Summary:

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report Feb. 19, 2010 titled Food and Drug Administration: Opportunities Exist to Better Address Management Challenges, which criticized the FDA’s efforts to fully use practices for effective strategic planning and management.

The report highlights five major management challenges the GOA believes could affect FDA’s ability to carry out its mission:

1. recruiting, retraining, and developing its workforce

2. modernizing its information systems

3. coordinating internally and externally

4. communicating with the public

5. keeping up with scientific advances.

The GOA made the following recommendations: Develop a strategic human-capital plan and issue an updated workforce plan; Work to make FDA’s performance measures more results-oriented; Following the creation of more results-oriented sets of performance measures, direct FDA’s centers and offices to track their workload by strategic goals; Direct each of the agency’s main centers and offices to clearly align their program activities to FDA’s strategic goals in documents such as the budget request or center- or office-level documents; Build FDA’s capacity to collect and analyze performance information by expanding training for managers on topics related to performance information.

Article Quote:

“The GAO said that FDA has aligned its three major activities—premarket review, production oversight, and postmarket surveillance—and uses employee performance plans to link individual activities to its strategic goals. However, only four of eight centers and offices that GAO reviewed clearly document alignment of their activities to FDA’s goals, and only two clearly linked their resources to the agency’s goals.”

Link: http://pharmtech.findpharma.com/pharmtech/Regulation/GAO-Report-Criticizes-FDAs-Strategic-Planning-and-/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/663378?contextCategoryId=35097

As mentioned in the recommendations above, strategic planning initiatives must focus on outcomes.  You should know the intended outcome before jumping into any action plan. That is not to say that the action plan must remain static. If adjustments to the action plan need to be made, and often they do, then make the necessary changes. Measure progress often because in doing so, you will gain insight into what is working and what may need adjusted. However, the focus should always remain on the intended outcome.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/