Administrative and support services.

These units play a vital role in supporting the mission of the FBI Laboratory. They ensure that the Laboratory has sufficient resources to operate, facilitate the efficient flow of evidence through the Laboratory, keep Laboratory employees safe and healthy, and maintain security on the premises, among other essential functions.

Administrative Unit 

The Administrative Unit (AU) supports the mission of the FBI Laboratory by coordinating, directing, and facilitating various programs and initiatives in the areas of administration, personnel, hiring, and mail services.

The AU's administrative responsibilities include the following areas:

* Awards.

* Ethics.

* Equal Employment Opportunity, Employee Assistance, and Upward Mobility Programs.

* Fleet management.

* Forensic examiner training, certification, and service agreements.

* Honors interns.

* Inspections.

* Manual revisions.

* Student loan repayment.

The AU's personnel and hiring responsibilities include:

* Promotions, transfers, and reassignments.

* Internal and external hiring initiatives.

* Staffing and funded staffing levels.

* Organizational charts and reorganization matters.

* Career-board coordination for special agent and professional support personnel.

* Promotional criteria and performance-based action oversight.

* Changes to and/or creation of position descriptions.

* Work-life matters, to include leave restoration, work-at-home options, alternate work schedules, and part-time employment.

* Availability-pay certification.

* Executive management requests.

* Resource Management and Allocation Committee coordination and facilitation.

The AU's Mail Services group provides in-house, full-service mail and shipping services for the entire Laboratory, to including mail metering; loading-dock functions; confidential-trash disposal; and incoming and outgoing shipments via the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, and other courier services. The AU's areas of responsibility are highlighted in the following 2006 endeavors.

In February 2006 the FBI's Security Division requested changes to the organizational structure and reporting requirements of the Laboratory's security positions. As a result, in May 2006, security personnel were reassigned to the Laboratory's Operational Support Branch, and the Administrative and Security Unit became the Administrative Unit. This change in staffing has allowed the AU to devote additional time and effort to the Division's ongoing and constantly evolving human resource requirements, various policy compliance issues, and coordination of various programs under the unit's purview.

In 2006 the AU also helped the Human Resources Division redesign the FBI's recruiting Web site (http://www.fbijobs.gov). The goal of the project was to make the site more user-friendly, intuitive, and informative, as well as more attractive to candidates, thus increasing the number of quality individuals hired. Toward that end, the AU reviewed and updated a collection of documents describing the Laboratory's scientific positions. This project also involved reviewing, editing, and revising approximately 23 unit descriptions for a Laboratory Web page (http://www.fbijobs.gov/311143.asp) that links to the FBI's main job Web site. The Laboratory's page provides a synopsis of unit functions and positions, as well as their requirements, and represents an excellent tool to generate a greater interest in career opportunities in the Laboratory.

The FBI Laboratory must maintain a cadre of experienced and certified forensic examiners. Because of the amount of time and expense involved in training and certifying forensic examiners, the AU received oversight responsibility for the new examiner training and qualification process. The AU implemented a new Forensic Examiner Training Agreement Program (FETAP), which included establishing the program's policies, procedures, and guidelines. The FETAP provides a flexible framework and training for experienced, court-qualified forensic examiners. As such, each Laboratory unit with forensic examiners requires an individualized training plan to document as trainees earn the status of fully qualified, FBI-certified forensic examiners. This training plan includes evaluations and assessments of each trainee's previous training, experience, and expertise; identification of areas needing improvement and the design of individually tailored training plans to address these areas; oral boards; moot courts; and certification.

Evidence Control Unit

The FBI Laboratory's focal point for evidence services is its Evidence Control Unit (ECU). The ECU's mission is to provide quality service to its evidence contributors as well as to provide supporting services to all evidence-examining units within the Laboratory.

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As the FBI Laboratory's central point for the administrative management of evidence, the ECU acts as a liaison between FBI Laboratory staff and contributing agencies to provide information regarding the status of their cases. This best practice is demonstrated in major and high-profile cases where a single point of contact in the ECU coordinates all evidence received and provides real-time status checks to contributors, as well as to Laboratory management, as the case moves through the FBI Laboratory.

Special programs also are in place to benefit and support frequent contributors of evidence to the FBI Laboratory. The District of Columbia's Washington Metropolitan Police Department and the Indian Country jurisdictions represent two such contributors. The FBI Laboratory employs a task-force-like approach to process the large number of cases received in these matters. The ECU supports these major evidence programs by designating a "Request Coordinator" to coordinate, track, and administratively manage the evidence received. This service enables the contributing agency to discuss and exchange information regarding cases, discuss the various forensic services available, and obtain up-to-the-minute case status.

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As a service to FBI field offices, the ECU provides leadership and guidance to field evidence technicians regarding the proper handling of evidence through its Field Evidence Program. The FBI's Field Evidence Program Manager sets policy and provides to FBI field offices--as well as other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies--guidance and direction in the receipt, storage, packaging, and proper transfer of evidence. As mandated by the Code of Federal Regulations under the Department of Transportation, the Field Evidence Program sponsors training in packaging and shipping hazardous materials. Evidence technicians responsible for packaging or shipping hazardous materials are required to receive this training every two years from a school certified by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Transportation Safety Institute.

The ECU's role in carrying out these administrative evidence services is vital to developing and fostering relationships and communication with the law enforcement community and significantly aids in the timely movement of evidence throughout the FBI Laboratory.

