leadership team convened, and
the Futuring Team presented those proposals, and they were fairly broad
proposals at that time, and the two key ones really were to centralize
or zone some of the administrative support and resource functions, and
then secondly, to move to a three‑tier field structure. Each proposal
was then analyzed, and because they were fairly broad at that time, we
couldn\'t do a lot of really detailed analysis, but we did look at the
costs, the savings, the customer service impact and the risks. The
executive leadership team formed subgroups and they reviewed and refined
those proposals. They also requested that we convene subject matter
expert teams to further look into the ‑‑ more of the details and kind of
dig a little, drill a little deeper in those arenas in the
administrative support functions. In February of 2006 the Futuring Team
again presented those revised proposals after the subject matter expert
teams had done some analysis of those options. At this February meeting,
the director asked us also to look at the Washington Office in more
detail and see if there were some functions there and some way of doing
business there that could be more efficient and provide better customer
service. So this was the second part of the study. This is the
Washington Office efficiency study, and Henri and I were asked to lead
that effort. So that\'s what we did, and what happened then was the
proposals from both the Futuring Teams ‑‑ futuring study, the Washington
Office efficiency study were brought together and presented again to the
executive leadership team this past October. Those proposals are what
we\'re going to share with you all today. I do want to mention what
we\'re not going to deal with today. That was, there were a lot of
resource proposals for resource program improvements, and those resource
program improvements that came out of that National Leadership Forum
were assigned to the various assistant directors back in Washington D.C.
for follow‑up action, and we are not going to talk about those today,
but just to give you an idea or an example of the kinds of program
proposals, there were some suggestions for improvement, for example in
our land use planning process, in sharing resources across boundaries,
for example, for the oil and gas programs.

\>\> T. GARRETT: Thank you, Elaine. Henri, this process was guided by a
clear concept of what \"Managing for Excellence\" should look like in
BLM?

\>\> H. BISSON: That\'s correct, Tony. We approached this with a
multi‑faceted approach, a concept, if you will, that ‑‑ our goal was to
make sure that we had established clear roles between the Washington
Office, the centers and the Field Offices. We also wanted to try to make
our organizations more efficient. We were looking to try to streamline
processes where we could, and our real goal was to try to keep as much
capability on the ground as we could as a result of whatever savings we
could find in the way that we do business. We\'re also concerned about
maintaining resilience of our organization in the face of so many
retirements that we have in front of us over the next few years. In
proposing these management refinements, what we\'re trying to address
are the changes that we see in the future that are coming our way, such
things as Kathleen mentioned the budget process that she\'s engaged in
in Washington right now. We have a lot at stake with the director\'s
work this week in Washington. In fact, there\'s probably no more
important responsibility she could attend to than to be back there and
to work on the budget proposals that are coming forward right now. We
also want to make sure that we involve our workforce in shaping an
organization that meets our mandates in the face of these changes. We
want to make sure that we develop an implementation schedule that
minimizes impacts on employees and minimizes impacts on service levels,
and we want to provide for meaningful union participation in this
process. We believe that the ideas that we\'re sharing with you today
are solid and provide some real opportunities for us in BLM. However, I
want to make it real clear that these are concepts and directions, and
they\'re not at this point hard and fast plans. So we\'re going to need
your help in shaping them as we move ahead in the next few years.

\>\> T. GARRETT: All right. Henri, when we were talking earlier, you
made the point that all agencies are being required to look at measures
that might improve their efficiency and their performance and that in
many cases there will be agencies that face more serious challenges than
BLM.

\>\> H. BISSON: That\'s correct, Tony. Virtually all of the federal
government is looking at itself right now. In the face of ‑‑ Kathleen
talked about the serious budget discussions that are happening in
Washington right now. We\'ve been facing erosion in our budget because
of inflation, because of rising salaries, and we need to do something,
and other agencies because of their particular situation have had to
take more drastic measures. What we\'re looking at are a series of
management refinements more than anything else at this point and we
think we can accomplish what we need to do within the framework that
we\'re going to talk about today.

\>\> T. GARRETT: All right. The teams that have been looking at how BLM
can better prepare for challenges and opportunities in the future
focused on four general areas, and those four focus areas are, first,
strategic direction and second improved service delivery, third,
streamlining the Washington headquarters office, and fourth improving
our work processes. Elaine, strategic direction, now, that deals with
the broad overarching ideas that would apply across the Bureau. You\'re
going to talk about those.

