More agencies get high marks on latest PMA scorecard

Agencies demonstrated progress in the way they handle finances and deliver e-government services from October through December, the Office of Management and Budget said today when it released the President’s Management Agenda scorecard for the first quarter of fiscal 2009.

Four agencies improved their scores since fourth quarter 2008 to the highest rating for e-government management, the category with the most number of agencies showing progress, OMB said. The agencies that merited the highest success -- or green rating -- are the Interior, Energy and State departments and NASA, according to the scorecard.

Some of the same agencies raised their ratings in other areas on the scorecard. The Interior, State and Transportation departments earned green ratings on the financial performance evaluations, increasing the number of successful agencies to 16 out of the 26 rated, OMB said.

OMB uses the PMA scorecard to illustrate agencies’ quarterly progress in realizing results in financial performance, human capital, e-government, performance improvement and commercial services management. The agency uses a color rating: green for success, yellow for acceptable but needs work and red for unacceptable.

The State Department joined the Environmental Protection Agency, Social Security Administration and Labor Department as the only agencies to achieve the green rating in all management categories, according to the scorecard.

“The scorecard indicates that the government has made significant improvements in the way they function in the last seven years,” Clay Johnson, OMB’s deputy director for management, said.

The General Services Administration was the only agency that slipped in one of its management ratings, declining to yellow, meaning it needs work, in financial performance. Some agencies continued to receive unacceptable ratings in certain categories. The Defense, Veterans Affairs and Agriculture departments again got the lowest -- or red -- rating for financial performance and e-government services performance, according to the findings.