Facility Services Unit

The Facility Services Unit (FSU) handles facility, physical security, and health and safety matters in the Laboratory building and other facilities used by the Laboratory Division.

The Facilities group comprises mostly maintenance personnel. These employees maintain, repair, and alter Laboratory Division facilities and also provide oversight for contracts that cover maintenance, repair, or alteration of the facilities. The group also oversees space-management issues and coordinates with architectural and engineering firms for facility studies and designs.

Electronics technicians (ETs) maintain and modify the Laboratory's electronic systems, including internal and external local area networks, access and intrusion systems, internal telephone communications equipment, and video teleconferencing equipment. ETs also help establish secret and top-secret communication to meet the Laboratory's needs for access to military and other government sites throughout the world.

The Health and Safety Group (HSG) ensures compliance with federal, state, and local occupational, environmental, nuclear, and transportation regulations in the operation of a forensic laboratory. This group supports investigative efforts with local, state, and international law enforcement agencies through the application and receipt of special permits for the movement of hazardous materials into and out of the Laboratory, while sharing technical health and safety information with local and state forensic laboratories. This group also manages the Laboratory's fitness center and arranges for inspections of the Laboratory's food-service facility. Finally, the HSG is home to the Health Services Office, staffed by contract nurses responsible for daily medical visits as well as routine fitness-for-duty physicals and physicals for personnel who deploy throughout the world to support FBI investigations.

Planning and Budget Unit

The Planning and Budget Unit (PBU) manages all phases of planning, budgeting, acquisition, project management, auditing, and inventory and supply services for the FBI Laboratory. These essential services support the Laboratory's mission and the FBI's strategic planning efforts. Using state-of-the-art tools that include real-time, web-based financial and project management information and automated templates and reports, the PBU ensures that Laboratory investments are well planned, fully funded, successfully implemented, and appropriately managed.

During 2006 the PBU enhanced the web-based financial system used to capture, track, and manage Laboratory investments. These enhancements included spending-plan forecasting and additional project management tools. These improvements help Laboratory managers plan their financial investments and track the health, status, and completion of their projects. Project management standards were refined to integrate the best practices of investment management and ensure project excellence and success. The PBU also established the Major Acquisition Review Committee and the Research Council to serve as standardized review mechanisms for approving, managing, and controlling Laboratory projects to ensure their compliance with project management standards. During the year the PBU processed more than 6800 financial transactions and managed expenditures totaling $66 million.

Security Team

Security represents an essential component of every FBI division, and the Laboratory has some of the strictest security measures of any FBI facility. To ensure that security remains a top priority, in 2006 the Security Team, which previously had been part of the Administrative and Security Unit, became a separate entity, reporting directly to the Deputy Assistant Director of the Operational Support Branch.

The Security Team administers the many aspects of the Laboratory's security program. These include classification issues, communications security, briefings and debriefings, access requests, five-year reinvestigations and associated personnel security interviews, international travel, contacts with foreign nationals, the foreign-national visitor program, requests for sensitive compartmented information (SCI) clearances and associated briefings, security compliance issues, and SCI facility accreditation and compliance procedures.

In addition to providing continuing advice to Laboratory employees on security-related issues, in 2006 the Security Team accomplished the following objectives:

* Created a Security Awareness Program, with an accompanying bimonthly security awareness newsletter to provide reference material and advice to all Laboratory employees.

* Automated the Security Awareness Annual Briefings to allow employees to access them on the team's intranet site.

* Created databases to track and ensure compliance with the rules for unescorted visitor access, contractor access, and international travel.

* Enhanced the Laboratory's physical security by changing procedures that affect the physical surveillance of the Laboratory facility.

* Wrote a new Continuity of Operations Plan for the Laboratory and facilitated an exercise to ensure that the Laboratory continues to fulfill its mission, even in times of crisis.

INNOVARi: The FBI Laboratory's Business Process Management Initiative

In 2006 the FBI Laboratory embarked on an ambitious project to improve its forensic examination business processes and to create a work-flow and information management system. The project is called INNOVARi, from the Latin word innovare, meaning "to renew." Its purpose is to provide visibility into the work activities being performed, to manage the information that is collected and produced as a result of forensic examinations, and to track and manage the individual items of evidence that are examined by the FBI Laboratory. INNOVARi provides the traditional features of a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), but because of the integrated work-flow features that enable the oversight and management of the entire forensic examination process, it exceeds the functionality of a LIMS.

The FBI Laboratory uses business process management, or BPM, for its INNOVARi project because BPM provides a holistic approach to improve the performance of organizations. BPM uses a methodology to analyze an organization's business processes to identify inefficiencies and uses information technology or automation to enable performance improvements. Furthermore, BPM is considered an instrument used within change efforts or interventions as part of the management discipline of Organization Development. The methodology used as part of INNOVARi is called Value Stream Management, and the automation software used to manage the business processes is called BizFlow.

As a part of its project to help create and develop its work-flow and information management system, the FBI Laboratory deployed a pilot phase involving two of its forensic business units: the Trace Evidence Unit and the Evidence Control Unit. Ten business processes between the two units were modeled, analyzed, improved, and then automated into the INNOVARi application. Overall user feedback regarding the INNOVARi application has been positive, and wider adoption is planned. Over the next two years, the remaining forensic examination units will undergo BPM methodology facilitation, and their business processes will be integrated into the INNOVARi application.