Defining Key Roles, Reducing Confusion

Yesterday I met a friend for lunch who was just recruited to work in the Obama White House.  That person says that it is a high energy, chaotic atmosphere with questions ranging from “how do we change this policy?” to “where do I get a stapler?”

 

But beyond that, there is a swirl of activity around both positions and policy that still need to be nailed down so agencies can begin delivering on behalf of the White House’s agenda.

 

Chief Technology Officer.  The position of Chief Technology Officer, which was a campaign promise, is still open.  One of the questions surrounding the job is:  what should the job entail?  Techies created a website to opine on what issues Obama’s newly-minted Chief Technology Officer should take on.   The Congressional Research Service issued a report describing the range of potential duties the office-holder might have and where in the White House the position might be located:  in the Office of Management and Budget?  In the Office of Science and Technology Policy?  In charge of ensuring progress on large federal technology projects?  In charge of cutting-edge ideas?  Inwardly focused on government?  Outwardly focused on the economy?  It seems that today at least part of this will be defined by today’s announcement that Vivek Kundra will be the OMB administrator of e-government and technology. 

 

Chief Performance Officer.  But what about the newly-opened position of Chief Performance Officer, also a campaign commitment?  When Nancy Killefer was named to that position, it was to be a dual-hatted role:  both Chief Performance Officer and Deputy Director for Management at OMB.  In that role, the person would have multiple responsibilities:  stewardship of the government’s mission support systems (like acquisition, technology, and financial management); enforcer of about 300 governmentwide management laws; chair of multiple governmentwide councils; new chair of the economic stimulus oversight board. . . and these are mostly statutorily required activities.  They don’t include the elements envisioned by Obama:  working with agencies to set performance targets and track them, working collaboratively across agency boundaries around outcomes, running SWAT teams to fix poor performing programs.  It was unclear whether this person would also be responsible for the promised “line by line review” of the government, as well.  When Killefer stepped down, the question is whether these roles will still be combined in future appointments.

 

Defining the boundaries around policy issues is also becoming a challenge.  Agencies will be asked for quick turnaround input on important issues but will likely face what looks like a confusing array of White House requests for input and support.

 

Citizen Engagement.  For example, the directive to create an Open Government directive – to be led by the Chief Technology Officer – has a 120-day completion deadline.  (I understand it is being led by Beth Noveck, at least until the CTO is named.) In part, the directive asks for a plan to increase citizen participation in government.  Separately, Katie Stanton has been named the director of citizen participation, but she doesn’t start her job until next month.  Separately, an office has been created in the White House to handle social innovation (and civic engagement?), tentatively to be led by Sonal Shah, Separately, another presidential directive on regulatory review was signed on January 30^th directing, in part, the development of a plan to increase citizen participation in the regulatory development process within 100 days (for some reason, this memo isn’t on the White House website).  Separately, the White House Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs, headed by Valerie Jarrett, may want to have some say in how the public is engaged, as well.

 

Hopefully, the various White House offices are presenting a common face to the agencies by funneling their requests for information, help, and coordination through Chris Lu, the secretary of the cabinet. At least his office could begin to coordinate these efforts.  But I haven’t heard if that’s happening yet.

Advice to Chief Performance Officer

In both his campaign and in his inaugural address, President Barack Obama placed an emphasis on government performance and results. One commentator said that Obama will likely govern less through ideology and more through the pragmatic use of fact-based decision processes.

In an initial step, he said he would appoint the government’s first “chief performance officer” who would report directly to him. He named Nancy Killefer to this role in early January. Killefer’s background is well-suited to the role. She served as an assistant secretary for management in the Clinton Administration and was most recently in charge of McKinsey Consulting’s federal initiatives. She was also dual-hatted with the job of deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This means she’ll have the institutional leverage of OMB and be a Senate-confirmed appointee, not just a White House staffer.

Since the role is a new one, she’ll have plenty of opportunity to shape its direction.

A new report by Shelley Metzenbaum to the IBM Center for The Business of Government offers a framework for shaping the role of the chief performance officer. In Performance Management Recommendations for the New Administration, Dr. Metzenbaum examines the evolution of the development and use of performance goals and measures over the past two presidential administrations and offers insights and recommendations to the incoming Obama administration. These insights and recommendations are based on extensive interviews with key stakeholders in agencies, Congress, OMB, and outside interest groups, as well as her own experience as a federal executive.

• Dr. Metzenbaum’s interviews revealed that even after 16 years of efforts, there still is no comprehensive way for the public or Congress to see how the federal government is performing and what agency goals and program targets are..

She concludes that despite reams of performance material produced in response to federal requirements, “it is still remarkably difficult to find meaningful government performance information . . . because too little attention has been paid to communicating targets and trends and too much to communicating the ‘percentage of targets met’ as the primary indicator of overall performance.”

