First-ever performance reports begin trickling out

Federal agencies have begun sporadically releasing their first annual performance reports under the Government Performance and Results Act.

Under the Results Act, agencies have until March 31 to issue the reports, which explain whether or not agencies met their performance goals for fiscal 1999. Agencies set the goals upon which they are measuring their performance back in 1998.

Several agencies have beat the Results Act deadline, but each has taken a different approach to presenting its performance report. The Defense Department, for example, released its report this week as part of Defense Secretary William Cohen's annual report to Congress. The Health and Human Services Department interspersed its performance report among the 2001 budget requests for its sub-agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Health Care Financing Administration.

The Social Security Administration issued its performance report five months early as part of the agency's annual accountability report. That report was released on Nov. 18, well before any other agency.

In a study released last week, the General Accounting Office predicted the performance reports would not be very useful this year.

"It appears unlikely that agencies consistently will have for their first performance reports the reliable performance information needed to assess whether performance goals are being met or specifically how performance can be improved," GAO said in "Managing for Results: Challenges Agencies Face in Producing Credible Performance Information" (GGD-00-52).

The release of the annual performance reports marks the end of the first full cycle of the Results Act. The act, passed in 1993, gave agencies several years to prepare for its strategic planning and reporting requirements.

In 1997, agencies released their first five-year strategic plans, which were designed to broadly explain their missions. Then in 1998, agencies drafted their first one-year performance plans, setting out specific goals to be accomplished in fiscal 1999.

GAO said agencies' performance plans didn't do a great job of explaining how managers would improve agencies' performance, nor did they offer evidence that agencies have data to show whether or not they're meeting their goals. Only four of the 24 agencies' plans that GAO reviewed gave auditors confidence that performance information would be credible.