Letter from Assistant Director Paul Rauch

The Year Ahead-2013

In FY2012, Business Management and Operations (BMO) led the Service’s first year of operations under the Financial and Business Management System (FBMS), and as would be expected addressed many challenges along the way. As we look ahead to FY2013, BMO will work hard to build off its FY2012 successes, implement lessons learned, enhance reporting capabilities and deliver quality training. As we deal with difficult budgets, it will become increasingly important for BMO to identify and implement efficiencies. FBMS will support improved efficiency by increasing transparency and facilitating the sharing of work and resources across regional and program boundaries. FBMS is critical to the Service’s future business successes and will require our focus as we continue to enhance both system and operational capabilities. To help maintain this focus, BMO has established the Branch of Business Integration (BBI) within the Division of Financial Management (DFM). BBI’s focus will be on FBMS training and support, and will lead the Service’s efforts to address all cross cutting operational issues related to FBMS.

The five divisions within BMO will continue to provide the Service’s natural resource programs with the day-to-day management and administrative tools necessary to accomplish their mission. Much of BMO’s performance happens behind the scenes and is transparent to Service resource program employees. What we do is not optional. BMO involves many complex organizational units that are designed to ensure that the Service complies with Federal law and that we effectively execute Administration/Departmental directives. Some FY2013 initiatives include:

• BBI will lead Service-wide efforts to enhance FBMS training, reporting, and operations based on lessons learned from FY2012.
• DFM will establish a comprehensive, FBMS based quality assurance program.
• Contracting and General Services (CGS) and DFM will work together to consolidate Acquisition Management Reviews (AMRs) and A123 reviews to reduce impact to the Regions and increase efficiencies.
• CGS will be completing acquisition of new office space for 800 Headquarters employees.
• As in FY2012, DFM and CGS will again work to maintain a “green” rating on the Department’s scorecard for Financial Management including a clean audit opinion and maintaining a green rating for Fleet and Property Management.
• Division of Engineering (DEN) will be implementing the Virtual engineering Center for Technical Resources (VeCTR) concept Service-wide to improve efficiency and improve the sharing of staff resources.
• DEN will streamline the environmental auditing process to reduce the impact on the Regions and improve efficiency.
• As one of many BMO continual improvement initiatives, our Division of Safety and Health (DSH) will finalize and implement a much needed on-line supervisory training model to ensure our frontline supervisors are well trained and ensuring the safety of employees and visitors.
• Our Division of Economics (ECN) will initiate and complete a study of the impact of changing socio-demographics on LCCs.

These are just a handful of examples that demonstrate our commitment to offer behind-the-scenes support and guidance to the Service as we continue to chart a course for excellence in service and the delivery of program activities that will enable Service programs to meet and exceed their mission goals on a national scale.

Paul Rauch
Assistant Director and Chief Financial Officer – Business Management and Operations