\>\> E. ZIELINSKI: I am. The strategic direction really has four
components. First one is to reaffirm the Washington Office\'s role. The
second one is to move to a three‑tier field structure. The fourth,
consolidate land use planning units. And the ‑‑ excuse me, and fourth,
implement changes over a two‑year period. So I\'m going to talk a little
bit about each of those, and the first one is the Washington Office
headquarters role. We want to ensure that the Washington Office is
focused on policy, coordination, budget and program oversight as their
major priority areas. We also want to realign the operational activities
to the field and to the centers. The reporting ‑‑ as a result of that,
the reporting relationships for the centers would shift from assistant
directors in the Washington Office, and we\'re going to propose ‑‑
we\'re proposing that there be a national operations center in Denver
that would really be that key operational entity out there. Henri is
going to talk about that in much more detail a little bit later on in
the presentation. But we really believe that the benefit of these
proposals and these changes would allow the Washington Office, as I
said, to really focus on its really unique special role there and also
have those operational activities focused and centered in one service
delivery unit. The second component is the three‑tier field organize. As
many of you probably recall, we moved to the two‑tier organization in
1996. It\'s about 10 years ago. There are a few exceptions to that. The
Oregon, Washington, Idaho and part of cavalry tainted the three‑tier
structure. Alaska and Eastern States, because of their kind of unique
missions, have always kind of had a little different structure there.
Then within the last couple of years, Arizona and New Mexico
reinstituted that three‑tier structure. Three tier is defined as a state
office, a District Office, and a Field Office. The three‑tier structure
is going to be in our proposal the standard, and there would be
exceptions to it, but overall, that would be the organizational
structure in the BLM. We feel that the ‑‑ that there are a lot of
benefits to that structure, and one of them may ‑‑ being that the
decisions are closer to the ground, and that would really result in
better service to the public out there. We also feel that the ‑‑ there
would be better quality control, there would be some opportunities to
reduce some of the overhead services by some sharing there, and there
would be better career paths for our employees. One example of those
better career paths would be that there would be opportunities for more
management positions, and they would be different complexity of those
positions. So that you would have an opportunity to be a manager in a
less maybe complex arena, receive some mentoring in that area. So we
would have a really nice cadre of experienced managers in our
organization. We\'re talking about the states putting together a plan
within the next six months that would tell what their three‑tier
structure would look like in that state and then the goal is to have
the ‑‑ have that implemented within the next two years.

\>\> T. GARRETT: Elaine, thinking about three tier versus two tier the
experience has been, has it not, that some of the expectations and
benefits of the two‑tier structure really didn\'t materialize, at least
in all cases. Zinnia, I think that\'s true. I think that those folks
that have experienced the two‑tier, there have been some unintended
consequences that we really didn\'t see happening and one of them, as I
said, I really want to stress the fact that the decisions, the ‑‑ the
intent was for decisions to become closer to the ground, be made closer
to the ground, and as a result of some of our appeal processes and
internal processes, what actually happens is that a lot of those
decisions when they go right from the Field Office manager to a state
office for mediation or whatever. So that really was one of the ‑‑ I
think the big criteria that did not happen.

\>\> H. BISSON: One of the points you raised, Elaine, that I wants to
perhaps stress a little bit more was, to me, it concerns leadership
development. When we went from three tier to two tier we lost a level of
leadership development that I think has really hurt the Bureau. We are
looking at this as an opportunity to give people in the field some
broader experience on a more regional basis where folks could move up
from a Field Office level to a district manager position perhaps with
some Washington Office experience and use those skills across a number
of counties instead of just the Field Office to help develop the skills
they\'re going to need to become senior managers, senior leaders later.
We have so many retirements in front of us, and we really need to give
people those opportunities. One other point I want to mention is that in
this six‑month period that the states are going to be given to develop
their organizational proposals, many states are already there, and they
may not have to do anything at this point to achieve what we envision.
We\'re very concerned that we not interrupt work flow in some of the
states, particularly the states that have a heavy energy workload right
now. Those states that have pilot offices, that are trying to get APDs
out. We will work closely with those State Directors to make sure that
there\'s sufficient time for them to transition without impacting those
workloads. The country needs that work accomplished that\'s being done
out in those field offices right now.

