for any given project, which was invaluable in defending staffing and budget requirements

In addition, 74 awards were given to organizations for meeting the targets of the Small Business Set-Asides program and 72 awards were given to branches for meeting the goals of the Safety program. Prior year spikes in the number of the Honor Awards bestowed as shown in the trend data resulted from exceptional events such as the 5.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Washington, DC on August 23, 2011 (FY 2012) and the opening of the Capitol Visitor Center on December 2, 2008 (FY 2009).

Future Strategy Efforts: In FY 2015, AOC will design and implement organizational improvement activities identified in the OAS survey specifically geared towards increasing employee involvement and engagement. Among the areas of improvement identified in the survey responses was the desire for reduced bureaucracy and increased flexibility. AOC has established teams of employees to develop recommendations for improvement and increase their involvement and engagement in implementing solutions. Recommendations are due to the Architect by the end of calendar year 2014 for implementation as calendar year 2015 begins.

Strategic Objective 2.3: Build a Culture of Transparency, Ownership, and Accountability

AOC’s strategies under this objective include:

• Instilling and fostering accountability and responsibility.

• Promoting transparency through effective, tailored and clear communications.

Discussion: AOC’s efforts in FY 2014 under this objective included developing an Accountability and Responsibility Program. As part of this effort, AOC conducted an Employee Engagement Benchmarking effort, extracting key elements from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM’s) Organizational Assessment Survey (OAS), Gallup literature, Partnership for Public Service’s publications and studies, and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. The stratetgy team identified observable behaviors associated with Responsible, Accountable, Trusted and Engaged (RATE) conduct. Ideally, the team would like to see this conduct socialized throughout the agency as “How do you RATE?” The RATE document has been developed into a self-assessment scorecard and is under review by HCMD and strategic goal leads. As a result of these reviews, HCMD is in the process of incorporating RATE concepts into existing employee programs.

AOC also advanced its efforts to improve the current Performance Communication and Evaluation System (PCES). The AOC performance management working group presented its recommendations to the Architect in early 2014, who approved them for implementation. Among the recommendations, the working group highlighted the importance of focusing agency efforts on improving the communications between employees and supervisors through enhanced training for both groups, developing standardized criteria for supervisory interviews/selections and educating employees regarding the PCES process.

AOC also undertook several efforts to improve internal communication channels including establishing a new intranet, AOC Compass. AOC also introduced a new weekly employee newsletter, Week in Review, refined its GovDelivery service and offered a subscription service that enables employees to sign up to receive news, announcements and other information to work and personal phones, and e-mail accounts. These internal communications channels improve transparency and provide tailored and clear communications for employees.

Perhaps most critically, in FY 2014, AOC administered its second OAS survey as part of its continuing commitment to make AOC one of the best places to work. AOC uses elements of the OAS as a performance indicator to monitor progress toward this strategic objective. A very high proportion of the AOC workforce participated. This survey, a tool developed by OPM, provides AOC employees an opportunity to offer anonymous feedback on AOC’s work climate and gives AOC leadership the opportunity to benchmark its survey results with agencies of similar size across the federal government. Participation in this year’s OAS will allow for AOC’s first-time inclusion in the Best Places to Work Index generated by the Partnership for Public Service. These employee job satisfaction results will be publicly available and will help to establish increased transparency and accountability for the agency’s performance.

AOC completed the second OAS with an impressive 89 percent participation rate among employees. Rather than using the dimensions established by OPM—which are more aligned with environments that are predominantly made up of office employees—AOC regrouped the roughly 100 survey questions into 13 focus areas that better represent AOC’s reality of a mixed workforce. When compared to the high and low benchmarks (agencies of like-size who conduct the OAS), AOC’s favorability scores are in the upper half for nine of the 13 focus areas. The