Trademark Fee Cost Analysis TPAC Briefing June 9, 2009

2 Trademark Fee Cost Analysis  The Trademark Fee Cost Analysis is a joint project between CFO and Trademarks to identify the actual cost of work performed for Trademark and TTAB Processing Fees  Cost is one factor that informs the fee setting process  “Unreliable cost information affects the federal government’s ability to control and reduce costs, assess performance, evaluate programs, and set fees to recover costs where required.” -FY 2008 GAO Financial Report of the United States Government

3 Reasons for Conducting a Trademark Fee Cost Analysis  OMB Circular A-25, User Charges – requires an agency to review the user charges (fees) for agency programs biennially to ensure they recover the full cost in the aggregate.  Good Business Sense – Knowing the cost to perform the work for a specific fee helps to inform better decisions for any new fee strategy.  TPAC Request – Requested by TPAC.

4 Timeframe  Executive level kick-off – January 2009  Formal cost study team kick-off – March 2009  Costing model complete – June 2009  Fee Cost Analysis complete – August 2009  Other costing requirements – September 2009

5 Fee Cost Analysis Study - Core Team  CFO  Office of Finance Activity-Based Information Division  Office of Corporate Planning – Revenue and Fee Forecasting Division  Trademarks  Office of Commissioner for Trademarks  Office of General Counsel  Trademark Trial and Appeals Board

6 Key Steps in Project Plan  Phase I: Project Initiation and Planning – January to March  Phase II: Trademark Model Revision – March to June (currently 3-4 weeks behind – plan on recovering)  Phase III: Trademark Cost Analysis – May to August  Phase IV: Consideration of other Costing Information Requirements – August to September  Phase V: Optional Fee Setting Analysis - TBD

7 Methodology  Review, update and validate the new Trademark ABI cost model  Develop the full cost of activities using the new ABI cost model  Determine the activity unit rates (full cost of activity divided by activity driver volume)  Associate activities with fee codes to develop an activity to fee code mapping  Adjust for frequency of occurrence (how many times an activity is performed for a particular fee based on a multi-year statistical data set)  Account for work in process by splitting the processes into discrete activities and by using a multiyear set of data. An analysis of the work in process will be undertaken in Phase IV. This analysis may also address such things as a check sum for the overall Fee Cost Analysis

8 Presentation of Final Results  Currently in the process of developing details for final presentation and displays  Will identify a fully burdened unit cost for all Trademark and TTAB processing fees  Plan to show cost contribution of direct and indirect costs for each processing fee unit cost

9 Accomplishments  Validation of activities and workloads for capturing Trademark process costs  Educating staff on how to better capture time spent on particular activities to help increase accuracy  Better understanding of Trademark process  Increased visibility of ABI data to managers within Trademarks and how ABI uses the information managers provide  Working to address Trademark cost information needs

10 Challenges  Defining and formalizing the methodology at the onset  Communicating amongst the team so that we understand each other’s information requirements  Coordinating schedules of team members and process owners and the necessary follow-on meetings

11 Current Status  The core project team has recently concluded Trademark Process Owner interviews to:  Confirm the team’s understanding of the process  Understand the process owners cost information needs  Review and validate the ABI activities and workloads  Map program, project and activity charges to Trademark ABI activities  Identify shared service organization and activities that directly support the Trademark process

12 Process Owner Groups & Schedule

13 Next Steps…  Review, update and obtain final validation on all process meeting response sheets and the activity dictionary based on discussions in each process owner meeting  Develop rules for distributing allocated direct and indirect costs to Trademarks  Develop system queries to extract workloads from Trademark systems such as TRAM  Finalize rules for cost allocations, workload drivers and the activity dictionary

14 Questions… Thank you!