\>\> T. GARRETT: Okay. Elaine you have a couple more ‑‑

\>\> E. ZIELINSKI: I do. The next one is consolidating the land use
planning units. As we all know, we are spending a lot of time and a lot
of money preparing land use plans. We have several that have recently
been completed, and we have quite a number that are well under way. So
what we\'re proposing here is that we would consolidate those planning
units so that you would do planning over a bigger geographic area. This
would result in less numbers of resource management plans and
Environmental Impact Statements that would have to be completed, which
would reduce our costs and hopefully some of the time frames
significantly. We also feel that another benefit of that approach is
that we have a broader geographic perspective for making those multiple
use decisions. We have some caution lights out there. We don\'t want the
planning units to become so large that they\'re unmanageable. And we
also don\'t want them to ‑‑ the intention is for us not to go back and
redo the plans that have been recently completed or that are well under
way. This is really a longer term goal and direction we\'re proposing
the Bureau to go into. The fourth and last component talks about the
careful implementation, and Henri touched on this briefly already, but
the goal is to implement these proposals, recommendations over a
two‑year period in a very deliberative and well thought out process.
That time frame gives us more opportunities to manage and absorb the
changes, and it lessens the disruption of our service levels both
internally and externally, and lessens the impacts on the BLM workforce.
One of the first tasks that will be done is to hire a project manager
who will devote their time, full time, to implementation of these
initiatives, and that person would report directly to Henri, and what
we\'re looking at also right now is having several set up to address all
of the different proposals and issues that are going to be part of the
\"Managing for Excellence\" initiative. We really need the help of a lot
of employees out there. This is a real opportunity for all of you at all
levels of the organization to give us your ideas, your perspectives, and
really to put that practical spin on what will really actually work out
there. So that\'s, again, an opportunity that will be out there for
you ‑‑ for you folks, and I really hope a lot of you will take advantage
of that. Lastly, we also will have union representatives involved in
that implementation process as appropriate throughout.

\>\> T. GARRETT: All right. Those are the recommendations in the area of
strategic direction. Let\'s look at the second focus area we have now
and that is improving service delivery, and here, Henri, we\'re talking
about improving deliver 80 of services and support within the BLM.

