Section 3Sec./Art. 3

Definition of Terms. - As used in this Act:

(a) Abolition refers to the dissolution of an agency or unit and the discontinuance of its operations, or the elimination of a position deemed obsolete, unnecessary, redundant, or overlapping;

(b) Affected Personnel refers to a government employee, whether regular, contractual, or casual, who may be affected by organizational actions arising from the results of the strategic review and study under the Government Optimization Program (GOP);

(c) Consolidation refers to the dissolution of two (2) or more agencies or units with duplicating or overlapping functions to create a new one;

(d) Creation refers to the establishment of an agency, unit, or position deemed necessary for the agency's operations or performance of essential functions;

(e) Deactivation refers to the act of making dormant or non-operational an agency or unit by phasing out its functions or transferring them to other agencies or units, and discontinuing the provision of resources. An agency or unit is rendered dormant or non-operational if it is defunded and its operation is terminated but its formal existence continues. A deactivated agency or unit is devoid of any activity, personnel, financial, and physical resources;

(f) Detailed Optimized Organizational Structure refers to the output of a government agency that provides information on the systematic arrangements and functions of the divisions and units within the organization. This shall be based on the Optimized Organizational Structure that shall be developed by the Committee on Optimizing the Executive Branch (COEB);

(g) Merger refers to the combination of two (2) or more agencies or units, whereby the identity of one is retained and the other agency/ies or unit/s is/are abolished or deactivated;

(h) Optimization refers to the process of analyzing and designing the appropriate roles, mandates, structures, functions, sizes, systems, and processes of government agencies to ensure effective, responsive, and efficient service delivery;

(i) Optimized Organizational Structure refers to the output of the COEB, which shall contain the appropriate structure of government agencies and their corresponding mandates and functions, resulting from the conduct of strategic review and study;

(j) Phase out refers to the gradual elimination or discontinuance of a function, program, activity, or project through the sequential or selective abolition of its parts, until the said function, program, activity, or project ceases to exist;

(k) Placement refers to the process of matching the position, qualifications, and skills of the personnel with the needs of the agencies, which occurs when the individual is assigned to a particular job;

(l) Scaling down refers to the reduction in the intensity or magnitude of a function, program, activity, or project either by eliminating selected components or reducing the geographical, demographic or clientele coverage, the types of services rendered, or the level of outputs;

(m) Staffing pattern refers to the staffing complement of an agency which shows the number of authorized positions by class and occupational group for each organizational unit within the agency;

(n) Strengthening refers to the act of increasing the targets of a core function, or its expected goods or services and their desired impact, or widening its clientele or geographical coverage by infusing additional physical, financial, and other resources to it; and

(o) Transfer refers to the movement of an agency or unit to another where it properly belongs or its functions are more aligned, or of a position or employee from one (1) organizational unit to another within the same department or agency, or from one (1) department or agency to another, with equivalent rank, level, or salary.