Based on the findings from her interviews and a premise that performance information should be primarily used to improve performance, not just create accountability, Dr. Metzenbaum created a set of fairly discrete recommendations for the new administration. She targeted her recommendations to the key actors on performance management in the executive branch:

The President should:

• Clearly identify presidential and cabinet priority targets, assign responsibility for them, and meet at least quarterly with cabinet members to assess progress.
• Create a Chief Performance Officer and a White House performance unit.
• Run goal-focused, data-driven meetings, similar to those used in “performance-stats” run by states and localities.

The Office of Management and Budget should:

• Direct agencies and programs to set targets and the direction of performance trends for key indicators.
• Continue, but revise the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). (note: the new Obama White House website retains the PART rating reports from the Bush Administration).
• Re-design the existing federal performance portal to make it easier to find performance trends, targets, and other related information.
• Facilitate cross-agency learning about performance improvement and analysis.

Cabinet secretaries and agency heads should:

• Review the performance trends and existing targets and revise to reflect the new Administration’s priorities.
• Run their own goal-focused, data-driven meetings.
• Create agency web-based performance portals and link them to their agency’s home pages.

The Performance Improvement Council – comprised largely of career agency officials — should lead a process to revise the PART so as to shift the emphasis from program rating to performance improvement.

Dr. Metzenbaum observes that two simple tools – goals and measurement – are among the most powerful mechanisms available to a President to influence the vast scope of federal agencies and programs. However, they are useless unless used. Her recommendations should provide a roadmap to the new Administration and the new chief performance office on how to leverage the existing plentiful supply of goals and performance information in new ways that get results Americans care about.

Transparency and Open Government: Congress-Style

 The 647-page proposed economic stimulus bill (H.R. 1) not only contains the spending details for the $825 billion measure, it also includes a series of transparency and accountability provisions.  Some of these reinforce the Obama transparency directive; others may make it more difficult to implement.  For example, the increased funding for inspectors general  (which oftentimes tend to focus on enforcing existing procedures and hierarchy, even if antiquated) could run counter to Obama’s call for more cross-agency and cross-sector collaboration.  Strong leadership across the Inspector General (IG) community could overcome this potential impediment, however.   Here are some highlights:

•  Designated IG offices get increased appropriations of nearly $250 million.  For example, the Agriculture IG gets an additional $22.5 million.  The Government Accountability Office receives an additional $25 million.  Now what would they audit?  Not just waste.  Here are some specific provisions they’ll have to ensure compliance with:

• None of the monies can be “used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool.”  (these restrictions are examples of perceived past egregious behaviors; the bill, however, forgot to ban the construction of pyramids — an particularly spectacular economic development project that received a Golden Fleece Award in its time).

• All iron and steel in stimulus projects has to be made in the USA.

• All laborers and mechanics employed by contractors on projects funded by the economic stimulus bill have to be paid “prevailing wages.” (also known as Davis-Bacon Act wages).

• All entities receiving stimulus bill funding have to participate in the E-verify program (so no illegal immigrants receive any funding).

• Federal agencies have to publish a plan for how they will spend their monies on a new website:  recovery.gov (is this the first time a web domain address has been legislated?)

• Each contract or grant issued using funds from the stimulus bill has to be posted on the internet and linked to recovery.gov.

• Contracts, “to the maximum extent possible,” are to be fixed-price contracts, using competitive procedures.

 

To oversee these requirements, a Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board (RAAT-B? what an acronym!) will be established to coordinate oversight of federal spending under the stimulus bill “to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.” There will be 7 members appointed by the president and it will be chaired by the Chief Performance Officer and provided a $14 million budget.  The board will issue both “flash reports” and quarterly reports, and annual reports.  It also runs the recovery.gov website.

 

The bill also establishes a 5-member independent advisory panel to advise the RAAT-B.  It would provide advice on how the Board can prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

A Departing Gift

As Obama names Nancy Killefer the incoming deputy director for management at the Office of Management and budget, the outgoing deputy director, Clay Johnson, held a briefing where he tied a bow around the initiatives he led while in that role.

 

He provided copies of the President’s Management Scorecard – before –February 2002 — and after –December 2008 – showing a shift from “red” scores to a sea of “green.”

 

In his briefing, he also announced the first-ever performance report for the federal government that provides “a candid two-page summary of Agencies’ performance.” From this report, the public will also be able to access in one place Agency planning, performance, budget, financial, and high-risk plans and reports.  Some government-wide performance trends include:

 

Improved performance results. 57 percent of 2008 program measures improved performance results over the prior year, compared to 45 percent in 2007.

 

Met performance goals. 63 percent of program performance goals met their targets in 2008, compared to 74 percent in 2007.

 

“Instead of just producing 300-400 page reports, for the first time, each major federal Agency has summarized its budget, financial, and performance results in two pages,” said Johnson. “Citizens should expect their Federal government to spend their taxpayer dollars effectively and more effectively each year and this way they can see it more clearly.”

 

 According to Government Executive’s Elizabeth Newell, Johnson said he “was proud of the state in which the Bush administration has left the management initiatives.”He provided a steady hand on the implementation of management improvements, largely related to vital mission support functions.  It seems Killefer’s challenge is to move that kind of attention to mission functions.