Hill demands results from feds
House members last week said they intend to keep pressuring agencies and Congress to use program performance measurements to determine whether agencies are accomplishing their missions.
House members last week said they intend to keep pressuring agencies and
Congress to use program performance measurements to determine whether agencies
are accomplishing their missions.
Agencies turned in their first performance reports last year under the
Government Performance and Results Act to varying levels of praise and condemnation.
GPRA's goal is to demonstrate how program performance relates to agency
budgets.
Because Congress passed GPRA eight years ago, many members of Congress
and Results Act experts say that agencies should be doing a better job of
identifying results, even though agencies were required to submit performance
reports only last year.
"I think that Congress should step it up another level," said House
Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-Texas), testifying before the House Government
Reform Committee's Government Management, Information and Technology Subcommittee.
"While I don't think we should ever be a discouraging voice out there, I
think while we continue to be encouraging, we should be more demanding."
Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Calif.), chairman of the subcommittee, suggested
holding joint meetings of the House and Senate authorization and appropriations
committees to hear from department and agency heads. "I think that we've
got to get a dialogue of principals, not just a dialogue of staff," he said.
The biggest challenge for agencies has been to set goals based on results
that the agency wants to achieve instead of meas-uring other outputs, such
as the number of reports or citations issued.
"We are still learning what the right measurements are," said Joshua
Gotbaum, executive associate director, controller and acting deputy director
for management at the Office of Management and Budget.
OMB collects agencies' performance reports and provides guidance to
agencies on how to develop them. OMB and agency officials said that developing
the reports is a trial-and-error process, and that means mistakes will be
made, Gotbaum said.
Some agencies, such as the Transportation Department and the Veterans
Health Administration, have done well when linking mission, budget and results,
said J. Christopher Mihm, associate director of the General Accounting Office's
General Government Division.
Others, such as the State Department, have had trouble distinguishing
between outputs, such as reports on the number of employees in security
training, and outcomes, such as what programs resulted in better security,
Mihm said.
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