Promote Commission excellence through executive direction and leadership, organizational and individual performance management, and effective management of resources.
FY 2012 INVESTMENT
Net Cost: $25.7 Million
Staffing: 85 FTE
Strategic Goal Five addresses those areas that enable the Commission to execute its mission of protecting market users and the public from fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices. Excellence in this area is reflected in strong and focused planning and governance, top notch information technology and infrastructure, superb facilities, efficient execution of resources, and an educated and productive workforce. FY 2012 proved exceptionally challenging as financial resources grew slower than mission needs causing CFTC to carefully prioritize requirements to meet Dodd-Frank Act initiatives while maintaining excellence monitoring the futures market. The key results summarize CFTC's mission support strategy.
Goal Five Key Results
The CFTC implemented a new automated hiring system to replace the labor intensive and slower manual hiring process. The new system will significantly increase hiring efficiency and speed, allow CFTC to effectively meet projected hiring goals, and remain competitive in the labor market.
CFTC successfully increased the number of Diversity and Inclusion collateral-duty employees providing counseling services from eight to 23, and implemented an integrated approach to counselor training which resulted in savings of 45 percent over FY 2011. These enhancements to program management allow CFTC to provide readily-available services to employees in headquarters and regional offices, while enhancing conflict resolution competencies in the workplace.
The Commission implemented the Strategic Learning Initiative, which included the development and deployment of a division-specific training needs assessment process. In addition, the Commission designed and implemented instructor-led courses and launched new e-learning campaigns to meet the Commission's regulatory, management, and leadership training and development requirements.
The Consumer Outreach Office was established to develop education initiatives that help customers protect themselves against fraud.
The Executive Director established a detailed operational level Performance Plan for the FY 2012-2013 performance cycle to better manage OED and commission-wide initiatives. The plan provides the first step towards a comprehensive Agency Performance Plan and includes key milestones and activities. This Plan is used for both the management of initiatives and to evaluate performance of executives.
The CFTC reengineered its Budget Program Activity Codes to provide a method for collecting time, labor, and expense data that is aligned with the Commission's budget and mission critical activities. During FY 2012, the agency successfully standardized a structure that reflects the requirements of CFTC programs and functions through a multi-divisional working group; put into place a governance framework and provided for future changes to the structure in accordance with best practices; and implemented a comprehensive training program for supervisors, timekeepers, and each employee to support front-end data integrity.
CFTC earned the Guardian Award recognizing agency excellence in security and suitability programs and operations. The award focuses specifically on agency achievements in security and suitability process automation, program implementation, or policy development resulting in enhanced timeliness, capability, capacity, and/or quality.
CFTC established an information governance program to provide better coordination on matters involving the collection and use of information. Initial issues addressed include, among other things, use of employees' personal mobile devices for business "Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)", the handling of controlled unclassified information, critical security controls, and the use of social media.
CFTC implemented new rules and guidance that allow a judgment officer to hear all reparations cases and statutory disqualification matters, as well as wage garnishment matters. The agency will borrow administrative law judges from other agencies if needed to hear administrative enforcement matters. Those changes, combined with implementation of Practice Manager, an electronic litigation support system, allow the Office of Proceedings to perform at a high functional level with only four permanent staff and one contractor.
To expand CFTC's compliance with Federal Information Security Management Act, we entered into a contract for a Personally Identifiable Information inventory, a review of NFA's privacy policies, and other privacy support. We also removed social security numbers from all CFTC forms and developed a new privacy threshold analysis that allows the procurement staff to determine which contracts require a privacy impact assessment.
In the 4th quarter of FY 2012, the Commission instituted a commitment accounting procedure for all purchase requisitions. Immediately after funds have been certified available for a purchase requisition, a commitment or reservation of funds is entered into the Commission's financial system to ensure that funds are available before contractual documents are awarded/obligated. This provides greater transparency into the true status of budgetary resources and consequently reduces the financial risk of the agency.
Information Technology
In addition to scaling up storage, processing, and communication bandwidth to support increased activity related to the Dodd-Frank Act, the Commission also migrated internet connections to a Department of Homeland Security-sanctioned Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Service and began implementing continuous monitoring of information security controls in order to enhance cyber-security.
To better support increasingly mobile and internationally-focused staff, the Commission piloted new mobile device technology. Based on the results of the pilot and other assessments, the Commission is prepared to begin a prioritized, targeted refresh of desktop and mobile technology in FY 2013 to increase the effectiveness of staff.
To help the effective transition of its workforce to the Dodd-Frank Act regulatory environment, the Commission leveraged cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to improve the hiring, training, and learning management, and staff time reporting processes. To increase the use and effectiveness of SaaS to support management and administration, the Commission also consolidated administrative and staff data into a central database supported by web services. In addition to allowing the Commission to streamline vendor management, staff and contractor, and ethics compliance processes, this has also allowed for the consolidation and increased control over sensitive personally identifiable information.
In addition to implementing a public-facing portal to streamline the submission of documents and information related to registration and compliance, product review, and enforcement activities, the Commission also continued to improve its public website to support increased transparency, improving its search engine and publishing Dodd-Frank Act timeline information.
