ORGANIZATIONAL OBJECTIVES
Consistent with the overall U.S. Government policy of ensuring the most effective use of Government resources, any proposed organizational structure should strive to achieve proper balance among: A) mission needs; B) efficiency of operations; and C) effective employee utilization. Organizational planning should be guided by the following objectives:
Meeting Departmental Priorities:
- Designing and changing organization structures to meet specific Administration goals, the Secretary's priorities, and legal or statutory requirements.
- Defining mission and functions with sufficient flexibility to allow changes in priorities and direction with minimum disruption to the organization.
Improving Service Delivery:
- Simplifying processes to enhance service delivery.
- Automating functions whenever cost effective.
- Delegating decision-making to the lowest possible levels.
- Assuring adequate staffing to meet priority workload demands.
Improving Internal Management:
- Streamlining internal procedures and operations to increase operating efficiency.
- Establishing and maintaining clear lines of authority.
- Reducing administrative overhead.
- Combining similar functions.
- Minimizing organizational layering.
- Maintaining appropriate span of control.
ORGANIZATIONAL PLANNING PRINCIPLES
- Organizational layers should be limited to the minimum number consistent with effective span of control and performance of mission. The addition of nonessential supervisory layers increases problems associated with establishing clear delegation of responsibility and authority, transmission of information, work flow, clearances, operational costs, and morale.
- Span of control is the number of subordinates one supervisor can effectively manage. A narrow span of control leads to unnecessary organizational layering. Too wide a span of control hinders the ability to make supervisory decisions based on thorough knowledge and understanding of the particular issue.
- Staff units should be established only to provide direct support in the development of policy or planning, or to provide a point of coordination of cross-cutting activities. Differentiate between staff and line functions and, where appropriate, place them in separate units.
- Like functions should be grouped together in a component.
- Integral policy or operational fields should not be divided into separate components.
- Functional statements should provide the minimum detail to define the area of responsibility of an organizational unit to distinguish its activities from those of related units, and to eliminate potential overlap and duplication.
- Have clear assignments of functions with no duplications, conflict or overlap.
- Establish responsibility for each specific function with an individual unit.
- Reduce administrative costs by consolidating resources where possible.
- Simplify processes whenever possible to promote administrative efficiencies and enhance service deliver.
- Ensure that the proposed reorganization change will assist the organization in accomplishing its mission.
- With respect to a change in legislative requirements, identify the legislation and reflect adequately the legislative intent in the reorganization proposal.
- Ensure that the proposed organizational change will assist the organization in accomplishing its mission.
- Use short and simple, but descriptive, organizational titles.
