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C O M M E N T A R Y

By Carl D. DeMaio

The President's '04 budget proposal was truly historic and represents a significant step towards performance-based budgeting in the federal government. In his budget proposal, the President released detailed evaluations of the results of 20 percent of all federal programs conducted by the Office of Management and Budget using the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). With great disappointment, we learned more than half of the 234 programs evaluated could not show results for the taxpayer's money.

In using the PART, the budget offered Americans a remarkably frank and transparent assessment of the performance of important federal programs. It also sent a message to federal managers that performance matters!

But is that message being heard? More importantly, is it changing behavior?

Since the budget was released six weeks ago, I have visited numerous agencies to assess their views on the use of performance information in the '04 budget, as well as their reactions to the PART tool itself. In many agencies, the message has been heard and behavior is changing. Yet, in some agencies, the entrenched cynics are still moaning (as they have for years) that the performance revolution-represented best in the Government Performance and Results Act-is a fad that will soon pass.

Here's what the naysayers had to say, and my response:

"The PART is a Faulty Tool"
For years, naysayers complained that GPRA was too vague-now they complain that PART is too rigid. While no assessment tool can be perfect, the PART takes a structured, methodological, systematic and evidence-based approach to reviewing the performance of individual programs. By breaking the PART into four elements (relevancy, planning, management and results), the tool examines the four distinct phases of performance management. Most importantly, if an agency disagrees with its score or feels political bias was a factor, the PART provides a transparent way to respond by marshalling evidence to turn a low score into a higher one.

"It Won't Impact the Budget"
The PART already has impacted the budget. While the '04 budget provided an average 4 percent increase in federal spending overall, programs deemed "effective" were rewarded with an average funding increase of 6 percent, while those programs that did not show results received an average funding increase of less than 1 percent. Most importantly, the budget allocated substantial increases to some programs that failed-provided they adopt better performance measures and demonstrate progress next year.

"The PART Duplicates GPRA and PMA"
The PART actually relies on the performance measures developed under GPRA-in fact, the PART provides an important "quality control" tool for evaluating the more than 16,000 pages of GPRA performance plans published each year. If agency GPRA measures don't score high on the PART, they should improve their GPRA measures. Finally, the PART addresses on a program-specific level the very intent of all five of the goals in the President's Management Agenda.

"This too Shall Pass"
In preparing the FY05 budget, OMB is planning to re-score the 234 programs rated for the FY04 budget, in addition to rating a new group of 234. That means 40 percent of all programs undergo a PART analysis next year. This is absolutely essential if OMB is to send a clear message to federal programs that you can run, but not hide. By the time the FY08 budget is released, every program will have been officially evaluated. Most importantly, by re-scoring programs annually the pressure for continual improvement will be greater.

So what should managers be doing about PART?

Instead of dismissing the exercise as meaningless or political, the 20 percent of programs examined during this year should take a long and hard look at the PART assessments and identify ways to improve. These managers have a chance for a new assessment in just 11 months, leaving plenty of time to set meaningful, measurable performance goals and address long-standing management challenges.

For programs not yet scored, it is a ripe time to do a self-assessment. Even if a program is not in the next batch of 20 percent of programs, the PART exercise is a valuable learning tool for diagnosis management deficiencies and dialoguing internally and externally with stakeholders on program results. Most importantly, an unofficial self-test (if soberly administered) could prove to be an important wake-up call and provide time for improvements.

Finally, managers should begin discussions with OMB early, and enlist the help of their Inspector General, the General Accounting Office, and other relevant stakeholders. Performance management in government-built on reliable and useful results-oriented performance measures-can be done with time and effort. What remains to be seen is whether federal managers will play their PART to get the job done.

Carl D. DeMaio is President of the Performance Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank that promotes performance management in government.

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