This week the General Services Administration (GSA) is hosting its 49th annual Interagency Resources Management Conference. An estimated 300 Chief Acquisition Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Human Capital Officers, Inspectors General, program managers and other senior executive leaders are attending. It is the most well known government-wide, government-only conference where leaders delve into emerging management issues and how they are being confronted. You can learn more about IRMCO at www.irmco.gov
This morning I moderated a panel “Expanding on the Management Agenda” with the four senior Office of Management and Budget officials who are leading the Obama Adminstration’s management efforts:
Vivek Kundra, Chief Information Officer and Administrator for E-Government and Technology,
Danny Werfel, Controller, Office of Federal Financial Management,
Dr. Shelley Metzenbaum, Associate Director for Performance and Personnel Management, and
Daniel Gordon, Administrator, Office of Federal Procurement Policy
Together they addressed the 6 strategies that according to OMB’s Jeff Zients “offer the greatest potential to improve performance”
Eliminate waste,
Drive top priorities,
Leverage purchasing scale,
Close the IT performance gap,
Open government to get results, and
Attract and motivate top talent.
Importantly, they did not dwell on each of the 6 strategies so much as explain how they are working together, in what I would describe as a pragmatic, problem-solving approach – looking to take the best of what works – in other governments, the private sector and recent federal efforts – to transform the way government works. It is apparent from their individual priorities as well as the way they describe how they are working together that the current OMB team is operating in a very coordinated and integrated fashion – where fixing problems and improving mission performance is no longer “someone else’s job,” but instead, everyone’s job.
The IBM Center for The Business of Government hosted a forum in November 2009 to examine the Obama Administration’s themes for a high-performing government and to frame a public management research agenda.
Participants included nearly 50 of the nation’s top public management researchers, scholars, and distinguished practitioners. The forum was an effort to help bridge the gap between research and practice, and to collectively develop a research agenda that would help government executives move things forward.
The forum was organized around key management priorities reflected in the Obama Administration’s early months in office. To inform participants in the forum, the IBM Center invited four scholars to each prepare a discussion paper providing context and issues related to one of these priorities. These draft papers were shared in advance with participants and they formed the foundation for the conversations during the forum. Authors used the feedback from the participants in revising their papers, which are summarized in subsequent blog entries. In addition, participants helped develop a series of research questions they thought would be useful to both researchers and practitioners over the next few years. These are also reflected in the following blog entries.
Noted public management scholar Michael Barzelay has written that “knowledge building is much more of a team sport than contributors to the current literature seem to appreciate.”
With this in mind, we are hopeful that the following topics, and their associated research questions, can help foster such team play by all of those involved in and committed to improving government performance.
Most of the news media focused on the size of the budget and which agencies gained or lost. However, the budget also included an overview of the Obama Administration’s management initiatives, as well.
The overall emphasis of these initiatives is on achieving defined mission-oriented results. It de-emphasizes (but still addresses) improvements to mission-support functions and the reporting of performance information.
The section on “Performance and Management” describes three mutually reinforcing performance management strategies:
Use performance information to lead, learn, and improve outcomes.
Communicate performance coherently and concisely for better results and transparency.
Strengthen problem-solving networks.
What’s New?
The sole mention of OMB’s Program Assessment Review Tool (PART) states that it “increased the production of measures in many agencies, resulting in the availability of better measures than previously existed; however, these initial success have not lead to increased use.” So, it’s probably dead.
In its place, the Administration offers a series of interesting initiatives:
130 high priority agency-level performance goals. These goals will be tracked quarterly by agencies and OMB. Bureau-level goals will be developed in coming year. It also hints at use of the “Citi-Stat” approach. For example, it notes that Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra recently held a “Tech-Stat” meeting at EPA, using the IT Dashboard, to detect IT investment problems. (scroll to “Chapter 19, Information Technology,” starting on p. 321 to find the budget’s technology initiatives).
Creation of a “performance portal” to track performance goals, and a series of mission-support dashboards. These would be in addition to the existing IT Dashboard. Dashboards will be created for procurement, improper payments, and hiring. It also committed to developing a “Citizen Services Dashboard” to display the quality of government services, by “service delivery touch points” for each major agency.
Creation of — or expansion of existing — problem-solving networks. Communities of practice will be organized across agencies by (a) problems (e.g., climate change), (b) types of programs (e.g., regulatory or credit programs), and (3) methods (e.g., Lean Six Sigma). For example, the performance management network will be led by the government-wide Performance Improvement Council, comprised of agency performance improvement officers. There was also a commitment to create an electronic, cross-government collaboration platform.
What’s Intriguing?
In addition to these key initiatives, there are a number of other interesting elements:
A commitment to increase tele-work by 50 percent by the end of FY 2011 (the 2009 baseline = 102,900 tele-workers)
Creation of an interagency program evaluation working group. The budget also invested an additional $100 million in program evaluation, in 17 agencies
There was a long discussion of “personnel analytics” in budget, with an emphasis on employee feedback, and a table reporting agency rankings in the last OPM workforce survey.
