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Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
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Annual Performance Plan 2013

Introduction

The Board's longstanding mission is to foster the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the nation's monetary, financial, and payment systems in pursuit of optimal macroeconomic performance. The Board's mission is rooted in the Federal Reserve System's statutory mandates, and on a set of core institutional values:

  • Public interest. In its actions and policies, the Board seeks to promote the public interest; the Board is accountable and responsive to the general public, the U.S. government, and the financial community.
  • Integrity. The Board adheres to the highest standards of integrity in its dealings with the public, the financial community, and its employees.
  • Excellence. The conduct of monetary policy, responsibility for bank supervision, and maintenance of payment system demand high-quality analysis, high performance standards, and a secure, robust infrastructure. The pursuit of excellence drives the Board's policies concerning recruitment, selection, and retention of Board employees.
  • Efficiency and effectiveness. In carrying out its functions, the Board is continually aware that its operations are supported primarily by public funds, and it recognizes its obligation to manage resources efficiently and effectively.
  • Independence of views. The Board values the diversity of its employees, input from a variety of sources, and the independent professional judgment that is fostered by the System's regional structure. It relies on strong teamwork and consensus-building to mold independent viewpoints into coherent, effective policies.

The Board seeks to accomplish its mission effectively, while creating the efficiencies that come from strategic planning.


Role of Strategic Planning

The Board considers strategic planning a critical factor to ensuring the long-term effectiveness and efficiency of operations, and to minimizing costs. Strategic planning has become even more essential in light of advancements in technology and other areas.

The Board's strategic planning effort recognizes the key distinctions between government and private-sector strategic planning efforts and measurement of those efforts. While private-sector planning often relies on measures of cost and revenue, establishing a comparable metric to costs and prices is extraordinarily difficult in the public sector. Moreover, the results are judged relative to public-policy objectives embodied in law, which often are not readily measurable.

This performance plan is based on the Board's four-year Strategic Framework.1 The framework is used to guide key investments, align resources, and implement changes over the 2012-15 planning period. The framework is organized into six themes:

  • Continue building a robust inter-disciplinary infrastructure for regulation, supervision, and monitoring risks to financial stability.
  • Redesign data governance and management processes to enhance the Board's data environment.
  • Establish a modern, safe work environment that emphasizes the need to maintain data quality and integrity and the importance of enhanced collaboration within the organization and with the public.
  • Create a work environment built on market-oriented compensation and support for professional and personal achievement that allows the Board to attract and retain top talent, while reinforcing collegiality.
  • Strengthen management processes to enable effective implementation of strategic themes, increase operating efficiencies, and reduce administrative burden.
  • Establish a cost-reduction approach and a budgetary-growth target that maintains an effective and efficient use of financial resources.

Senior leadership will reassess priorities throughout the strategic framework's implementation period to take into account environmental factors and changing circumstances. These factors impact the specific activities undertaken in any given year to achieve strategic objectives.

The Annual Performance Plan 2013 sets forth the planned projects, initiatives, and activities that support the strategic framework's long-term objectives. Board staff will report quarterly the progress towards achieving the following strategic objectives to Board members and executives internally. In early 2014, the Board will publish and release to the public (1) a report on the Board's performance toward achieving what it set out to do during 2013, and (2) a performance plan for 2014.

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References

1. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2013), Strategic Framework 2012-15 (Washington: Board of Governors, February), www.federalreserve.gov/publications/gpra/files/2012-2015-strategic-framework.pdf.  Return to text

Last update: June 14, 2013

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