Balanced budget, balanced measures mark 2001 plan

Now that the federal budget will be balanced for four straight years, the Clinton administration is seeking to balance government efficiency with customer and employee satisfaction.

The administration's fiscal 2001 budget plan, released Monday, suggests that balancing three primary measures-customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and achieving program goals-is the best way to gauge government performance.

"High-performing organizations use a balanced set of measures to determine how they are doing in achieving 'bottom line' mission results, maintaining strong employee morale and satisfying their customers," the budget plan said. "Together, such results-oriented measures give a more comprehensive picture of how programs are performing and prevents managers from making improvements in one area at the expense of another."

Two of the budget's sections, "Sustaining our Economic Prosperity" and "Improving Government Performance" make up the third annual governmentwide performance plan issued by the Clinton administration. The White House is required to release a performance plan under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA).

The governmentwide plan draws from the individual performance plans drafted by each department and agency and submitted to Congress along with their budget requests.

The budget said that the government will try to improve its standing on the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which measures both private companies and government agencies. In 1999, the first year a large number of government agencies were measured on the 100-point index, Uncle Sam got a rating of 68.6, compared to an average private-sector score of 72.

Federal employee satisfaction is improving, the budget said. But the results of the second annual governmentwide employee satisfaction survey, taken in 1999, have not yet been released.

In the third area of measurement, getting results, the budget lists a sampling of performance goals from across government. For example:

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will restore 15,000 acres of coastal habitat in 2001.
• The Veterans Benefits Administration will cut processing time for ratings-related disability claims by 24 days.
• The Immigration and Naturalization Service will remove 195,000 illegal immigrants from the country in 2001.
• The Health Care Financing Administration will reduce improper Medicare payments to 5 percent of the program's outlays by 2002, down from 14 percent in 1996.

"The concept of a balanced set of measures has been gradually gaining ground everywhere, and rightfully so," said Chris Wye, director of the National Academy of Public Administration's Center for Improving Government Performance. About 30 agencies are participating in the Performance Consortium, a group Wye founded to assist agencies in their GPRA efforts. While managers within the bureaucracy are committed to GPRA, Wye questioned the administration's dedication.

"The President hasn't really taken hold of it. The Vice President hasn't taken hold of it. Who's on first in terms of the administration? It could be the President, the Vice President, or the Office of Management and Budget," Wye said. But only a handful of OMB budget examiners are actively involved in the GPRA process, he said.

Walter Groszyk, who is overseeing GPRA implementation at OMB, said at a Jan. 28 seminar that agencies are generally putting "a much greater focus now on what programs are actually accomplishing and whether they are effective or ineffective" than they have in the past. But he noted that agencies often come up with only a "superficial list of strategies" for achieving their goals. These lists are "not totally incoherent," Groszyk said, but they "do not set out the idea that this has been a well-thought-out process."

Eventually, the administration hopes agencies will tie their budget requests to expected results. Some agencies already do that. The Patent and Trademark Office, for example, can tell Congress each year how many patent and trademark applications it can process with various funding levels.

"Progress will depend on GPRA becoming more than a paper exercise," the President's budget said. "Over the next year, [the Office of Management and Budget] will work with all agencies to better integrate planning and budgeting and systematically associate costs with programs."

Groszyk said agencies have not yet perfected the process of linking resources to performance goals, largely because they lack the ability to put a price on what they do.

One way to tie the amount of funding agencies receive to the services they provide is by allowing them to charge user fees. The Clinton administration is proposing $3.8 billion in new user fees in 2001. Proposals include requiring meat, poultry and egg processors to cover the costs of all plant inspections conducted by the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service; replacing aviation excise taxes with cost-based fees for air traffic services provided by the Federal Aviation Administration; and allowing the Forest Service and other land management agencies to set their own recreation and entrance fees to cover the costs of facility improvements and new services.