H -- Quality Metrics Pilot

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) intents to engage in a limited pilot project with M-CAM under FAR 6.302-1 for the following: Patent application filings have increased dramatically throughout the world. Technology has become increasingly complex, and demands from customers for higher quality products and services have escalated. In response to these demands, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) developed the 21st Century Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan is an aggressive and far-reaching five-year plan that reflects both a thorough internal process review and a systematic attempt to incorporate the best thinking of our stakeholders. The Strategic Plan identifies a number of efforts that will improve the quality of our products, further expand our e-government objectives, and strengthen our ability to be one of the most efficient intellectual property organizations in the world. The USPTO recognizes that a robust quality assurance program is critical to maintaining the public?s desired level of patent product quality. The public?s interest in quality has been repeatedly and strongly voiced. Accordingly, improving patent quality is a major objective of the Strategic Plan. To reach our goals, the USPTO has initiated an improved Quality Assurance Program. The improved program integrates past quality review programs into a single integrated Quality Assurance Program for the USPTO, expands the quality review of work products, and improves the connection between the results of the review and subsequent training requirements. Prior to the Strategic Plan, the USTPO established its Office of Patent Quality Review (OPQR) end-checking process more than 25 years ago. While the randomly sampled OPQR measures are statistically valid, they have proven difficult to use when building training programs. Particularly difficult has been the development of training programs to help individual examiners whose needs do not coincide with the Technology Center averages determined by OPQR statistical measures. Further, OPQR is a stand-alone organization at the end of the examination pipeline. This has made it difficult to modify the OPQR process to better connect their quality measurements into training program development. Not long ago, the USPTO established an In-Process Review (IPR) of examiners? work products using a review standard based upon applicant/attorney feedback. The Quality Assurance Examiners (QASs) for each Technology Center (TC) reviewed a random sample of completed Office actions per fiscal year. A further sample from the reviewed pool was used for follow up with applicant?s representative to get their judgment of the quality. The results of the random sample were used to determine general TC-wide training needs from which the QASs develop training courses. The USPTO is currently expanding the IPRs of examiners? workproducts as part of the improved Quality Assurance Program. Current USPTO quality reviews generate organizational measures, but do not provide measures that can be used to identify individual quality performance levels and address the needs of an individual examiner. The major goal of the expanded quality review program under the Strategic Plan is to identify quality trends and individual examiners with significant quality concerns and to provide sufficient help to address those concerns. Employing the applicant/attorney based review standards of our prior In-Process Review and adding measures of indicia of quality performance the reviews under the Strategic plan will provide a robust field of feedback at the organizational and individual quality performance level. The USPTO is interested in obtaining assistance with defining the quality performance metrics and indicators associated with the In-Process Review (IPR) Program, on a limited pilot basis. Particularly, the USPTO is interested in developing objective quality metrics and indicators at the organizational level of quality performance based upon the data collected during the In-Process Reviews. This pilot would be used to identify the critical objective data points and verify the link of performance in these areas to overall patent examination quality at the organizational level. Additionally, these indicators and the data collected during IPRs will flow into numerous processes within the Patents organization including: ? Training development. ? Examiner certification and re-certification. ? Annual performance appraisals. ? Quality award determination. ? Selection of Supervisory Patent Examiners, QASs, and Examiner Trainers. ? Calculation of Technology Center quality measurements such as reopening rate. ? Calculation of overall USPTO quality measurements. Any responses to fulfill the above stated requirements can be submitted on a cost or no-cost basis. Provide previous product applications and references. Include any terms, conditions, disclaimers, and/or limitations connected with the response. All questions regarding this notice should be submitted to Janet Carlson, via e-mail at contact@example.gov, or via telephone at 703/305-8219. The deadline for submitting responses is 5:00 pm EST, March 10, 2003.