\>\> H. BISSON: Primarily in the BLM. What I would like to do is talk
about six proposals to improve service delivery we\'re putting on the
table today. The first of those is to establish a national operations
center in Denver. Basically ‑‑ I\'ll speak about this in a second. What
we\'re talking about combining the existing centers that report to five
different assistant directors in Washington into a single center. We\'re
talking about ‑‑ and proposing to centralize some human resources and
information technology functions. We\'re proposing to zone the
acquisition function, particularly on the large acquisitions. We\'re
going to look at proposing to look at realigning the national science
and technology center functions. We\'re looking at establishing a policy
on Washington Office detached positions. And we\'re also proposing that
we maintain the Eastern States as a state office. What I would like to
do now is dined of go into a little more detail in ‑‑ kind of go into a
little more detail on each one of these. The heart of the improved
delivery level is the creation of the national operations center in
Denver. What would happen is that the existing centers, national science
and technology center, the land resource program office, the national ‑‑
the national IRM center, national human resource center, the National
Training Center in Phoenix and the National Business Center would all be
combined under a single executive who would lead that entire operation.
They would service the entire Bureau both in the field and in
Washington. This organization would not be a policymaking group, as
Elaine mentioned. Our intention is that the policy be developed in
Washington. But they will, in fact, need to issue operational guidance
that may be necessary for the day‑to‑day function of the Bureau. Right
now we have 400 or so employees in Denver reporting to five different
assistant directors. We have another roughly 80 employees in Phoenix at
the Training Center reporting to an assistant director in Washington. In
addition, we have a contract workforce in Denver totaling about 500
positions ‑‑ excuse me ‑‑ 400 positions. And we believe that all of
these employees deserve to have on site executive leadership that can
help them work together. We think the synergy that can be gained through
aligning them under one organizational leader will help to improve
service for the Bureau and ensure that we can support the work that
needs to be done in our Field Offices. The second bullet, the second
piece I wanted to introduce, is related to human resource management.
We\'re proposing to centralize some of the H.R. operations in the
national operations center. We believe it\'s important that we keep H.R.
advisor functions in the states. Each state office and the Washington
Office will have an H.R. advisor function there. And we think that it\'s
extremely important, and our intention is to maintain all of the H.R.
policy responsibilities at the Washington Office level. This human
resource proposal will seem significant to us. We value and rely so much
on our H.R. workforce that it will be difficult to imagine maintaining
service quality in this new structure, but frankly, has happening
government‑wide and in private industry as well. Changing mandates ‑‑
changing technology mandates we move in this direction. The functions
that are likely to be centralized in Denver include personnel action
processing, staffing and classification of positions, employee
development, time and attendance, payroll, drug testing, medical exams
and benefits administration. We will maintain H.R. specialists ‑‑ we
propose to maintain H.R. specialists in each state and we would work
during the implementation to define the essential roles that they would
play. Generally these will include employee and labor relations,
organizational design and position management, workforce planning, OWCP
case management, outreach, retention strategies and retirement advice.
Any changes that would be made as a result of this effort would be done
carefully. We need to reengineer some of these functions before we
centralize, and we would propose that service level agreements between
the center and each of our states and the Washington Office be
established to hold the centralized staff accountable for the work
we\'re counting on them to do. In the area of information technology,
our proposal is to centralize many I.T. operations at the national
operations center. We would propose to create virtual state I.T.
organizations utilizing existing Field Office I.T. staff, in state
office staff reporting to the state chief information officer. I want to
emphasize that IRM national policy would remain at the Washington
Office. We\'re also proposing that national application development
would be consolidated at the national operations center into a single
division with the land resources project office forming the nucleus of
that operation. Like human resources, I.T. changes would be phased in.
We would need to carefully reengineer the function before we centralize
anything. There are many I.T. functions that we are being mandated to
centralize anyway. The technology, again, allows us to centralize these,
and there are others that are not being considered right now that we
need to take advantage of and centralize as well. Initially our proposal
is to leave positions where they are, change the reporting structure so
as not to make a lot of physical moves necessary, and that\'s what\'s
called the virtual organization that I mentioned. In the future, Field
Office I.T. staff could come under the jurisdiction of the state office
I.T. staff rather than the field managers and we would begin sharing
more I.T. resources across offices in the interim. Everything we said
about concern for service delivery and H.R. also holds true for I.T. In
the ‑‑ the accountability will be the same through the service level
agreements. I also want to mention that the Bureau chief information
officer will remain fully responsible ‑‑ firmly responsible for IRM
policy and Washington Office, including I.T. security. In the area of
acquisitions, we\'re taking a little bit different approach. What we\'re
proposing to do is to zone acquisition authority for anything,
contracts, procurements, over \$100,000 in the Colorado state office and
