New website will track federal agencies' performance

A senior administration official told senators at a hearing May 10 that the government will launch an early version of a new website, Performance.gov, in the next few weeks to publicly track the performance of federal agency programs.

Jeffrey Zients, the chief performance officer and the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, described the planned site to the panel, and also described other initiatives the administration has undertaken to improve the government’s performance.

The hearing focused on the implementation of the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010, which calls for the creation of the Performance.gov site, and was held jointly by two subcommittees of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The GPRA Modernization Act was signed into law in January and updates the original GPRA of 1993. The new law requires all agencies to designate a chief operating officer and a performance improvement officer to oversee efforts to strengthen management and administrative functions at the agency and across the government.

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It also requires agencies to set measurable performance goals, enhance coordination to avoid overlapping government programs, and post regular performance updates on a single, public website – Performance.gov – every quarter.

Some of the administration's other initiatives include reviewing more than 100 troubled federal IT projects as part of IT management reform, getting rid of unnecessary civilian properties,  and reducing improper payments.

Zients also said he expects a standard version of Performance.gov to be up and running in the near future. However, he noted that recent budget cuts to the General Service Administration’s E-Government Fund will have an impact on the site’s eventual functionality.

“We plan to expand and improve the public site to meet the law’s expectations before the October 2012 timeframe, although the exact timing and level of sophistication for those improvements will depend upon future funding levels,” he said in his testimony.

In addition, OMB has begun the process of identifying high priority goals that will benefit from cross-agency coordination and will work with Congress on developing these goals further, according to Zients. The first set of cross-agency goals are expected to be included in the fiscal 2013 budget.

Zients and OMB Director Jacob Lew sent a memo to agency heads in April outlining the initial steps they must take to implement the new law.