Congress Must Engage Before Full Results Can
be Demonstrated from GPRA
Testimony Before the House Committee on Government
Reform
Subcommittee on Government Efficiency and Financial
Management
March 31, 2004
Carl DeMaio, President
|
| |
Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I appreciate
the opportunity to be here this afternoon. My name is
Carl DeMaio, and I am the president and founder of The
Performance Institute, a private, nonpartisan think
tank that focuses on reforming government through the
principles of performance, transparency, competition,
and accountability. The Institute has extensive expertise
in the area of government performance management, working
with tens of thousands of federal, state and local government
managers every year to improve the performance of their
programs and agencies.
The Government Performance & Results Act of 1993
was and continues to be a critically important statute
guiding federal managers and employees in the continual
pursuit for better results and more transparent governance.
As a statute, GPRA has done its job. It got the ball
rolling on an era where planning is strategic, performance
is measured, budgeting is results-oriented, and management
is results-driven.
The General Accounting Office report that prompted
this hearing — Results-Oriented Government: GPRA
Has Established a Solid Foundation for Achieving Greater
Results (GAO-04-38) — provides a comprehensive
look at the evolution of GPRA and its affect on agency
and program management. It describes a government that
is more focused on outcomes and aligned to outcome measures
because of the statutory requirements of GPRA.
As a whole, the federal government has come a long
way. But the reality is that the full potential of GPRA
has not yet been reached. Some of the management challenges
exposed by GPRA back in 1993 are still holding back
some programs and agencies. Those barriers, and the
expected $500 billion budget deficit facing our government
for Fiscal Year 2005, reinforce the need for increased
Congressional attention to the way the federal government
does business. Congressional oversight —Congressional
engagement — is needed.
Taxpayers are demanding accountability, and no doubt,
that demand is justified! They want to see results for
their tax dollars and as their representatives in this
room, it’s up to you to make sure they see those
results.
Hurdles to Fulfilling GPRA’s Promise
Some of the challenges rampant in the early days
of GPRA still linger in some federal government programs
and agencies today. They include:
• Poor Outcome Measures:
GPRA has lacked a focus on outcome-oriented measures
— measures that asked what results were achieved
instead of what work was done for those results. Without
outcome measures, we might know that programs’
wheels are definitely spinning, but can’t tell
if the car is going anywhere… let alone in the
right direction.
• Too Many Measures: With
an absence of outcome-oriented performance measures,
the emphasis has been placed entirely on the work
that is done — the processes. Agencies often
develop a litany of activity-oriented performance
measures that focused on the work being done by front-line
employees and not the mission-aligned results generated
by the program. Those measures are often then used
in decisions on funding, resource allocation and goal
attainment in the absence of true outcome measures.
• No Coordination or Common Measures
among Similar Programs: Across our government,
we often have several programs performing similar
activities, addressing similar issues, and thus facing
similar challenges. There has been a severe lack of
coordination and an absence of “common”
performance measures, leaving programs with similar
missions and customer bases alone in their attempts
to improve performance. Instead of sharing their innovations,
they idle with their frustrations. GPRA failed to
lay a foundation for coordination of measures.
• Limited Linkage to Budget: The
lack of outcome-oriented measures has made it difficult
for budget requests to be integrated with performance
data, despite that integration being one of the original
aims of GPRA. Essentially useless measures can’t
be used to make management decisions, and therefore,
can’t be reflected in the budget. With the Program
Assessment Rating Tool and the President’s Management
Agenda, we have seen a stronger link between budget
and performance because of the demand that performance
measures be outcome-oriented.
• Limited Linkage to Personnel Systems:
GPRA did not create a strong link between
organizational mission and the individual work of
employees and managers. Rarely could we see the connection
between the goals of a member of the Senior Executive
Service and the goals of an individual employee because
most employees lacked strategic-level goals and measures
communicated down throughout the organization. Thus
the full impact of activities and expenditures on
mission-aligned program results often can not be accurately
measured.
• Limited Linkage to Contracts/Grants:
Numerous agencies and departments rely on contracts
and grants for their business purposes. The idea of
a “performance-based grant” or “performance-based
contract” is not new, however GPRA provided
little guidance to see the importance of those crucial
elements. Without contracts and grants that are truly
performance-based, mission-aligned accountability
ends just beyond an agency’s front door.