in the Oregon state office. The state offices and the national
operations center would maintain simplified acquisition authority up to
\$100,000. And appropriate authorities for the district and field and
state offices will be determined as we go. We believe that the Colorado
state office and the Oregon state offices need to have unlimited
procurement authority and we\'re asking that these two offices basically
would provide services for five states each. The Colorado location would
allow us to minimize impact on those employees at the National Business
Center contract staff. They\'re actually just a few miles away from
where this responsibility would be housed. And we believe that we can,
in fact, build on the Oregon state office\'s existing capacity and
expertise. Again, we would use service‑level agreements to assure
customer service and existing state office and Washington Office
authority levels would not change. Related to the national science and
technology center, we\'re proposing that we go through a process to
analyze the field\'s need for centralized engineering support services.
We\'re proposing to realign some of the NSTC engineering functions
within the national operations center, and we\'re going to take a hard
look at realigning the library function and publishing services branch
but retain aerial photography and cadastral survey notes, archive
responsibility a NSTC just the way it is now. Some additional study is
need needed in this area on how some changes could be made. The library
function might be accomplished on an interagency basis in partnership
with other bureaus or agencies. And we\'re going to learn more about how
best to deliver these services as plans progress before we actually make
any shifts. The National Training Center here in Phoenix where we\'re
broadcasting from today would also report to the national operations
center. They would continue their emphasis on distance learning. We
would propose to evaluate the need for state training coordination
function as we move into the future. And we believe that some of the
administrative servicing for the National Training Center could actually
be accomplished by taking advantage of the fact that the Arizona state
office is here. In essence, we don\'t see any real change for the
National Training Center in this move other than who they report to.
They do great work and we expect that to continue. The National Business
Center would report directly to the national operations center. We are
going to propose some streamlining of the leadership structure and
supervisory ratio ‑‑ actually, increasing the supervisory ratio, numbers
of employees reporting to each supervisor in that organization. We\'re
proposing to realign centralized space leasing with property, with that
property group that\'s there. And in the not‑too‑distant future, we\'ve
talked, and we are going to look at the feasibility of perhaps
volunteering, if you will, or providing ‑‑ for providing a service to
other DOI bureaus by creating an interagency space leasing center using
our service first authorities as a vehicle. We have very experienced
space leasing people and we think we could help other bureaus if
there\'s an interest in pursuing that path. So we\'re going to talk
about that. We\'re also looking at consolidating the PCS function.
That\'s the move function for employees when they move from one place to
another, at the national operations center, except for Alaska, which has
some very complex moves and that would continue to be done out of
Alaska. And the regional directors and the State Director, in my former
capacity in Alaska, have been talking for the last year about the
possibility of creating a Department of Interior service center in
Alaska that would result in reducing our costs and sharing resources,
sharing some people, administrative service functions primarily, and we
want to give appear chance to be successful. So we\'re going to allow
that to occur before we look at making changes in Alaska that would
allow them to do some more centralization. If the regional service
center doesn\'t work, then, of course, Alaska will fold in along with
everybody else. We were very concerned going into this that we not
impede our ability to implement the new FBMS. With changes in the
schedule, FBMS implementation is two years off, we actually think making
these changes now puts us in a very good position to be ready to take
FBMS on in a couple years when we\'re asked to. That\'s ‑‑ no, I have
another one. Well rehearsed. One other area that we think we really need
to focus on is to develop a policy on detached Washington Office
positions. Elaine mentioned that through some prior reorganizations, we
have number of positions around the west. Right now we currently have 70
positions in all that report to the Washington Office. Some of them are
involved in developing policy. Some of them are one‑of‑a‑kind
specialists that provide unique resource disciplines that we need. But
we don\'t have a policy in terms of how those positions should be set up
and so on. So what we want to do is ensure that positions that are
responsible for policy and guidance and budget development are in
Washington in the long run. We believe that non‑policy positions could
be reassigned to a state office or the national operations center and
that over time we could make those adjustments. We also have a category
of work that supports the Washington Office that is done by field
employees. We have many field employees engaged in developing manuals
and so on, but there\'s really no policy in terms of how that work
should be conducted, what it takes to go through an approval process to
engage employees and so on. So we want to put a little more definition
on how that work should be accomplished. And the last of this section is
the Eastern States office. What we\'re proposing is that the Eastern
States office be maintained. The focus at the Eastern States office
should be on BLM\'s highest priorities. We\'re proposing to maintain the
Jackson hotshot crew. They\'re extremely valuable fire resource and we
need and want to continue that program. We\'re also proposing that many
of the scattered public lands we have within the Eastern States would be
disposed of.

