5 U.S.C. § 306 — Agency strategic plans

(a) By the first Monday in February of the year after a new presidential term starts under section 101 of title 3, each agency head must post a strategic plan on the agency's public website and tell the President and Congress it's available. The plan must include: (1) a full mission statement covering the agency's major functions and operations; (2) general goals and objectives, including outcome-focused ones, for those major functions; (3) how those goals connect to the Federal Government priority goals required by section 1120(a) of title 31; (4) how the agency will reach its goals, including (A) the processes, skills, technology, and human, financial, information, and other resources needed, and (B) how the agency works with other agencies to reach its own goals and government-wide priority goals; (5) how the goals reflect views and suggestions gathered through the congressional consultations required by (d); (6) how the performance goals in the plan required by section 1115(a) of title 31 — including any agency priority goals under section 1120(b) — support the strategic plan's general goals; (7) key outside factors, beyond the agency's control, that could significantly affect whether it reaches its goals; (8) the program evaluations used to set or revise goals, a schedule of future evaluations, and references to the related plans required under section 312; and (9) for agencies that must write a plan under section 312(a) or (b), an assessment of how good, thorough, and independent the agency's statistics, evaluation, research, and analysis work is, including (A) a list of agency activities currently being evaluated; (B) how well that evaluation work supports the agency's different divisions; (C) how well it balances organizational learning, program management, performance management, strategic management, coordination with other agencies and the private sector, oversight, and accountability; (D) whether the agency uses evaluation methods suited to its divisions and questions, including a mix of formative and summative approaches; (E) whether the agency has the staff and processes to plan, run, and share evaluations, and use employee feedback; and (F) whether the agency can help its own staff and program offices build skill in using evaluation and analysis in daily work.

(b) The strategic plan must cover at least the next 4 fiscal years after the year it's submitted. The agency head can update it if the agency's environment changes significantly, notifying Congress appropriately.

(c) The performance plan required by section 1115(b) of title 31 must match the agency's strategic plan, and a performance plan can't be submitted for a year not covered by a current strategic plan.

(d) When writing or updating a strategic plan, the agency must regularly consult Congress — including majority and minority views from the relevant authorizing, appropriations, and oversight committees — and must ask for and consider the views of anyone likely to be affected by or interested in the plan. The agency must consult the relevant congressional committees at least once every two years.

(e) Writing these plans is considered an inherently governmental function. Only federal employees may draft them.

(f) In this section, "agency" means an Executive agency as defined in section 105, but not the Central Intelligence Agency, the Government Accountability Office, the United States Postal Service, or the Postal Regulatory Commission.