• Review and discussion of performance results monthly in an Executive Leadership Team meeting.

• Issuance of quarterly reports on strategy progress and challenges.

In addition, AOC publishes its annual PAR on the agency’s website (www.aoc.gov), making the report—including information on the agency’s progress in achieving its goals and objectives—available to Congress and the general public. Once posted to the website, AOC notifies Congress of the availability of the final PAR and where it may be found online.

AOC is in the process of producing a comprehensive and detailed operational definition for every performance indicator included in the Executive Dashboard. Operational definitions are documentation packages that discuss each indicator’s relevance, identify data source and data providers, detail the calculations used to build the measure, describe specific data validation steps undertaken for each data set, define relevant data terms, and summarize data limitations as well as risks associated with the data that might impair accuracy. By identifying data limitations and risks, operational definitions have helped AOC develop better, more complete data validation procedures where advisable. In FY 2015, AOC will complete its operational definitions collection and use the information to continually improve the validity, accuracy, and depth of the data it uses in measuring performance.

In this section, certain performance indicator tables include prior year data noted with an asterisk (*) to indicate that results reported in this year’s PAR differ from those reported in FY 2013. These differences are primarily due to data updates received after the PAR publication date or to minor differences in precision reported.

In FY 2014, AOC did not conduct research or program evaluations related to understanding program performance, problems or external factors that might influence performance.

Photo Caption: AOC’s data validation efforts include implementing controls such as restricting permissible values, flagging outliers for review and mapping results for visual checks. These efforts help ensure the accuracy of information collected and reported.