\>\> T. GARRETT: All right. Henri, you talked about the centers that
would be reporting to the new national operations center. What about the
national interagency fire center, NIFC? Business NIFC is actually a
directorate right now. Their status has been elevated. We now have an
assistant director for the fire program, an acting assistant director in
Washington, and so that organization is a little bit different. We have
not proposed any changes to that organization.

\>\> T. GARRETT: Okay. Thank you. Let\'s move now to our third focus
area, and that has to do with the Washington headquarters office and
ideas and concepts for streamlining the structure and operations there.
Elaine, you\'re going to walk us through those recommendations.

\>\> E. ZIELINSKI: These recommendations came from the Washington Office
efficiency study that I mentioned before, and there are seven really
components under this topic area. First is establish standards for the
Washington Office organizational structure. Next, a proposal to
establish a Washington Office administrative services unit. To
consolidate the cooperative conservation initiatives in the national
landscape conservation system directorate in Washington. To consolidate
the engineering and asset management functions into a Washington Office
800, which is the business and fiscal resources directorate in
Washington. And to centralize the science policy and then clarify the
GIS function in BLM. And lastly, assign the internet content management
to Washington Office 600, which is our communications directorate. So
again I\'ll quickly walk you through a little bit more detail in each of
those. The first component was establishing standards for the Washington
Office organizational structure, and here we\'re proposing that we look
at the span of control back in D.C. and also look at eliminating any
redundant structures back there. The thoughts are that our Washington
Office staff are usually very senior, seasoned folks and that they
probably need less direction, and so we can probably increase those
spans of control as far as how many employees report to a supervisor.
The second one is to merge divisions with less than 7 to 10 employees or
those that really have some similar functions, and we would propose
doing that unless there\'s some really compelling reason not to go there
with that. The next one is to minimize the substructures in Washington
Office at the division level. Again, take a look at the structures there
as far as the deputy, division chiefs and branch structures. Another one
is to merge the management services and budget offices, and this is
really, I think, kind of a neat opportunity in that you would have those
folks really be cross trained so they could step in and management ‑‑
services folks could do some budget work, budget folks could do some of
the management services work. And ‑‑ those are already in business and
fiscal resources. The last one is to conduct workforce planning for
Washington Office. The field has been very, very involved in workforce
planning for quite some time now, and we felt that this was a real
opportunity for the Washington Office to take a hard look at their skill
needs and their succession planning needs. The next one is ‑‑ this is
very much kind of an internal Washington Office proposal, and that is to
establish an administrative service unit for Washington Office, and that
would place the operational, H.R. and I.T. service functions into an
administrative services unit. Again, that would be located in business
and fiscal resources. The kinds of services that we\'re talking about
there would be, as I said, H.R. services for headquarters office,
property, fleet management, mail room, warehouse, purchasing, credit
cards, those kinds of things. Right now many of those functions are done
by each assistant directorate in Washington Office. So we really want
this to be an operational unit that services the entire Washington
Office. The third component is cooperative conservation initiatives, and
again, the proposal here is to consolidate the partnerships, volunteers,
environmental education, heritage education, cooperative conservation,
alternative dispute resolution and service first into the national
landscape conservation system directorate in D.C. We felt that a lot of
those initiatives and programs really were interrelated and that there
could be some savings and some real synergy in having them all work more
closely together. This proposal would only affect the Washington Office,
not the Field Offices in those arenas. Next one is ‑‑ with engineering
and asset management. This proposal really talks mostly about kind of
reporting relationships here. But we would propose to consolidate the
engineering and asset management functions again into the business and
fiscal resources directorate in Washington. Right now ‑‑ and Henri
talked a little bit about engineering functions, but they are kind of
scattered in several entities both in Washington Office and centers and
in field offices. So we feel again that this would be a good opportunity
to bring those engineering ‑‑ take a hard look at them and then bring
them together. We would then also recommend realigning the remaining
functions that are in Washington Office 360, and that is the division of
protection and response, and those functions, for example, are the
haz‑mat program, abandoned mine land program. So those would also be
moved to Washington Office 800. The realignment in the national science
and Training Center of engineering is also proposed, and those functions
would go to the property and asset management division at the national
operations center or to the state offices. We don\'t really have enough
time to go into detail on that national operations center, but this is a
division that would be under that new service entity out there. We
propose also realigning the CASHE function and that\'s the Compliance
Assessment For Safety, Health and the Environment function to the
AD‑800, again to the business and fiscal resources. It currently resides
in the minerals, realty and resource protection division in the
Washington Office. The operational aspects of that program would go to
that same division, the property assessment management division at the
national operations center. The fifth component deals with science and
science policy. Again, currently we have science policy and pieces of
the science programs and processes scattered all over many different
offices in Washington and in the field. We\'re proposing that we
centralize the science policy in the AD‑200, which is the renewable
resources and planning directorate in Washington Office with a single
science advisor reporting to that assistant director. We\'re also
proposing that we incorporate the science functions that are currently
done in minerals, realty and resources, protection, directorate, in
planning and in the national landscape conservation system directorate,
and those also would go into AD‑200. We want to review the placement of
the operational science functions and see where they would best fit, and
there is a lot of work, I think, that still needs to be done on that
one. They may fit at the national operations center. They may fit at the
states. It may be other agencies. Just a variety of options there.
We\'re also proposing to migrate the science investigations to non‑BLM
science providers such as universities, other agencies, contractors.
Finally, to consider reestablishing a BLM science coordinating committee
that would help us establish priorities for science in BLM. And all of
these proposals really are focused on trying to ‑‑ better define how
science is addressed within the Bureau and how we use it in the
decision‑making process. 6th component is to define the GIS function in
BLM. The first thing we need to do and are proposing to do is to clarify
the GIS function, its roles and responsibilities, and make sure that we
are in line with the Department of Interior\'s blueprint for GIS. Right
now there is really no one focal point in the Washington Office for the
leadership and the funding and GIS standards. We really feel that that
needs to be addressed, and if appropriate, we need to adjust our
organizational placement of that policy lead, clearly our proposal would
be to have it in one directorate. The next one would be to establish a
formal Bureau coordination group that crosses the directorates, because
the GIS function obviously affects a variety of different programs. The
last one under this section has to do with internet content management.
The proposals there are to assign a Washington Office 600, which again
is the communications directorate, the responsibility for internet
management, and that means that they would oversee the design and
content of the web pages. The web application development would be
centralized at the national operations center. And the intent there is
for there to be a similar, you know, look and field of all the websites
that BLM has out there. The national operations center would also manage
the web servers, the infrastructure and the security. So that\'s end of
those ‑‑

\>\> T. GARRETT: Thank you, Elaine. We\'re covering a lot of ground. We
know our viewers have a lot of information to digest. We\'ll just
underscore the point that this is an introduction and there will be many
follow‑on discussions, continuing communications both ways and more
input from the staff. So this is very much an ongoing process. We\'re
ready to move to our fourth and final focus area, and that has to do
with process improvements, how to make our work processes work better
for us. We go back to Henri for that discussion.

