Performance Management Advice: Build on Foundation

Last week, another consortium of good government proponents released a report, “Building a Better Government Performance System: Recommendations to the Obama Administration.”  Sponsored by the Accenture Institute for Public Service Value, the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, and OMB Watch, the report reflects the results of a workshop they hosted last year as their public service contribution to the transition effort.

The resulting report has both principles and recommendations to the Obama Administration on how it might best move forward on its management initiative “Putting Performance First.”  Robert Brodsky, with Government Executive, characterized the bottom line of the report as “Groups Warn Against Reinventing the Wheel on Management Reform,” which is actually a big step forward!

Principles:

• Enhance the public’s right to know how well government programs work
• Strengthen leadership and accountability from top to bottom
• Modify, don’t trash, current systems
• Re-balance the roles of OMB and federal agencies
• Improve performance and accountability with positive reinforcement
• Seek input from outside stakeholders

Recommendations:

• Reform the implementation of the OMB Program Assessment Rating Tool and the Government Performance and Results Act by “developing ownership throughout agencies over performance measurement and reporting.”
• Promote leadership and accountability by having leader focus on results and ensuring federal employees buy into the performance system.
• Foster policy innovation and ownership with the use of positive reinforcement and an emphasis on improvement, not punishment.
• Balance the roles of OMB and federal agencies by engaging agencies, and agency performance improvement officers, in program assessments and making OMB’s performance activities more transparent.
• Engage outside stakeholders in providing feedback on program performance as well as linking performance reviews to the congressional budget process.

Some of these recommendations had been made in earlier reports (see GAO and IBM Center), but the good news is that the Administration seems to be committed to taking action on a number of them.

Legislating Good Program Performance

Congressmen Dennis Moore (D-KS) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX) have introduced legislation (H.R. 2142) that would require an effort equivalent to the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) and make Program Improvement Officers a statutory role

As much grumbling occurred among agency staff under President Bush’s performance improvement initiatives, that Congress didn’t care and didn’t use the information, it’s interesting to see that two Democrats have introduced legislation to make it permanent. 

Here are the highlights of the “Government Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Performance Improvement Act:”

Program Assessments – Require that every federal program be assessed at least once every five years to evaluate the clarity of the program’s purpose and objectives, the quality of the program’s management and organizational design, the quality of the program’s strategic and performance planning and goals, and the effectiveness of the program in meeting its strategic objectives.

Assessment Reports – Require that comprehensive assessment reports summarizing the findings of each assessment be submitted along with the President’s budget every year.

Improvement Plans – Require agencies to submit, within 90 days after the submission of assessment reports, improvement plans that lay out the managerial, organizational, and operational reforms the agency will implement to respond to the issues raised in the assessment report and to improve the performance of the program.

Agency Performance Improvement Officers and the Performance Improvement Council – Create “agency performance improvement officers” to supervise the performance management activities of agencies, and the Performance Improvement Council, which will assist in the development of performance standards and evaluation methodologies, identify best practices in federal performance management practices, and facilitate the exchange the exchange of information on performance among agencies.  These officers and council were originally created by President Bush by executive order.

What are the bill’s prospects?  That’s a good question.  President Obama, during his campaign, said he would keep the Bush-era PART but “fundamentally” change some of the elements.  An IBM Center report by Shelley Metzenbaum offers some ideas of how that might be done, but this doesn’t require legislation.  The introduction of this bill, however, provides an incentive for action by the new Administration, even if it goes no where legislatively.

Obama Announces Reform Agenda

Sen. Barack Obama

Senator Barak Obama described his Washington reform agenda yesterday in a speech in Wisconsin.  It was backed up with an 11-page list of fairly specific action steps.  His agenda was divided into three parts – one on curbing lobbyist and special interest groups, one on government reform, and one addressing the need to modernize financial regulations to deal with the ongoing crisis in the financial markets.  In the section dealing with curbing influence, he reiterated previous pledges such as conducting significant public business of agencies in public, archiving videos of these meetings on the web, and requiring cabinet officials to have periodic “21st Century Fireside Chats.”

In his speech, Obama said “we will use technology and lessons from the private sector to improve efficiency across every level of government  — because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.”

Following is a summary of the elements in the second part of his agenda, dealing with government reform:

Make Government More Effective

Create a new Chief Performance Officer who reports directly to the president.  This person will work with agencies to set tough performance targets and hold managers accountable for progress.  This person will be supported by a High Performance SWAT Team composed of top-performing and highly-trained government professionals.  This person would:  (1) lead a line-by-line review of the budget; (2) lead governmentwide and agency-by-agency performance target-setting and tracking; and (3) go into failing programs with the SWAT team to conduct a turn-around.

The president will meet regularly with cabinet officers to review the progress their agencies are making toward meeting performance improvement targets.

Reconfigure the OMB Program Assessment Review Tool (PART).  “Barak Obama will fundamentally reconfigure PART.  He will open up the insular performance measurement process to the public, Congress and outside experts.”  He will “ensure that programs are not only (sic) measured in isolation, but are assessed in the context of other programs that are serving the same population or meeting the same goals.”

“Obama’s performance improvement effort will include cross-agency performance where service delivery requires coordination across federal agencies and multiple levels of government.”

