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W H I T E P A P E R

Forum Focuses on Role of Performance Information in Congressional Budget Process

Agencies Must Provide Useful Performance Information to Appropriators for PART to Impact Budget Decisions

By Vincent Badolato
Director of Research

On Friday, June 13, The Performance Institute and a coalition of good-government groups sponsored the "Executive-Legislative Budget Summit on Program Performance and the FY04 Budget Process" in Room 2247 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The purpose of the forum was to increase Congressional awareness of the ongoing development of the Office of Management and Budget's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), and to discuss how it can be used to enhance the government's focus on performance in the budget process and to expand the dialogue between the two branches.

A standing-room-only crowd of primarily executive branch employees was on hand to hear from a wide array of legislative and executive officials and experts on how the results of the first round of the PART affected federal programs; how the PART scores can help inform Congressional appropriations decisions; and how the PART might affect federal programs and congressional decision making in the future.

Below is a synopsis of the program and key points made during each session:

• Overview of the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) and the President's Management Agenda (PMA)
  Carl DeMaio, President, The Performance Institute
  
  The Summit was opened up with a brief presentation by Carl DeMaio on what the first round of the PART has demonstrated and the complexities of measuring the performance of federal programs (click here to download a copy of this presentation). The key points made during this session were:
  • The PART is a systematic and evidence-based tool for assessing program management and performance results. No assessment tool will ever be perfect, but the PART is methodologically sound and can serve a key role in guiding the analysis of program performance.
  • The PART is consistent with the PMA goal for budget-performance integration, but addresses the other four goals as well. In doing so, it is a comprehensive view of PMA progress on a program level.
  • The PART is consistent with the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) and can act as a "quality control" mechanism for making improvements in GPRA goals, measures and management systems.

• PART Results: Views from the Government Reform Committees
  Mike Hettinger, Majority Staff Director, House Subcommittee on Government Efficiency and Financial Management
  Mason Allinger, Professional Staff Member, House Committee on Government Reform
  John Salamone, Majority Staff Director, Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Workforce, and the District of Columbia
  
  Representatives of the Congressional committees of jurisdiction on government reform and oversight provided views of federal management reform issues. The panelists spoke positively of what the PART represents, but did say that the congressional budget and appropriations process has yet to find an appropriate way of utilizing the information provided in PART scores appropriately. Specific points included:
  • Their committees plan to move forward with the PART and attempt to utilize the PART scores to further enhance the effectiveness of the budgetary and appropriations process.
  • Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has asked GAO to review the use of the PART and will hold a hearing on this topic in the near future.
  • House Government Reform Committee will be holding a 10-Year Anniversary of GPRA hearing in August to examine ways GPRA can be strengthened.
  • Panelists expressed interest in drafting legislation to make the PART a statute-driven tool specifically linked to GPRA.

• PART Results: A View from the Office of Management and Budget
  Marcus Peacock, Associate Director for Natural Resource Programs and Budget-Performance Initiative "Owner," Office of Management and Budget

  Marcus Peacock, OMB's performance budgeting lead official, presented on the evolution of performance budgeting in the federal government, with particular emphasis on the results generated by GPRA. Mr. Peacock has seen positive results from the first round of the PART process and is confident that as the PART scoring continues, the information generated by the process will be instrumental for making budgetary decisions in the future. Among key issues addressed:

  • The PART was used to not only impact funding decisions, but also propose legislative fixes for programs needing statutory changes to improve performance.
• The PART is not the sole determinative means for evaluating the performance of federal programs. The PART is not a method for determining the relevance of a program, rather it is a way of ascertaining the relevance of a program within the mission of the agency or department. Used this way, the PART can ensure that the agency or department is utilizing its funding in the most efficient way.
• The PART will score another 20% of programs for the '05 budget and will also re-score the 20 percent of programs evaluated in '04.

• The PART's Impact on the Congressional Budget and Appropriations Process
  Rich Meade, Majority Chief of Staff, House Committee on the Budget
  Michael Stephens, Minority Senior Staff Member, House Committee on Appropriations

  The House Budget Committee and House Appropriations Committee represent the two key committees of jurisdiction reviewing agency funding requests. This panel focused on how agencies could anticipate the use of the PART in budget decisions and improve performance information provided to Congress for that purpose. Specific points covered:

