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RRB Strategic Plan 2009-2014 |
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Strategic Priorities |
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Strategic Plan in PDF
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We have two comprehensive strategic priorities for this planning period:
Customer Service and Trust Fund Stewardship.
Our Customer Service priority is focused on meeting our customers’ expectations
for timely and accurate personal service. These expectations are based on past
experience and performance, as reflected in several independent customer
satisfaction surveys over the past decade. Our challenge in meeting this
priority will be to make the most of our limited resources, using technology and
staff in cost-effective ways. Another challenge will be the rising expectations
of our customers, reflected in increased demands for new and improved services.
We will strive to meet these expectations in this planning period.
Our Trust Fund Stewardship priority has several different aspects, including a
focus on financial solvency for our programs for the future as well as
maintaining a high level of program integrity.
Future solvency was a major objective of legislative changes to the RRA in 2001.
Those amendments, contained in the Railroad Retirement and Survivors’
Improvement Act, created the NRRIT, a non-governmental entity that is charged
with managing investment of the railroad retirement trust funds in a wide
variety of financial instruments. Although this responsibility was shifted from
the RRB, the agency still has the responsibility of monitoring the activities of
the NRRIT and working with the NRRIT to ensure the availability of funds.
Program integrity involves managing our budgetary resources in a prudent,
responsible way to ensure that customers receive those benefits to which they
are legally entitled. To do this, we conduct automated reviews of our customers’
benefit information to identify errors or inconsistencies, and maintain computer
matching agreements with other agencies and entities that report information on,
or pay benefits to, our customers. We also safeguard our trust funds through
such activities as using competitive procurements whenever possible, increasing
energy efficiency in our headquarters building, developing in-house training
programs to better equip our employees to handle a variety of challenges and
using online video to present both internal and external training. We also work
closely with our Office of Inspector General (OIG) to have our financial
statements audited every year. All of these activities will continue during this
6-year planning period.
A key factor in meeting our strategic priorities is the RRB’s administrative
funding level. Budgetary resources have been tight in recent years, and are
expected to remain so during the planning period. To deal with this challenge,
the agency has made creative use of technology and other innovations, not only
to maintain service levels, but to improve agency performance wherever possible.
The following figure demonstrates how the RRB has done more with less in recent
years. The general trend over the last 15 years has been an increase in the
ratio of customers served to agency employees. The major reasons the RRB has
been able to maintain high performance levels with increasingly scarce resources
are our extremely capable and dedicated employees coupled with expanded use of
technology. However, the continued loss of personnel through retirements,
coupled with ongoing budget restraints, has created a serious challenge for the
future, to be addressed during the planning period.
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