skip to main navigation skip to secondary navigation skip to content
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
skip to content

Annual Performance Plan 2015

Introduction

The Board's longstanding mission is to foster the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the nation's monetary, financial, and payment systems in pursuit of optimal macroeconomic performance. The Board's mission is rooted in the Federal Reserve System's statutory mandates and on a set of core institutional values:

  • Public interest. In its actions and policies, the Board seeks to promote the public interest; the Board is accountable and responsive to the general public, the U.S. government, and the financial community.
  • Integrity. The Board adheres to the highest standards of integrity in its dealings with the public, the financial community, and its employees.
  • Excellence. The conduct of monetary policy, responsibility for bank supervision, and maintenance of payment system demand high-quality analysis, high performance standards, and a secure, robust infrastructure. The pursuit of excellence drives the Board's policies concerning recruitment, selection, and retention of Board employees.
  • Efficiency and effectiveness. In carrying out its functions, the Board is continually aware that its operations are supported primarily by public funds, and it recognizes its obligation to manage resources efficiently and effectively.
  • Independence of views. The Board values the diversity of its employees, input from a variety of sources, and the independent professional judgment that is fostered by the System's regional structure. It relies on strong teamwork and consensus building to mold independent viewpoints into coherent, effective policies.

The Board considers strategic planning a critical factor for ensuring the long-term effectiveness and efficiency of operations. The Board's Strategic Framework 2012-15, available at www.federalreserve.gov/ publications/gpra/files/2012-2015-strategicframework.pdf, is used to guide key investments, align resources, and implement changes over this four-year planning period. The framework is organized into six themes:

  1. Continue building a robust interdisciplinary infrastructure for supervision, regulation, and monitoring risks to financial stability.
  2. Redesign data governance and management processes to enhance the Board's data environment.
  3. Establish a modern, safe work environment that emphasizes the need to maintain data quality and integrity and the importance of enhanced collaboration within the organization and with the public.
  4. Create a work environment built on market-oriented compensation and support for professional and personal achievement that allows the Board to attract and retain top talent, while re-enforcing collegiality.
  5. Strengthen management processes to enable effective implementation of strategic themes, increase operating efficiencies, and reduce administrative burden.
  6. Establish a cost-reduction approach and a budgetary-growth target that maintains an effective and efficient use of financial resources.

The Board's strategic planning effort recognizes the key distinctions between government and private-sector strategic planning efforts and measurement of those efforts. While private-sector planning often relies on measures of revenue, establishing a comparable metric to costs and the "bottom-line" is extraordinarily difficult in the public sector. Moreover, the results are judged relative to public policy objectives embodied in law, which often are not readily measurable.

The Board's senior leadership has reassessed priorities throughout the strategic framework's implementation period to take into account environmental factors and changing circumstances. These factors effect the specific activities undertaken in any given year to achieve strategic objectives.

The Annual Performance Plan 2015 presents the planned projects, initiatives, and activities that support the strategic framework's long-term objectives. Board staff will report quarterly on the progress toward achieving the following strategic objectives to Board members and senior leadership internally. In 2016, the Board will publish and release to the public (1) a report on the Board's performance toward achieving what it set out to do during 2015 and (2) a performance plan for 2016.

As scheduled, the Board is in the process of reviewing its strategic plan.

Last update: June 8, 2015

Back to Top