NTEU Update Briefing World-Class Enterprise Operations

1. NTEU Update Briefing World-Class Enterprise Operations Presented by Tony McMahon February 23, 2010

2. Today’s Meeting… Agenda: Introduction of Presenters Background Information Focus Group Results: Optimize workflow Streamline communications Improve system efficiencies Enhance employee career development In Summary Next Steps Questions

3. Background Information Objectives: Increase efficiency to enable focus on both strategic priorities as well as on-going operations Equip EOps to utilize industry best practices through the Information Technology Infrastructure Library1 Improve the quality of service delivered to IRS employees and taxpayers Aspire to become the Federal agency leader in world class IT operations History: Initial NTEU briefing 12/07/09 Solicited employee volunteers to participated in focus groups ~20 BU volunteers, 8 manager and front-line focus group discussions (4 in DET and 4 in MEM, including remote volunteers) Today’s briefing will present research findings • The employee discussions resulted in the followingareas of focus: • Optimize workflow • Streamline communications • Improve process efficiencies • Enhance employee career development 1 2 3 4 • 1 (ITIL) Framework developed by British government for managing IT operations

4. 1 Focus Group Results – Optimize Workflow Current state Focus group results Segment-ation SAs work across all work types, resulting in fragmentation and task switching losses Align work based on work type (e.g., incident, transmittal) Pooling Most systems aligned to 1-2 SAs; this structure requires continuous support and makes scheduling less flexible Increase employee cross-training to pool skills and allow increased scheduling flexibility Managing “other work” All SAs handle untracked “other work” (e.g., password resets, system checks, etc) Document all requests to reduce redundant or low priority work and allocate necessary resources to more critical tasks Dispatch There is no consistent process for evenly and efficiently allocating incoming work,resulting in uneven distribution of workload Centralize work and allocate to team members to manage and track demand, as well as minimize disruptions to team members Workload balancing Workload spikes are typically addressed with extended work hours Leverage resources in pools during workload spikes Monitor and balance workload across multiple SAs to ensure that no one individual is overloaded

5. 2 Focus Group Results – Streamline communications Current state Focus group results Emails SAs receive and review hundreds of emails each day – only a small number of them (<20-30%) are applicable to their areas Leverage dispatcher to filter emails (e.g. incidents, transmittals) Streamline and target communications by updating mailing lists or discontinuing automated notifications (e.g., OL5081s) Meetings and calls SAs attend around one, one-hour meeting each day - a majority of them simply attend to cover / listen Optimize meetings- minimize the number of required participants for standing meetings and request attendance only for individuals with action items / decisions

6. 3 Focus Group Results – Improve system efficiencies Current state Focus group results Best practices Best practices and SOPs informally created and distributed by a few teams in an ad hoc manner Formally codify and consolidate best practices and SOPs in a centralized location Emphasize proper use of best practices through coaching Contin-uous improv-ement Continuous improvement activities performed in ad hoc manner without time formally allocated Use freed resources for continuous improvement (e.g., documentation of best practices) Metrics There are very few metrics used consistently at the team level (e.g., productivity and quality) Track a simple set of team level front-line metrics- deploy productivity and quality metrics at team level to provide transparency into optimized workflow and process efficiencies

7. 4 Focus Group Results – Enhance employee career development Current state Focus group results Employee training Strong employee desire for training (e.g., peer mentoring and formal classroom training) Formalize employee training plans; managers should support career development plans (IDP) for employees and set up local training opportunities Increase informal employee capability building Manager training Employee desire for manager continuity (e.g., consistent use and definition of processes and procedures) Manager interest in improved tools and increased training to be better managers Define a set of consistent management practices to enhance communication with SAs

8. In Summary • Increased capacity could present new opportunities in the following areas: • Capability development (e.g., knowledge base development, training opportunities, scripts and tools, productivity documentation for metrics and continuous improvement) • End-to-end monitoring • Disaster recovery and security program • Asset management • Data-centric operating environment • Mandates & legislative changes (e.g., Tax Return Preparer Initiative, Information Reporting) • Insourcing (e.g., DITE) • Cloud computing

9. 6 Next steps • Will use the input of the focus groups to create the design • NTEU Article 47 notification to be issued (if applicable)

10. Questions ?