SSA's Strategic Plan

In October 1997, SSA published "Keeping the Promise", the Agency's third strategic plan (ASP), and the first under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). It is also the first strategic plan since SSA became an independent agency in 1995. In developing the ASP, SSA looked at its traditional role of administering the Social Security programs in light of its new status as an independent agency. While our emphasis remains on our longstanding commitment to service and effective program administration, we also acknowledged our broadened role in providing program leadership. With these considerations in mind, our mission is:

To support this mission, SSA has established five broad strategic goals that encompass all our program activities. Each goal has supporting strategic objectives that add specificity and define what the goals will mean to SSA over the period covered by the strategic plan (FY 1998 through FY 2002). The five strategic goals are:

• To promote valued, strong and responsive social security programs and conduct effective policy development, research and program evaluation

• To deliver customer-responsive, world-class service

• To make SSA program management the best-in-business, with zero tolerance for fraud and abuse

• To be an employer that values and invests in each employee

• To strengthen public understanding of the social security programs

Our Next ASP Under Development

SSA currently is developing the next edition of its Strategic Plan that is due to Congress in September 2000 under the requirements of GPRA. The Plan will cover the period FY 2001 through FY 2005. To update the Strategic Plan, we are reexamining our strategic objectives and the strategies for achieving them in the context of recent stakeholder input, evaluations and performance experience.

As an important part of this effort, we also are creating a vision of SSA in 2010 to guide our strategic planning decisions. This vision will provide a view of the ways we expect to deliver service in the next century considering changing customer expectations, technology, demographics and other trends. We will use it to determine what actions we must take today to adequately prepare for the future and to adjust our current strategic guidance where necessary.

Guidance in the next strategic plan will supersede the current plan and as a result, some elements of the FY 2001 annual performance plan may change. These changes will be reflected in the revised final FY 2001 and FY 2002 annual performance plans.