The budget announced a $158 million initiative to improve capacity of non-DOD acquisition workforce. Previously, the Administration committed to increasing the DOD acquisition workforce by 20,000 positions.
Federal civilian employment increased 15 percent between FY 2007 – 2011 (the percent change was the same in DOD vs. civilian agencies)
The Administration says it will leverage FederalReporting.gov (created to feed data to the Recovery Act’s recovery.gov site) to expand USASpending.gov reporting to the sub-recipient level.
The Administration will create web-based platforms to host challenges and incentive prizes for innovations.
Was there anything that caught your eye that should be added?
Given what we have learned from experience and careful research, the performance management approach the Obama Administration lays out in the Analytic Perspectives section of the FY 2011 budget is very promising and represents a more aggressive, more coherent, and more comprehensive approach than that of past Administrations. We know that when leaders focus on a few priority goals, we see tremendous performance improvement on those goals. We are also learning (in fact, there is an interesting note on this in the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review) that a sense of progress is the greatest employee motivator.
So, I am very hopeful about the Administration’s decision to emphasize ownership of the goals by agency leaders and to report performance trends, not the percentage of targets met and program PART rating done on a five-year cycle. The Obama approach is likely to be more effective at engaging the Federal workforce, improving performance, and making government more accountable to the public.
Recent years have seen a growing emphasis on the reporting of the outputs and outcomes of government programs. Yet there is limited information on what outputs and outcomes are actually reported on in practice. A new report by Richard Boyle, Head of Research for the Institute of Public Administration in Dublin, Ireland, finds that there is surprisingly little information on the nature and quality of output and outcome indicators that are actually used and presented in performance reports. He further notes that there is an almost total lack of information on cross-national comparative practice.
What types of indicators are actually being reported on? Does reality match the rhetoric? Boyle provides empirical evidence of what is actually happening in output and outcome reporting by government departments. He examines four countries regarded as among those at the forefront of performance reporting: Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United States. His report provides cross-national comparative data on good and bad practices in performance reporting, shares good practices across these countries, assesses the state of performance reporting, and provides directly relevant assistance to program managers in both central and line agencies.
According to Boyle, there is a clear distinction between performance reports in the US and those in other countries he examined. On the whole, indicators contained in US reports are more likely to report on outcomes, be quantitative in nature, meet data quality criteria, and have associated targets and multi-year baseline data. To learn more, read the full report just released by the IBM Center for The Business of Government.
The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) was enacted in 1993 to bring about a greater focus on results in the federal government. GPRA’s requirements have built a strong foundation for results-oriented performance planning, measurement, and reporting.
Prior to the enactment of GPRA, federal agencies generally lacked the infrastructure needed to manage and report on results of federal programs in a way that was transparent to Congress and the American people. Today, the federal government has outcome-oriented strategic plans, performance measures, and accountablity reporting that have significantly improved over time.
Last evening, former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) staffer Walter Groszyk hosted his annual GRPA birthday party at the oyster bar in the historic Old Ebbitt Grill, just steps from the White House in downtown Washington, DC. President Clinton signed GPRA on August 3, 1993, so this year’s off-season event celebrated GPRA’s 16th birthday.
Missing, because of a trip to California, was John Mercer, who calls himself the “father” of GPRA. Others in the group also claim paternity, but until there is a reliable legislative DNA test, they all will have to share credit. David Plocher, a self-described “mid-wife” of GPRA, was in attendance. No one yet has stepped forward claiming to be the “mother.”
There seems to be little doubt about the Obama Administration’s intention to “use” GPRA’s performance goals and measures to set priorities, monitor progress and diagnose problems. For example, just over a month ago, Shelley Metzenbaum joined the Office of Management and Budget to lead the Administration’s performance measurement and management effort.
Her boss, Jeff Zients, who is OMB Deputy Director for Management and the Administration’s Chief Performance Officer, recently testified that “The test of a performance management system is whether it is used.” According to Zients, the Administration is enlisting Cabinet and subcabinet appointees with experience in using performance goals and measures in States and local government to work together as a vanguard for federal performance management.
The November 15th release of federal department and agency annual performance and accountability reports went largely un-noticed. Not a mention in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post (even its Federal Page).
With so much attention to transparency and accountability – does no one care? Or, are these reports written in such length and technical prose that no average citizen would want to read them? According to a survey conducted by the Association of Government Accountants of 239 financial management executives across government: “The current financial reporting model costs too much and delivers little useful information to government decision-makers”
Performance and Accountability Reports
Congress and the Executive Branch created the Performance and Accountability Report (PAR) to satisfy various statutory reporting requirements. The PAR serves at least two very important purposes.
It is an effective and easy way for oversight organizations and others to determine the extent to which an agency is fulfilling its mission and managing its resources, plus be able to produced reliable information to support budgeting and decision-making.
It enables agencies to present, in a comprehensive and integrated manner, the services it is providing to the public, the results it is achieving, what these accomplishments cost, and how it is managing its resources.
