Over the last four years, the FLRA has risen to the challenge presented to all Federal agencies by President Obama’s Administration: engaging in rigorous, metrics-based evaluation of its mission performance, management, and policies. Emphasizing mission accomplishment and performance improvement through transparency, employee engagement, and collaboration, FY 2012 was another year of real results for the FLRA, with all components meeting their strategic objectives and performance indicators, accomplishing key agency-wide mission milestones, and sustaining the dramatic and unprecedented increases in employee satisfaction and morale that were reported in FY 2010 and FY 2011. In addition, the agency continued to improve its efficiency by engaging in new and innovative ways to conduct business, using technology to maximize resources, increase flexibility, reduce costs, and enhance the delivery of agency case processing, training, and dispute resolution services.

Delivering on the commitment FLRA leadership made to the labor-management community, employees, and the President in FY 2009, the Authority component satisfied its Corrective Action Plan, meeting all significant performance indicators and ensuring the timely resolution of disputes. In this connection, the Authority reduced its pending case inventory by close to 90 percent; eliminated overage case inventory by 100 percent; and the average age of its cases is now approximately 50 days – reduced from well over 250 days. For yet another year, the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) component sustained its dramatic productivity increases, resolving 20 percent more cases than it did in FY 2009. In addition, the Federal Service Impasses Panel component – which continues to experience increased case filings, including an increase of over 15 percent in FY 2012 – is still showing improved performance outcomes and dramatic case settlement success. In this regard, the FSIP exceeded all of its performance goals in FY 2012 – with one exceeded by more than 15 percent.

Particularly noteworthy, are the tremendous efficiencies gained through the FLRA’s use of collaboration techniques and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to minimize and resolve labor-management disputes. In FY 2012, the OGC resolved close to 100 percent of the cases in which parties agreed to engage in ADR to collaboratively resolve their dispute. The FLRA’s Collaboration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Office also brought about real results, expeditiously resolving well over 90 percent of pending cases with no further need for litigation, getting the parties back to conducting the business of government. And consistent with its leadership role in labor-management relations, the FLRA delivered hundreds of training, outreach, and facilitation sessions in FY 2012 to thousands of practitioners. The agency’s work in this regard, has been critical to the implementation and ongoing success of parties’ efforts pursuant to President Obama’s Executive Order 13522, Creating Labor-Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services.