III-A: Technology and Innovation, including E-Government

Strategically align our information technology (IT) environment and investments to most effectively and efficiently support our business needs.

Other Information:

The planned improvements in IT operations and procedures will enable us to respond rapidly to changing business requirements, such as legislative changes and technological advances. We are currently engaged in a multi-year project to implement a mainframe-based relational database management system and to optimize the large databases which comprise the core of our benefit program operations. Our priorities in the coming years will include implementing a variety of E-Government initiatives within the framework of our overall information technology architecture, in a secure and stable electronic environment. At the same time, we will also focus on other business process improvements which may or may not require new systems or automation. Such improvements will include reengineered work processes and streamlined procedures. The key components of this strategy are outlined below: E-Government: E-Government is a major technological advance that allows our customers the option of choosing to use the Internet for a variety of services. One of the principal components of the President’s Management Agenda, E-Government has significant potential for improving customer service, since it gives the customer more independent control over his/her own business transactions, which can be conducted at any time and from any location where the customer has an Internet connection. In addition, E-Government promises a framework within which Federal agencies will be able to collaborate and align their efforts to provide standard customer service features, to eliminate redundancy, and to take advantage of economies of scale in the development of new applications. The RRB currently has several E-Government services available for our customers, and plans to expand the range of services even more. Examples of on-line services our customers will have in the future include: On-line applications for use by railroad employees and their spouses in filing for retirement age and service benefits. On-line claims for sickness insurance benefits. An enhanced Employer Reporting System (ERS) for use by railroads and rail labor employers to file service and compensation reports and for related activities. The enhancements include: additional forms, improved on-line edits and help, creation of an on-line training system, improved secure file transfers and the conversion of the system to Microsoft’s .Net platform. On-line input of change of address or direct deposit information. Enterprise Architecture Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a process that not only drives continuous business and technology alignment, but provides an overall plan for designing, implementing and maintaining the underlying infrastructure to support information sharing and resource optimization. Technology has done an excellent job of supporting agency business needs. Our opportunity is to leverage this experience and knowledge into enterprise solutions that support the future of the RRB and the constituents we serve. EA offers a framework for accomplishing this shared mission. The RRB’s EA framework is based on the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework. The EA documents the agency’s baseline architecture and the processes for managing change to the architecture. The target architecture we have established defines the information technology environment to achieve our current and future business goals and objectives. The target environment is designed to Streamline business and technical processes and procedures; Be flexible in consolidating similar or redundant internal and government-wide functions, applications, software and hardware; Enable collaboration among all kinds of applications; and, Promote reuse of data and processes, as a means of reducing development time and costs. Internal Operations/Process Improvements Our focus will remain on simplifying the delivery of services and making it possible for our customers, businesses and government agencies to easily obtain information and service from the RRB. We will use several strategies over the course of the planning period in order to achieve these goals. Point-of-Contact Service: This is our way of describing our ideal service delivery method – one in which a single contact from the customer, including businesses and government agencies, results in the desired outcome, without internal handoffs or the need for multiple customer contacts. We use this approach when designing internal processes and procedures for our claims examiners and claims representatives who deal with our customers. This philosophy has also been built into our enterprise architecture, and represents a key requirement in our overall strategy. We will ensure that new systems are designed to provide this kind of responsive customer service. Streamlining and reengineering: While we strive to meet the standards we set in our customer service and performance plans, we may not always be able to do that. We will review our performance data at least annually to identify areas that fall short of our goals. Through streamlining and reengineering studies, we will look for ways to make short-term improvements, and we will develop recommendations for longer-term projects. Finally, we will track our improvements to determine their effectiveness. Review of regulations, policies and procedures: To some extent regulatory, policy or procedural requirements may cause delays, inaccuracies or complexities. We will review and evaluate such requirements to determine if changes would be warranted. If so, we will propose alternatives in order to reduce operational complexities and erroneous situations, and alleviate delays.

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

Content