• The Committee on the Budget is focusing their strongest efforts on attempting to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government and the PART is an effective tool to evaluate where these might exist.
• While the PART has yet to play a significant role in Congressional budgetary decisions, the chairmen of both the House Committee on the Budget and the Committee on Appropriations, Rep. Jim Nussle and Rep. Bill Young, are actively working together to incorporate performance evaluations more heavily in appropriation and authentication decisions.
• The House Appropriations Committee staffer reported that the PART has not yet played a role in appropriations decisions. Mr. Stephens attributed this to the lack of communication and shared traditional cultures between the executive and legislative branches.
• It is a revealing truth that this lack of communication can result in new performance evaluation tools, like the PART, being overlooked when making appropriations decisions. Appropriations appreciates evaluation tools, but not all are helpful. The jury is still out on the PART. If it can provide useful information to appropriators on program spending and results-particularly incorporating historic levels and changes-then it can be helpful.
• As many presidential management initiatives have come and gone in the past, Congress has therefore relied on more traditional tools to help make decisions. The notion that the PART will "go away" as other initiatives have done needs to be overcome and federal agency and department program managers, along with OMB examiners, must work to view appropriators as their "customers" and integrate their budget justifications with those used by the appropriators.

• The PART's Impact on Agency Budget Justifications
  Ted David, Chief Financial Officer, National Weather Service
  Nina Hatfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, Budget and Finance, Department of the Interior
  Lisa Korsak, Research Associate, Mercatus Center
  Carl DeMaio, President, The Performance Institute
  Barry White, Director of Government Performance Projects, Council for Excellence in Government

  The final panel represented the impact the PART has on agency budget justifications. This session built on the points made throughout the Summit to provide agencies with some helpful guidance on how to effectively use PART to manage and justify budgets. Key points made include:

  • Nina Hatfield and Ted David agreed that even though the PART has yet to affect funding decisions, the scores from the evaluations are still instrumental in identifying and improving poor performing programs within agencies. Use of the PART can help to manage the agency and its programs better. That is a key benefit of the process that agencies should not overlook. This can be attained regardless of the use by Congress for budget allocations.
  • The PART has also led to increased communication between the program managers and their OMB examiners, something that has been severely lacking in the past.
  • Carl DeMaio and Barry White made the case that the information provided by the PART and GPRA evaluations are being used by the congressional appropriators, only not in the format that the PART is used by OMB. Both stressed that the appropriations process is steeped in tradition and culture change is key to making successful use of the evaluations. They also stated that open lines of communication between the executive and legislative branches are absolutely essential to ensure that program performance is used to drive funding decisions. Without this communication and education, the cycle of inadequately justified budgetary decisions will continue to hamper government performance.
  • Carl DeMaio noted that the Performance Coalition would work with all Congressional committees more pro-actively in the coming months to assist them in using the PART and other PMA-related tools.

Forum on Performance Budgeting using the PART:
An Interactive Simulation! (June 25-27 and August 26-28)
To assist agency program managers in improving their PART evaluations and communicating their budget justifications to Congress, The Performance Institute is sponsoring two PART and performance budgeting summits in July and August 2003. Both of these summits will feature opening comments from OMB on how the first round of the PART has affected presidential budget requests and how the PART will be further integrated in the next round. Participants will then be walked through the PART process and have their program budget evaluations reviewed by experts. Finally, participants will have the opportunity to undertake a mock congressional review and hearing to learn how to communicate their budget justifications to appropriators. For more information or to receive an agenda for these summits, contact Vincent Badolato at [email protected].

Supplemental Materials

NEWS RELEASE FROM CHAIRMAN TOM DAVIS, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM: June 13, 2003
Davis Statement on Program Performance Ratings, Performance Institute Summit
Washington, DC - House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) today praised the Performance Institute for helping to shine a light on a critical initiative by the Bush Administration to hold agencies accountable for accomplishing their missions. | Click Here to Read Chairman Davis' Statement

PERFORMANCE INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE: June 13, 2003
Congressional and Executive Branches Discuss Commitment to Performance Standards in FY04 Budget
WASHINGTON - Integrating performance data generated by a new Office of Management and Budget evaluation tool into the Congressional appropriations process was the focus of a morning-long summit hosted today on Capitol Hill. | Click Here to Read the News Release

GOVEXEC.COM STORY: June 13, 2003
OMB Ratings Have Little Impact on Hill Budget Decisions
Lawmakers make funding decisions based on traditional budget justification documents, and pay little attention to the Office of Management and Budget's recent evaluations of federal programs, a House Appropriations Committee aide said Friday. | Click Here to Read the GovExec.com Story

PERFORMANCE INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE: May 6, 2003
Loose Ends Tied with Release of FY05 PART Guidance
The Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) guidance and worksheets released this week by the Office of Management and Budget for use with the FY05 Budget represent an improved model of the same successful vehicle used during the FY 04 Budget. "The revised PART guidance from OMB is a refinement, but represents no major change from the fundamental design of the tool," PI President Carl DeMaio said today. | Read the News Release

FEDERAL TIMES OP-ED PIECE: April 14, 2003
Are You Doing Your PART for Performance?
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. | Read the Op-Ed Piece