NOAA Office of Program Planning and Integration

4.1 – The Next-Generation Strategic Plan

NOAA’s NGSP, adopted in the fall of 2010, charts a new and compelling future for NOAA and the Nation. NOAA developed the NGSP through an iterative process of data gathering, analysis, revision, and vetting of those things most fundamental to the work of the agency—its mission and vision for the future, long-term goals, objectives to meet those goals, and outcomes as evidence of the agency’s progress.

An effective strategic plan is a basis for stakeholder engagement. It provides a starting point for informed conversation and debate through which broad agreement on common challenges and opportunities can be generated. The plan is more than an advertisement for what the agency does. It is a tool for cultivating informed customers and collaborating with partners who are best positioned to help NOAA improve its service to the Nation. NOAA has relied heavily on stakeholder input and internal assessments of the agency’s mission and the external trends and forces that shape the future.

The NGSP emerged from extensive consultations with NOAA’s staff and its extended community of partners and collaborators in the public, private, and academic sectors. NOAA conducted a one-day national stakeholder forum in Washington, DC, regional stakeholder forums across the country, and an online survey to ensure NOAA staff and their partners shaped the plan. Based on staff and stakeholder input on key trends and uncertainties, the NGSP specifies a focused set of long-term goals and corresponding near-term objectives that:

»Reflect the Administration’s policy priorities;

»Respond to long-term threats and opportunities external to NOAA;

»Specify long-term societal benefits;

»Are SMART;

»Are feasible with respect to NOAA’s existing and potential functions; and

»Build upon progress achieved under NOAA’s previous plan.

NOAA’s Next-Generation Strategic Plan is available at www.ppi.noaa.gov/ngsp.