The President’s Management Agenda: A Shot in
the Arm
Attention paid to GPRA has risen tremendously since
the debut of the President’s Management Agenda,
or “PMA,” in 2001. Administered by the
Office of Management and Budget, the PMA has sought
to overhaul the way the federal government is managed
by focusing innovation on five key areas of administration:
budget/performance integration, improved financial
management, strategic management of human capital,
competitive sourcing, and citizen-centered e-government.
The budget/performance integration initiative has
resulted in a significant change in the way program
and agency budgets are written and submitted to the
White House and to Congress. At the center of the
Administration’s approach to “performance
budgeting” is the Program Assessment Rating
Tool (PART). The PART is a methodological, standardized
and evidence-based evaluation - offering hard data
on whether federal programs are doing what taxpayers
are paying for them to do and assessing whether they
are being managed properly.
It investigates the most important aspects of performance…
from relevance to results. By focusing on these various
characteristics, managers can paint an in-depth picture
of just what exactly they are achieving, or if they
are achieving anything at all! The results are presented
by OMB as four different percentages (one for each
section of the PART) and as a categorical assessment
("Effective," "Moderately Effective,"
"Adequate," "Ineffective" or "Results
Not Demonstrated").
Largely attributable to the clear commitment from
OMB and the anticipated impact on the budget, many
federal managers have taken note of the PART and made
substantial efforts to improve their use of performance
management. One of the most vivid indicators of the
growth in government-wide buy-in to the PART process
is the side-by-side analysis of the categorical ratings
assigned by OMB to each program between FY 2004 and
FY 2005.
Examiners have only five options: “Effective,”
“Moderately Effective,” “Adequate,”
“Ineffective,” and “Results Not
Demonstrated.” Between FY 2004 and FY 2005,
the following changes were seen:
• The percentage of programs rated as “Effective”
increased from 6 percent to 11.28 percent.
• The percentage of programs rated as “Moderately
Effective” increased from 24 percent to 26.32
percent.
• The percentage of programs rated as “Adequate”
increased from 14.5 percent to 20.55 percent.
• The percentage of programs rated as “Inadequate”
decreased from just 5.1 percent to 4.76 percent.
• And the percentage of programs rated as “Results
Not Demonstrated” decreased from 50.4 percent
to 37.09 percent.
The chief difference between the FY04 and FY05 PART
evaluations is an added emphasis on the use of performance
measures in the planning and management sections.
OMB’s call for outcome-oriented performance
measures and efficiency measures illustrate a commitment
to improving performance while using cost-effective
procedures. By including a section on performance
measures, OMB is sending the message that performance
measures, as well as goals, are essential in the planning
process for any program in government. OMB’s
decision to move questions about budget-performance
integration from the Management section to the Strategic
Planning section conveyed a message that performance
measures need be developed in conjunction with our
strategic goals, and be a driving force behind our
resource allocation and tracking of output production.
The focus on performance measures also elevates the
discussion on programs that are rated as “Results
Not Demonstrated”. As demonstrated by the FY05
PART results, programs that have overall high scores
can still receive a “Results Not Demonstrated”
if there is an absence of long-term performance measures.
The absence of long-term measures illustrate that
programs cannot effectively plan and allocate resources
for continuous goal improvement and performance improvement
and are not in line with the overall strategic plan
of the program.
Some managers complain that PART is merely another
mandate that has been applied on top of the already
existing GPRA performance management requirements
and the initiatives contained in the President’s
Management Agenda. This interpretation is misinformed
and fails to recognize the entwined relationship between
GPRA, the PMA and the PART.
GPRA is the statutory requirement that agencies plan,
measure, manage and budget for results. PMA is the
Bush Administration’s commitment to implementing
the PMA through the “Budget-Performance”
integration goal. Finally, the PART is best seen as
a “quality control” assessment tool to
evaluate implementation of GPRA on a program-specific
basis and fulfill the promise of the PMA.
For years, GPRA generated little more than voluminous
documents—strategic plans, performance measurements,
performance reports, etc. Indeed, over 16,000 pages
of GPRA performance planning documents were generated
in FY 2002. With the PART process, programs are paring
down their performance measures to the vital few —
three to five measures per program in most cases.
