3.2: Supporting our Strategic Goals

Meet and advance our longterm strategic objectives.

Other Information:

The Department’s Open Government Plan is fundamental to meeting and advancing our longterm strategic objectives. Only by increasing our efforts in transparency, participation and collaboration will the Department be able to fully satisfy our core mission of promoting the welfare of job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States. Our vision of “good jobs for everyone” is supported through the following goals: • To prepare workers for good jobs and ensure fair compensation; • To ensure workplaces are safe and healthy; • To assure fair and high quality work-life environments; • To secure health benefits and, for those not working, provide income security; and • To foster fair working conditions in the global marketplace. Our Open Government Plan is not just a slogan or policy position, but a powerful strategy towards the achievement of our strategic goals. While different aspects of this plan will ultimately help achieve different combinations of our strategic goals, increased transparency, participation, and collaboration will influence the work of the entire Department, and make it better able to satisfy our core mission of promoting the welfare of job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States. Publishing information online in such a way that it is easily accessible and can be used and distributed as widely as possible dramatically alters the relationships between the Department, our community of active stakeholders, and the public. This data gives the public an unprecedented view into Department activities – and increased transparency holds workers, employers, and the Department more accountable, while ensuring that the public is able to make more informed decisions about where they live, work, and consume. As part of our transparency efforts, we are launching version 1.0 of a comprehensive Online Enforcement Database which provides access to enforcement data collected by the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), and Wage and Hour Division (WHD) in one location. Users will be able to search a growing series of common dimensions which open a window to all of our enforcement actions for the first time. In addition to the added value of access to aggregate enforcement data, this database also provides access to a variety of previously unpublished data. Perhaps workers will review the database before beginning their job search, allowing them to more accurately assess a prospective employer’s reputation. Or maybe someone will create a mashup of the employers in their community and encourage neighbors to stop doing business with serial employment law violators. Information is power, and a number of our initiatives will dramatically increase the accessibility and usability of the information we collect and further aid in meeting our strategic goals. Meeting these goals will also require new channels of public participation—both on- and off-line—to strengthen Department decision-making and to better serve the public workforce. With today’s technologies, it is easy for citizens to speak directly to the appropriate decision-makers within our Department, and for our decision-makers to sift through and understand the submitted comments and recommendations. Workers will be able to boost our enforcement efforts by directly reporting problems in their work environments, and retirees will be able to report gaps in their benefits to help the Department identify potentially systemic issues. The Department will also be able to provide more responsive and accurate customer service by integrating our outreach efforts into popular online venues. We plan to be aggressive in adopting these technologies to better engage the workforce. In addition to our worker protection efforts, a large part of our work centers around workforce development programs, and a number of these are conducted through the distribution of grants. Though the Department distributes nearly $4 billion in formula grants through a de-centralized system of service deliverers and one-stop career centers, we also award millions in discretionary grants for demonstrations and evaluations of labor market strategies and interventions. The grant application process is one area in particular that could benefit tremendously from an increased level of public participation. Increased information dissemination about grants and the grant making process will improve the quality of both the applications and our responses. Finally, the development of collaborative partnerships among our internal agencies, and between our Department and external entities, will help us efficiently deliver on our open government promise. Integrating data collections within our Department will streamline better cross-agency analyses and provide higher data quality to the public. External collaboration with other Federal entities, especially those who also engage in enforcement activity, will help each entity reduce duplicative efforts, especially in our information technology needs. And external collaboration with private, non-profit and academic entities, and the public-at-large, will result in improved oversight, extended outreach and better data interfaces and visualizations.

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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