Labor goes 5-for-5 on PMA

It took exactly three years for one agency to reach nirvana on the President’s Management Agenda.The Labor Department became the first agency to earn green scores in all five categories by improving its competitive-sourcing grade on the fiscal 2005 midyear , which the Office of Management and Budget released today. The administration issued the first report card in June 2002.“The Department of Labor is the leader, the best, per the PMA scorecard,” said OMB Deputy Director for Management Clay Johnson. “They are the first and only department … to have installed all the management disciplines and habits which the president established as priorities back in 2001.”Each quarter, the administration gives agencies green, yellow or red scores for their efforts to meet the goals of the five agenda items. Green means an agency has met all the standards for success, yellow means it has met some but not all and red means there are serious problems. OMB grades each agency on its overall status and on its progress toward implementing the agenda items. Overall, the scorecard progress continues to be mixed, with most agencies still earning a yellow in most categories and the number of green scores dropping to 33 from 41 over the last three months.In the E-Government category, for instance, two agencies—the Office of Personnel Management and the Social Security Administration—dropped from green to yellow. On the other hand, two other agencies—the Department of Housing and Urban Development and OMB—moved up to yellow from red.Overall in E-Government, agencies earned seven green, 13 yellow and six red scores.Agencies earned the most green scores, 11, in the Human Capital category and are struggling the most with improving their financial performance, receiving 17 red marks.“The president’s emphasis on improving management is working,” Johnson said. “It is clearly motivating agencies to implement the necessary disciplines to get more for taxpayer dollars.”