\>\> H. BISSON: Thanks, Tony. We\'re almost there. It\'s been a long
broadcast. We have just a little bit more to cover with you today. I
would like to visit with you about some improvements we\'re proposing
and how the Washington Office is doing its business. First of all,
we\'re proposing to establish a Washington Office cost containment
strategy. We\'re proposing to improve the way that Washington Office
works in terms of coordination and integration of programs within the
Washington Office. We think that there are opportunities certainly
within Washington and Bureau‑wide where we could achieve some fairly
significant savings if we focus on clarifying data management
responsibilities. And it may seem small, but it\'s a fairly significant
new approach that we\'re proposing in how we deal with office of
workman\'s compensation program, OWCP. These ideas for the most part
won\'t directly impact the field, but hopefully there will be some
positive spin‑offs as a result of it. First of all, let me talk about
the Washington Office cost containment strategy. This is ‑‑ as a deputy
director, this is an area of keen interest to me. As an assistant
director a few years ago I would have welcomed an opportunity to have an
organization like this help us to try to make sure that we\'re getting
as much money as we can to the field, and that\'s the intention of this
group. We\'re proposing to take a few people in the budget office who
would be called cost containment team, and they would provide advice to
me that I would discuss with the assistant directors relative to cost
containment for the Washington Office. We\'re proposing to establish
cost containment indicators and to set performance benchmarks so that
just as we expect the field to accomplish a certain amount of work with
the money that\'s provided to them, we\'re going to impose the same
requirements on the Washington Office. If we\'re going to keep money
back there, then we\'re going to set some goals and we\'re going to
achieve those goals or we\'ll address them. Those performance targets
will actually be established between myself and the assistant directors
when we work on their performance each year. We\'re also proposing to
been Mark spending in the Washington Office and FTE allocations in the
Washington Office so once we agree what the appropriate levels are, as
we move on we can track adjustments made over time with how much money
is being kept in Washington. Hopefully by containing the amount of money
that we\'re spending in Washington at the appropriate level, we will be
able to ensure that the bulk of our money coming to the Bureau is
getting out to the field where the work needs to be done. The field
work. There\'s a lot of important work being done in Washington as well.
I don\'t mean to dismiss that, but we want to get as much money out to
the ground as we can. One of the areas that we think is a fairly
significant issue that we need to work on is coordination between the
directorates, and we\'re proposing to use matrix teams to coordinate
policy and budget development for crosscutting priorities and special
initiatives. We\'re going to evaluate the recent matrix team effort that
was used on the energy policy act for lessons learned but we believe
that a wider use of matrix teams on crosscutting issues will actually
improve the guidance, the work that we\'re doing that comes out to the
field. That\'s really what we want to do, is try to improve the
Washington Office day‑to‑day operations in a team environment on these
crosscutting issues. Feedback from the states is too often our policies,
our data calls are not coordinated in the Washington Office before they
go out to the states. The result is that oftentimes the states are left
to resolve overlapping or contradictory policies. We want to emphasize
coordination and integration across the various programs in Washington
and we think that that will improve the work that we\'re doing back
there. Kathleen Clarke and I will be heavily focused on the operation of
the headquarters office to make sure that we\'re doing a better job in
this area. Another opportunity that we think is quite significant is in
data management, and we\'re proposing that in fact we clarify data
management responsibilities. We believe that we need to standardize data
collection, evaluation and reporting, that we need to enforce the use of
common databases in the Bureau. We need to establish standards for GIS
and remotely sensed data. We need to develop data standards and
management control for key data elements and databases. And we need to
ensure there is proper oversight of data quality. We think that
substantial savings are to be gained here, money that can be
redistributed to the field. There are significant hidden costs to data
management when good data management is not practiced. Valuable data is
often not available to others other than the folks that created it. We
frequently have duplicate collection of data. And sometimes by not
having the data available it contributes to poor management decisions. I
intend to ask our field committee to set up a project team to oversee
this initiative, and what we hope to see again is increased
standardization of data, increased sharing of data, especially within
the agency, improved data quality, and I think in the long run, through
some of the centralization that we\'re doing in information technology,
we can actually reduce and change the way that we utilize the data to do
our everyday jobs and save a lot of money by reducing servers and
basically using new technology to reduce our expenditures in this area.
Related to the office of workers\' compensation program, what we\'re
going to propose to the department is that they consider allowing us to
decentralize that program on a pilot basis. Right now what we would
propose to do is to assign OWCP operational management to the national
operations center but individual case management would be done in the
states. OWCP policy would remain with the H.R. directorate in
Washington. And we hope to develop incentives that would allow us to
improve case management. We\'re going to be requesting permission from
the department to pilot this initiative. Right now BLM spends nearly \$9
million a year in OWCP charges. Currently all costs are paid by the
department, and any savings that can be achieved through case management
remain with the department. We think that a well‑run OWCP program can
both support our employees in need and ensure that costs are proper
managed, and we would like to hope we might be able to gain from some of
the savings that could be achieved through this effort.

