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 arise from recent legislative changes to the Railroad Retirement Act, 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. Turnover is relatively low, and approximately 88 percent of our employees have 10 or more years of service at the agency. Because of this strong experience base, we have not made significant investments in training, procedures, and other tools that support our front-line workers in recent years. However, as with other government agencies, the RRB will be facing a serious challenge during the planning period, as many of its most knowledgeable and experienced employees become eligible for retirement. Approximately 42% of our current workforce will be eligible for full retirement by 2008.

Planning for succession, training, knowledge transfer, and employee support 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, much less having them fully trained and functional before their predecessors leave. The impact on the work during this period of transition has the potential to manifest itself in lower quality and timeliness for both external and internal customers. Our challenge will be to develop processes, training and systems that can minimize that impact.

•      Information Technology

Information technology is one of the essential means to achieving our mission. A key challenge is to use the enterprise architecture developed in recent years to identify cost-effective solutions for replacing outdated technology. Once specific solutions are planned and transition strategies are in place, we must commit a significant investment of both staff and budget in developing and implementing those solutions. 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. This represents a particular challenge and was identified as a material weakness during fiscal year 2002. Specifically, the identified weakness involved insufficient computer security awareness training for agency staff that have specific job roles and responsibilities for our major applications and general support systems. An action plan has been developed to correct this weakness and is targeted for completion in fiscal year 2004. Even with those improvements in place, however, 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.

•      Changing Role in Trust Fund Management

Recent changes in legislation call for the transfer of railroad retirement funds from the Railroad Retirement Accounts to a new National Railroad Retirement Investment Trust, whose Board of seven trustees is empowered to invest Trust assets 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 Accounts 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 new Trust 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 Trust, the 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. Our challenge will be to make this transition in a constructive and effective manner.

•      Changes in Disbursement of Railroad Retirement Payments

The Railroad Retirement and Survivors’ Improvement Act of 2001 includes a provision for the RRB to contract with a non-governmental disbursement agent for payment of railroad retirement and survivor benefits. The law specifies that until this transfer of function is completed, the RRB will continue to use the Department of the Treasury as its disbursing agent. During the initial procurement actions and analysis, several complex issues have surfaced concerning the costs and effectiveness of services available from non-governmental service providers. The RRB will address these issues during the coming years.

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