Clinton champions 'budgeting for results'

The Clinton Administration's fiscal 2000 budget proposal includes more than 450 goals for improving government performance through better management.

According to the budget proposal, which President Clinton unveiled Monday, the administration will use several strategies to make the government work better. Agencies submitted performance plans to the White House along with their budget plans, which the administration then combined in a governmentwide performance plan. This is the second year the White House has drafted a performance plan under the Government Performance and Results Act.

The administration set 24 management priorities in the plan, including solving the year 2000 computer problem, improving financial management and strengthening computer security. The White House is focusing on improving service at 32 agencies that have a direct impact on the public, such as the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Health Administration.

The President's budget targets several individual agencies it says need management improvement: the Health Care Financing Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Aviation Administration, the IRS and the Defense Department.

Agencies across the executive branch are developing measures to gauge government performance, the budget said. The budget lists 450 such measures, including:

• No more than seven flight anomalies per space shuttle mission (NASA).
• Completing environmental cleanups at four former nuclear sites (Energy Department).
• Reducing oil spills in the nation's waters to 4.83 gallons per million gallons shipped (Coast Guard).
• Demolishing more than 13,000 public housing units (HUD)

Eventually, agencies will be forced to justify their budget requests with expected program results, explaining what they are getting for the money they spend, the budget said. The administration calls the effort "budgeting for results."

The administration's performance plan says budgeting for results "is an effort to display and budget for all resources used by federal programs in a way that allows the costs to be systematically compared with the benefits provided. Although all costs are reflected somewhere in the budget, these costs are not all associated with the individual programs that use the resources. . . . In the coming years, efforts will continue toward making budgeting for results a reality."

Meanwhile, acquisition reform remains a top administration priority. More than $23 billion in service contracts will be shifted into performance-based service contracting arrangements by 2000, the budget said. The administration is also projecting that the government will use charge cards for 80 percent of all purchases under $2,500, for a total of $18 billion.

By 2000, all major agencies will have systems to record contractor performance, the budget said. The systems will help agencies better use past performance data when selecting contractors.

The administration's management plan also calls for public-private competitions as a means of improving operations. The Defense Department is using such competitions more than any other agency. DoD will put more than 200,000 federal jobs up for competition through 2005. Other agencies must identify activities now performed in-house that could be performed by the private sector by June 30. That requirement was established by the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act of 1998.

In the area of financial management, the administration has set a goal of receiving an unqualified opinion on the government's 1999 financial statements, which will be issued in March 2000. Auditors could not issue an opinion on the government's first consolidated financial statements, for 1997, because of agencies' poor accounting systems.

The budget said the year 2000 bug will force agencies to spend the year testing their computer systems and data exchanges with other organizations. They will also develop contingency plans in case any systems fail at the end of this year. Computer security concerns will also require agency attention this year, the budget said.