Implement consequences for success and failure.  For failing programs, Obama will “take steps like sending in performance teams to reform programs; replacing existing management; demanding improvement action plans; and cutting program budget or eliminating programs entirely.” 

Move workers from bloated bureaucracies to the frontlines.  There are too few workers on the front lines in local offices across the country.  “Obama will thin the ranks of Washington middle managers.”

Eliminate wasteful redundancy.  “Obama will conduct an immediate and periodic public inventory of administrative offices and functions and require agency leaders to work together to root out redundancy.  Where consolidation is not the right strategy to improve efficiency, Obama will improve information sharing and use of common assets to minimize wasteful duplication.” 

Streamline government procurement.  Obama will implement GAO’s recommendations to reduce erroneous federal payments, reduce procurement costs with purchase cards, and better manage surplus federal property.

Protect whistleblowers.  Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse.

Increase the use of technology.  Obama will appoint a Chief Technology Officer to “ensure that our government and all its agencies will have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century . . . Like he has in the campaign, Obama will employ innovate technologies, including blogs, wikis, social networking tools and other new strategies, to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communications and information sharing.”

Cut Wasteful Spending

Line by line review of the budget.  Conduct “an exhaustive line-by-line review of the federal budget and seek to eliminate government programs that are not performing and demand that new initiatives be selected on the basis of their merits.” 

Slash earmarks.  “Obama is committed to returning earmarks to less than $7.8 billion a year, the level they were before 1994,” from the $29 billion level in 2006.

Sunlight on corporate tax loopholes.  “Obama will require any tax bill considered by Congress to include a Corporate Tax Impact Statement that would disclose which industries or specific companies would be expected to benefit from the new tax breaks.”  He also said that he would create an agency “charged with identifying recipient of corporate subsidies” that would be charged with identifying “wasteful subsidies that should be eliminated.”

Fix Government Contracting

Cut federal spending on contractors by at least 10 percent.  “Obama will reform federal contracting and reduce the number of contractors, saving $40 billion a year.”

Restore management and oversight capacity.  Obama will “ensure that contract oversight remains within the federal government” and will “require audits of a quarter of large contracts each year, focusing in the first year on noncompetitive and cost-plus contractions.  The audits will verify performance and cost savings. . . .”

End abusive no-bid contracts and minimize the use of cost-plus contracts. “Obama will require each federal agency to defend each of its noncompetitive contracts to the Office of Management and Budget.. . . Obama will encourage the use of fixed-cost or incentive-based contracts and where cost-plus contracts are necessary, force agencies to use mitigating procedures like incentives tied to performance goals and costs savings.”

No federal contracts for tax delinquent companies.  Obama will prohibit seriously delinquent contractors from getting contracts for government work.

Adding a Player

In my November 6^th blog, I missed a beat.  I had described four forces that will likely influence the next Administration’s management agenda:  the President-elect, the bureaucracy, the Congress, and the think tanks.  One that I’d missed:  the current President!

President Bush made that clear the week after that blog entry by releasing a new Executive Order, “Improving Government Program Performance.”

The new executive order says it is intended “to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the Federal Government and promote greater accountability. . .”  The Order:

·        Requires each agency head to create annual and long-term goals.  These goals are to have “objectively measurable outcomes” and measure progress towards those goals. Individuals must be held accountable for meeting those goals.  The Order also requires agency heads to justify their budget requests based on “objective performance information” and post “updated and accurate” program-level performance information on their agency’s websites.

·        Requires each agency head to appoint a “Performance Improvement Officer.”  This newly-designated officer is to be a senior executive who will be the focal point for the development of their agency’s strategic plan, annual performance plan, and annual performance report – all of which are required by the Government Performance and Results Act.  They are also responsible for assessing the goals and targets proposed by program managers, as well as assessing the measures being used by the programs.  In addition, they are responsible for assessing performance and advising on “performance measures in personnel performance appraisals.”

·        Creates a government-wide “Performance Improvement Council.” The deputy director for management of the Office of Management and Budget will chair a cross-agency council of performance improvement officers.  Collectively, they will develop criteria for evaluating program performance (which could be the existing Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), or some variation). They will also be able to share best practices as well as develop a website “that provides the public with information on who well each agency performs.”  Currently, OMB sponsors a website, expectmore.gov, that provides program-level performance assessments done using the PART.

This executive order embeds in the machinery of government a single point of accountability in each agency and government-wide for creating, tracking, and reporting performance and results — 14 years after the passage of the Results Act.   Over the years, this responsibility has been performed in different places in different agencies.  Some placed this responsibility with their chief financial officer.  Others placed it in their planning or budgeting units.  Some split the responsibilities across their agencies.  This Executive Order finally creates a single focal point of accountability.  It also creates a cross-agency network of these officials so they can share best practices, much like other cross-agency councils such as the Chief Financial Officers Council.

So, in the upcoming year, senior executives will be designated as their agency’s “performance improvement officer” and a cross-agency council of performance officers will convene and likely set an agenda for 2008 and 2009.   As a result, the next Administration will inherit a network of performance improvement executives – largely career public servants — who will be responsible for advocating improved performance and making results of agency programs publicly available.   The Executive Order does not enshrine this Administration’s management agenda or the PART.  Therefore, if the next Administration wants a different focus, it will have an administrative foundation upon which it could rapidly build and deploy a variety of new performance-oriented initiatives.