Like deer caught in a car's headlights, some federal managers aren't sure what to do next with the Government Performance and Results Act. Congressional and administration leaders had an answer for them Tuesday: Turn the Results Act from a paper exercise into a decisionmaking tool.
Last September, federal agencies finished crafting five-year strategic plans. In February, they submitted proposed fiscal 1999 performance plans to Congress. The next official step under the Results Act doesn't come until March 2000, when agencies report on whether they met their goals. Now it's time to step back, take a deep breath, and start using performance information to make decisions, said G. Edward DeSeve, acting deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget.
"No one's done this before," DeSeve said at a National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) conference on the Results Act. "That's the struggle we are going through."
Virginia Thomas, congressional committee liaison for House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, told the gathering of federal budget and planning officials, agency managers and public administration experts that the federal government has reached the point where it must start using performance data and expectations for program results to make decisions.
"We are at a turning point in Results Act implementation," Thomas said, adding that the act can be a tool for gathering data that decisionmakers can use when they set budgets and plan programs. But, she added, "we want this tool not to be a huge paper blizzard."
So far, though, few members of Congress are using Results Act plans during the legislative process and few federal program managers are using the plans in their day-to-day routines.
"In each agency, we do not have thousands of people working on the Results Act," said Chris Wye, director of NAPA's Center for Improving Government Performance. Wye said people whose jobs involve Results Act planning number in the tens or in the hundreds in most agencies, and many of them are in agencies' budget and planning offices. The managers who actually run programs typically do not work on the Results Act, Wye said.
When DeSeve asked the conference attendees if program managers in their agencies were getting and using performance information to help them manage, fewer than five people raised their hands. DeSeve said managers should be using performance measures, but he acknowledged several attendees' concerns that many of the measures agencies have developed are not yet useful for managers.
"First we have to get the measures right in the agencies," DeSeve said.
In addition, DeSeve suggested that Congress should work performance measures into agencies' annual authorizing legislation. Thomas also expressed the hope that performance expectations would become part of the legislative process.
On July 14, Armey's office is scheduled to hold a meeting of congressional committee staff and administration officials to discuss strategies for making the Results Act work.
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