Moreover, the measures are being reviewed and improved
through the OMB/agency dialogue process. Ideally,
Congress will engage in the PART process and add its
views on how GPRA performance measures can be improved.
Next Steps for Congressional Engagement
Legislating management reform is the most important
step Congress can take right now to ensure the momentum
started by GPRA and accelerated by the President’s
Management Agenda.
• Consult with Agencies and Programs
on their Strategic Plans: The backbone of
GPRA is its requirement of outcome-oriented performance
measures that tie into long-term strategic plans to
guide agency and program activities. By consulting
with agency staff on the creation of these strategic
plans, Congress can ensure those plans include efficient
and useful performance measures that can later be
used by Congress to gauge results and to better inform
appropriations and budgetary decisions.
Being a part of the effort to identify the most
useful measures will dramatically improve Congress’
ability to hold program managers and agency officials
accountable for their performance and results. Those
measures should then be codified in statute or committee
reporting by Congress to mandate adherence.
• Institutionalize the Program Assessment
Rating Tool and its Successors: Introduced
just two years ago by the White House Office of Management
and Budget, the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)
has proven its immense potential for improving the
results of federal programs. The PART is a systematic,
methodological and evidence-based evaluation system
that assesses program results and program management.
While the PART was borne of a Bush Administration
initiative, it need not bear the burden of political
affiliation with one particular administration. Tools
like the PART can be helpful in wading through data
to find a vital few outcome-oriented measures of program
and activity performance.
In February, the Program Assessment and Results
Act was introduced by the chairman of this subcommittee
in order to codify the progress made by the Executive
Branch and ensure its momentum continues through the
November elections. The Act would require the Office
of Management and Budget to conduct a complete evaluation
of each program at least once every five years and
more frequently as necessary. Such legislation mandates
program assessment, and not merely the Program Assessment
Rating Tool. This is an appropriate tact to take in
that it allows future directors of the Office of Management
and Budget to decide for themselves what evaluation
system is best, while fulfilling the Congressional
requirement for performance review.
• Create a Congressional Office of Program
Performance: Congress can help improve the
integrity of OMB program reviews by creating a Congressional
Office of Program Performance (COPP) that would “peer-review”
the OMB ratings. In addition, the COPP would conduct
its own program performance reviews based on member
and committee requests. The COPP would help Congress
sort through the reams of performance plans, reports
and budget justifications that pour into Hill offices
during the budget process.
By peer-reviewing OMB’s ratings and conducting
some of its own reviews, the COPP can help provide
a much-needed balance to the Administration’s
assessment of a program. In doing so, a healthy “Good
Cop/Bad Cop” dynamic would be created for programs
where differing political views drive differing conclusions
regarding program effectiveness. While politics might
drive some elements of the assessment on a program,
having an assessment capacity in both branches will
make these political differences more transparent
and provide opportunity for an informed and healthy
debate on program effectiveness.
To avoid the creation of a new Congressional bureaucracy,
the COPP would be staffed jointly by the General Accounting
Office (providing program performance information)
and the Congressional Budget Office (providing program
cost and budget information.) A joint House/Senate
committee composed of members from the appropriations,
budget and oversight committees would be created to
select which programs would be reviewed each year—with
each chamber and political party having an opportunity
to select programs for review.
Should you like to discuss any of our recommendations
further, I and the director of The Performance Institute’s
Center for Government Performance, Jeffrey Bergin,
stand ready to help you and your staff. We look forward
to supporting the committee’s efforts to improve
the way the federal government is managed.
Thank you.
The Performance Institute is a private think tank
seeking to improve government performance through
the principles of competition, accountability, performance
and transparency. The Institute serves as the nation's
leading authority and repository on performance-based
management practices for government. Its mission
is to identify, study and disseminate the leading
management innovations pioneered by "best-in-class"
organizations.
Carl DeMaio is President and Founder of the Performance
Institute. He is a nationally-recognized expert
in government reform and performance-based management.
Contact:
Jeffrey Bergin
Director, Center for Government Performance
The Performance Institute
1515 N. Courthouse Road, Suite 600
Arlington, VA 22201
703-894-0481
fax: 703-894-0482
e-mail: [email protected]
|