\>\> T. GARRETT: All right. We\'ve covered, then, the four focus areas
of this \"Managing for Excellence\" initiative, and thank you both for
those very informative presentations. Let\'s talk about moving forward
now. What\'s next in the process?

\>\> H. BISSON: Elaine mentioned earlier that that one of the first
things I\'m going to do when I get back to Washington is to initiate the
process to get a project manager hired. We think we need to have a
person who has strong skills to analyze all of these different proposals
and to lay out a road map for us with specific targets that we can
accomplish over the next two years. We want to use team approaches to
resolve many of the decisions we need to make. I would hope that within
the next few months we would actually have a project plan. And we\'re
going to be looking at, as funding permits, the potential to reengineer
some of the I.T. and H.R. processes that would need to be done if in
fact we decide to centralize in these two areas more than we are right
now. And I will be working with the state directors on developing
state‑specific plans for moving to three tier. Recognizing that these
changes could impact many of you out there, we\'re not going to rush
into implementation. We intend to be very methodical and to gradually
implement these changes over the next couple of years. I\'d like to
mention a couple of steps that we anticipate as well. First of all, as
we begin to implement these changes, we want to keep you informed. We
want to hear your concerns and suggestions. Following this broadcast,
the state directors and assistant directors are going to be holding
meetings with their employees to clarify any concerns, answer any
questions people might have. We\'re going to create a website and a web
box where people can go and get the most current information or answers
for their questions. We intend to provide for frequent and regular
updates as to what is going on. We are going to brief the deputy State
Directors and the field committee on a regular basis and the ELT as
well. So we look forward to getting into this initiative. We look
forward to working with all of you, BLM\'s managers and employees, to
help refine these concepts and to make them a reality.

\>\> T. GARRETT: All right. Thanks again, Henri. We\'re nearing the end
of our broadcast now. So we\'ll take a few moments and offer our
panelists the opportunity to make some final comments. Elaine?

\>\> E. ZIELINSKI: We\'ve presented a lot of material today, and it
really reflects a lot of thought and a lot of hard work from a lot of
people, but we also have a lot of work still to do, and we really, has
Henri said, we really do need your comments on these concepts and
proposals. We need your involvement and your expertise and your good
ideas out there. And we want that involvement from all levels of our
organization, because we feel that\'s the best way that we will be able
to chart a course for BLM\'s future. As the director said, you know,
change is inevitable, and I think that also maintaining the status quo
is not acceptable and isn\'t going to work for us.

\>\> T. GARRETT: All right. Henri, final thoughts?

\>\> H. BISSON: Yes. First of all, I would like to thank everyone who
worked on both the futuring and the Washington Office efficiency
efforts. A lot of terrific people helped us to formulate these concepts.
Elaine and I have spent virtually our whole adult lives working in the
BLM, and the changes that we\'re proposing to make are really necessary
to ensure a vital BLM in the future, as Kathleen mentioned. Based on our
experiences over the past 30 years, we feel that these refinements are
going to help us adjust to the rapid changes ahead of us yet. The
changes that we\'re proposing to make are not nearly as drastic as other
bureaus have had to make, and Kathleen Clarke and I want to assure all
of you that our intention is to move ahead carefully, thoughtfully and
considerately of the potential impacts on our employees. We will work
through this together.

\>\> T. GARRETT: Deputy Director for Operations, Henri Bisson, Arizona
State BLM Director Elaine Zielinski, thank you both for being with us.
We would also like to once again thank BLM Director Kathleen Clarke for
her message to us at the beginning of our show. Remember, many of you
will be having further meetings with your State Directors and other
managers to discuss additional aspects of the \"Managing for
Excellence\" initiative and what it may mean for you. Thanks for
watching and so long from Phoenix!

This broadcast has been a presentation of the BLM National Training
Center.