The Food and Drug Administration yesterday launched an innovative performance management system called FDA-TRACK to monitor more than 100 program offices.
The system is designed in line with the President Barack Obama’s commitment to transparency, public participation, and collaboration in the government.
FDA-TRACK measures data from key performance measures established on an annual basis. That data will be gathered monthly, analyzed and presented each quarter to FDA senior leadership. Importantly, the information will be open to the public through the FDA-TRACK website.
“FDA-TRACK will bring the operations of this historically opaque agency into the daylight and help us be even more responsive as we work to protect the public health,†said FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg.
FDA-TRACK is designed to be informative, encourage accountability among FDA employees, and make their work more transparent and measurable. It also provides a way for the public to monitor agency activities.
Adapted from several successful state and local performance management models, FDA-TRACK hopes to set the standard for open government at the federal level. The system monitors performance indicators in four categories: common measures, key center director measures, program measures, and key projects.
Statistics measured could include, among others, the number of employees trained in the Incident Command System, an emergency response system; monitoring publishing of technical publications; and even developing new approaches for evaluating safety of new drugs.
