Achieving Real Improvement In Federal Policy And Program Outcomes: The Next Frontier

[Federal News Radio]

Dr. Kathryn Newcomer
George Washington University
Steve Redburn
National Academy of Public Administration


A new Administration eager to successfully implement its policy goals has the challenge of quickly identifying what is worth retaining and what is not of the performance management procedures established by the previous Administration—ideally throwing out the bathwater but keeping the baby. A new Administration also has an opportunity to redeploy the assets it inherits and draw lessons from recent experience about what will be most effective in achieving Presidential priorities.

Who should be responsible for guiding the federal government’s performance in the next Administration? How can the next President achieve real improvements in federal policy outcomes? We propose answers to these questions, and offer concrete recommendations to the next President on how to improve executive branch performance to achieve his desired policy outcomes. Our guidance is based on our review of the experience of the last decade with efforts to bring performance information to bear in improving how programs are managed, and in improving decisions on policy design and use of resources.

As elaborated below, we believe that:

• The President must set the standard and demand of his cabinet and senior officials that performance be a high priority;
• At the highest level, priorities for program assessment should be set so that assessments focus mainly on programs important to the President’s major policy priorities;
• Agency heads, not the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), must lead in improving performance, and agency executives must be held accountable for improving outcomes;
• Gains in transparency and standards for assessing how well programs perform should be preserved and built on; and
• The analytic and reporting burdens of the assessment process on both OMB and agencies should be reduced and better targeted.

Since enactment of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) in 1993, the efforts of successive Administrations have built a legacy of assets useful to the next Administration: an armature of strategic plans and performance measures supported by an infrastructure of staff and processes in the agencies built incrementally and now quite sophisticated. These have provided the executive branch with enhanced capacity to drive improved results at a time when there will be a growing premium on making better use of budget resources.

Lessons from Experience with Performance Management During the Last 10 Years

The most important lessons from recent experience—expressed by a variety of participants in the process, including career staff of agencies and OMB examiners and others and drawn from our own observations—are summarized below.

Conflicting Purposes. Tracking performance measures and assessing program effectiveness have the potential to be used to improve programs and to inform budgetary allocations within the agencies, OMB and Congress, but it is very difficult to select a set of measures or to design assessment tools that can achieve both objectives. Both processes require a large number of choices about what and how to measure, and how to draw appropriate comparisons, thus introducing the potential for differences of opinion about criteria for judgment.

Burden. Another aspect of the performance challenge is linked to the lack of agency staff capacity to measure results at the activity level—this is an area of particular concern among agencies with a large number of grant programs with distinct measures. The quality and consistency of information on program effectiveness is still inadequate in most policy domains. More, and more rigorous, program evaluations are needed to test the effectiveness of policies and programs, but these assessments require more resources for most agencies.

Use of Performance Assessments. Performance information, including program assessments, has the potential to be used by two distinct audiences or sets of users: one external to executive agencies and the other internal.

What’s Next?

The President and his team in the executive agencies must be at the leading edge of the next frontier for achieving real, measurable and significant improvement in federal program and policy performance. Political executives and senior managers must take ownership to ensure achievement of the key policy outcomes prioritized by the next President.

Goal #1: Strategic Presidential Leadership

The President must identify a limited number of policy objectives and ask his team to focus attention on improved performance in these high visibility policy and programmatic areas. These priorities are likely to span the responsibilities of multiple agencies, which must collaborate effectively to achieve progress. Thus, for these major policy objectives, strategic performance planning, progress monitoring, and reporting need to be cross-cutting. Relevant agency leaders and executives from all pertinent agencies must be brought together to collaborate and build integrated leadership and management processes to deliver the desired results.

Goal #2: Executive Accountability

The President should assign accountability to agency executives to demonstrate progress in achieving his policy priorities. Agency leaders should be charged with:

• Reporting regularly on performance to track achievement of major Administration policy priorities, and coordinating with but not delegating this responsibility to staff offices;
• Revisiting agency strategic plans, which should include consultation with relevant Congressional stakeholders, and streamlining of performance measurement and reporting processes to be in sync with refreshed agency strategic objectives;
• Collaborating productively with state, and non-governmental, service providers to prioritize and select appropriate measures to track achievement of outcomes related to their missions and achievement of their collaborative efforts;
• Identifying a prioritized set of valid and reliable performance indicators that are deemed credible and useful internally, and supporting use of these measures throughout their agency to improve internal learning and management;
• Streamlining performance reporting systems within their agency to reduce burdens where possible, and eliminate measurement where measures are not credible or useful;
• Identifying a staff and consolidated system to administer and service performance reporting for purposes of program assessment, budgeting, and publishing of agency plans and performance accountability reports, consistent with OMB and GPRA requirements;
• Clarifying to agency staff at all levels how agency strategic performance goals should be used to direct workforce staffing, and ensuring that all employees are involved and educated about how their work contributes to achievement of agency goals;
• Leading processes within their agencies modeled after a “Citistat” or “Statestat” approach, i.e., regular discussions among senior managers about agency performance as measured by a limited set of valid, reliable, and frequently reported outcome measures, to focus regular attention to progress on the highest priority objectives of the Administration;
• Empowering and rewarding program managers for using performance information to improve programs;
• Embracing transparency and a systematic, standardized approach to program assessment, key strengths of the PART process, by publishing results of program assessments and supporting explanation and evidence on the web;
• Supporting and funding strategic use of program evaluation methods by executives and program managers to address questions about both program implementation and results; and
• Rewarding publicly and frequently achievement of mission-driven program outcomes, and providing rewards for performance (not simply for reporting) at all levels of the agency.

Goal #3: Strategic and Effective Use of OMB

The Executive Office/OMB should provide authority along with responsibility for achievement of mission-driven outcomes to agency leaders, but support political and career executives so that they can tailor strategies to their agency cultures rather than strive to meet “one size fits all” management or performance reporting requirements.

OMB should continue and even strengthen its role in:

• Crafting a government-wide performance and accountability plan;
• Convening and supporting task forces of relevant multi-agency stakeholders on cross-cutting policy priorities;
• Educating agency executives on performance measurement and reporting—for example, OMB staff, rather than contractors, should provide mandatory training for all political appointees on legislative and regulatory requirements regarding performance measurement and reporting;
• Identifying efficiencies in meeting legislative performance reporting for all agencies to reduce reporting burdens; and
• Facilitating collaboration and sharing of effective practices among agencies on generation and use of performance data, and effective use of information technology to facilitate performance reporting.

Initial Actions

Here are some actions that we believe should be taken in the first months of the next Administration so the next President can gain leverage quickly in improving executive branch performance to achieve desired policy outcomes:

1. The President should identify a limited number of policy priorities and clarify that obtaining improved performance in these high visibility policy and programmatic areas will be a critical priority for his Administration.
2. The President should assign accountability to agency executives to demonstrate progress in achieving his policy priorities, and require agency executives and senior leaders to expeditiously design and implement their strategies and processes for achieving improved outcomes in the new Administration.
3. The President should announce his commitment to transparency of performance reporting and a systematic, standardized approach to program assessment to support accountability.
4. The President should use the Office of Management and Budget strategically to support efforts to achieve high priority policy and programmatic outcomes, and refocus OMB program assessments on a small set of high priority targets for improved outcomes.

Note: The full version of this paper is available on the National Academy of Public Administration website at: http://www.napawash.org/achieving_real_improvements_10_08.pdf