Pilot Program
In an effort to make the information more meaningful and transparent to the public, the Office of Management and Budget authorized a Pilot Program in FY 2007. The Pilot Program:
Permits an agency to replace the PAR with an Agency Financial Report and an Annual Performance Report (in recent years, the two reports had been consolidated into a single performance and accountability report).
Permits the Annual Performance Report to be issued at the same time as the Congressional Budget Justification (in February), which allows for a more complete performance report.
Adds a Highlight Document intended to be a brief, use-friendly and easily understood report that summarized the key performance and financial results for the novice reader.
The eleven department and agencies that participate in the PAR Pilot Program issued their Annual Financial reports on November 15, 2009. Separate Highlights will be released by January 15, 2010, and their Annual Performance Reports will be issued in February 2010 following release of the President’s Fiscal Year 2011 Budget. Here are the Financial reports released by the pilots so far:
She concludes that it is possible for agencies to submit performance and financial information using alternative formats without diminishing the statutory purposes of performance and financial reporting documents: “Allowing agencies to use alternative methods for presenting these data presents an important opportunity to improve transparency and accountability throughout government, goals emphasized by the Obama Administration.”
I attended the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Senior Budget Officials December 1-2 performance and results network meeting on measuring and evaluating countries’ stimulus programs. The countries making presentations at this meeting were: Australia, Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and United Kingdom.
I was struck by several things.
First, countries have undertaken a surprisingly wide variety of stimulus programs.
Second, there has been strikingly little evaluation or measurement of the performance or results of these interventions. To date, most countries appear to be relying on macro economic indicators rather than more detailed reporting of jobs created/retained or measures of programmatic performance,
Finally, and perhaps not surprisingly, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA) requirements for accountability and transparency appear to be far more detailed and comprehensive than anything I heard from other countries.
Role of performance information in economic stimulus packages
Nearly all OECD countries have introduced discretionary fiscal measures. The size, composition, and proposed duration of stimulus packages vary widely across countries. The average OECD country introduced a stimulus package with a cumulated budget impact of more than 2.5 percent of GDP over the period 2008-2010.
OECD countries launching the largest packages in the 2008-2010 periods include the United States, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The composition of these packages varies extensively. Some countries concentrate on tax cuts for individuals and/or businesses, or on increasing public spending and investment, and still other countries combine these measures. Countries whose packages concentrate strongly on public investment programs include Australia, Canada, Poland and Mexico.
The design, implementation and evaluation of these packages present unprecedented challenges for policy makers in OECD countries. Some of the challenges include:
Finding the most effective size and composition of stimulus packages to achieve objectives
The speed and urgency of actions required to implement these packages pose challenges for traditional budget processes and procedures
The key challenges facing world leaders and individual countries are when and how to unwind the fiscal stimulus packages
How to monitor and measure the results of these packages
Exit strategies
In addition to questions of measurement and results, the Senior Budget Officials network discussed general approaches for an exit strategy to plan the transition to restore fiscal sustainability. As countries come out of the economic and financial crisis with a sharp deterioration of their public finances, they need a fiscal recovery plan to get their finances in order to reduce debt burdens before long-term pressures (especially aging and health care) hit with full force.
Many of the fiscal actions taken during the crisis, while appropriate at that time, would be harmful if they stayed in place too long. By 2014, debt ratios will be close to or exceed 90 percent in all G7 countries except Canada. It is thus critical to avoid surge interest rates that might be prompted by concerns about high debt ratios. The fiscal outlook is better for emerging economies, but it is unlikely that they would be shielded from a loss in confidence in public sector sustainability in the developed countries; as the recent crises has amply demonstrated, crises in confidence easily spill across borders.
The Senior Budget Officials believe that an exit strategy to plan the transition from the current levels of fiscal imbalances to more sustainable levels is clearly needed. The OECD Secretariat therefore presented a draft report with 18 lessons learned from countries’ previous experiences of fiscal consolidation that will be presented to the G20. Lessons #1-#12 were deficit reduction actions; lesson #13 focuses on reducing regulation inside government; lessons #14-#16 address reductions in public employment; lesson #17 deals with outsourcing; and the final lesson is “Yes, you can!.”
My personal mission statement for more than a decade has been to “help create a government that is results-oriented, performance-based, citizen-focused, and collaborative in nature.”
I’ve found that this has helped me set priorities in what I do and how I approach my work. I’ve modified it over the years, but found that it provides a useful focus in my day-to-day thinking.
Do you have a personal mission statement that you would be willing to share?
This week the General Services Administration (GSA) is hosting its 49th annual Interagency Resources Management Conference. An estimated 300 Chief Acquisition Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Human Capital Officers, Inspectors General, program managers and other senior executive leaders are attending. It is the most well known government-wide, government-only conference where leaders delve into emerging management issues and how they are being confronted. You can learn more about IRMCO at www.irmco.gov
The Business of Government: Getting it Done 
