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US Department of the Interior Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians
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Comprehensive Trust Management Plan
AS-IS Report

Trust Business Re-Engineering

For a number of years, DOI has been working on several projects to reform and improve the management of Indian fiduciary trust assets. The most comprehensive reform effort currently underway is the development of the "To-Be" Trust Model, which will re-engineer the way DOI bureaus and offices perform their trust responsibilities and, ultimately, improve services provided to trust beneficiaries.

Why is this re-engineering project necessary? Here are some of the challenges facing DOI in it's administration of the trust:

  • Individual Indians, Tribes, and Congress have for some time expressed dissatisfaction with the trust management services provided by DOI
  • Multiple and often duplicative processes are used to manage land and natural resource assets, track ownership, manage accounts and distribute funds
  • The expectations of beneficiaries and employees may exceed the Indian Trust mandate or capability of the Trustee to deliver
  • The number of fractionated interests in land assets, which are growing at an exponential rate, and the number of IIM accounts that must be managed have overwhelmed and excessively complicated the existing manual and automated processes and systems
With this daunting array of challenges, the need for changing the way we deliver trust products and services becomes much more clear. DOI senior leadership has led the way by developing a strategic plan titled The Comprehensive Trust Management (CTM) Plan, which defines and describes the strategic direction of trust reform and clearly articulates DOI’s commitment to fulfilling its trust responsibilities.

Consistent with the CTM, the standardization of fiduciary trust business processes and modernization of systems to meet customer, accounting, and operational requirements is needed. Toward this end, a team of DOI and tribal representatives worked extensively to document the performance of current trust business practices nationwide, which are reported in the "As-Is" Report. The information contained int the "As-Is" Report is the foundation for the recommendations for re-engineered business process that appear within the "To-Be" Model.