Two overriding strategic issues for the upcoming planning period relate to customer service and trust fund stewardship. The service issue involves our ability to meet our customers’ expectations for personal, high quality service as we have in the past, and our ability to position the agency to meet rising customer expectations for new and improved services in the future. The stewardship issue has multiple aspects, some of which arose from legislative changes to the Railroad Retirement Act, enacted in 2001, and others which relate to our ongoing ability to meet our program integrity responsibilities and to maintain effective, efficient and secure agency operations.

Two key variables in successfully addressing both of these issues will be the level of administrative funding the agency receives and how well we manage those resources. Anticipating that budgetary resources will be very limited during this planning period, the agency recognizes that it must develop innovative ways to operate effectively in a downsized environment.

To address these issues, we need to overcome major challenges in the areas described below. Each of these areas relates to specific strategic goals and objectives which are outlined and discussed in Chapter V of this plan.

Human Capital

An important contributor to this agency’s success in meeting our mission and goals in the past has been the quality and experience of our workforce. Historically, turnover has been relatively low, and almost 90 percent of our employees have 10 or more years of service at the agency (with about two-thirds of those having more than 20 years of service). However, as part of an agency-wide buyout program at the beginning of fiscal year 2005, 77 of these long-term agency employees left the agency. To help cope with the loss of experience, particularly in times of limited budgets and hiring, the RRB is placing increased emphasis on strategic management of human capital, particularly in the areas of training and human capital planning. This takes on added importance due to the fact that over 35 percent of the current RRB workforce will be eligible for retirement by 2009.

Human capital planning, including provisions for employee support and knowledge transfer, will be critical to our ability to continue to achieve our mission. This will be especially challenging since our expected budget levels will not allow for large-scale hiring of replacement staff. Our challenge during this planning period will be to develop processes, training and systems that can maximize the growth potential for agency employees while maintaining outstanding customer service.

Information Technology

Information Technology (IT) is one of the essential means to achieving the RRB’s mission. The RRB’s IT capabilities span from basic infrastructure support to integration and implementation of mission-critical applications, network centric systems, and architectural design. Together these capabilities ensure timely, accurate, and efficient delivery of benefits. We continue to improve and advance our technologies. Beginning in 2005, the agency embarked on a major multi-year project based on an Enterprise Architecture target initiative to transition the mainframe computer to a relational database management system from a non-relational database management system, and to optimize the performance of the databases and further reduce data redundancy. As mentioned above, with the impending drain on human capital resources due to approaching retirements, another challenge will be to ensure the availability of sufficient staff with the necessary skills to complete these modernization projects.

Another critically important area of information technology is computer security. We anticipate computer security to be a continuing, significant challenge over the course of the planning period. The increasing number of Internet and telecommunication services we plan to offer requires that we continue to employ effective risk management procedures and “best practices” for intrusion prevention to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our mission critical assets.

Changed Role in Trust Fund Management

Legislative changes in 2001 called for the transfer of railroad retirement funds from the Railroad Retirement Accounts to the NRRIT, whose Board of seven trustees is empowered to invest NRRIT-held funds in non-governmental assets, such as equities and debt, as well as in governmental securities.

As a result, the role of the RRB and its staff in relation to the Railroad Retirement Account and the Social Security Equivalent Benefit Account has fundamentally changed. The RRB no longer has primary responsibility for the investment of railroad retirement trust fund monies, but continues to be responsible for ensuring that the NRRIT complies with the provisions of the Railroad Retirement Act. The agency has the authority to bring civil action to enjoin any act or practice by the NRRIT, its Board of Trustees, or its employees or agents that violates any provision of the Railroad Retirement Act or to otherwise enforce the provisions of the Act.

See Figure 1 for a summary of the Strategic Goals and Objectives resulting from these issues and challenges.

Figure 1: Summary of Strategic Goals and Objectives