The General Services Administration has met many of the goals it has set under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, the General Accounting Office concludes in a new report, but isn't doing enough to improve safety, access and energy efficiency in federal buildings.
GAO's report, GGD-00-148R, summarized GSA's success in meeting the targets set out in their fiscal year 1999 performance report as well as how those targets have been modified in the agency's 2000 and 2001 plans. GAO conducted a similar analysis of each of the 24 Chief Financial Officer Act departments at the request of Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., and ranking minority member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.
GSA's goals focus on three performance outcomes:
- Providing quality products and services to federal employees.
- Making federal buildings safe, accessible and energy efficient.
- Adequately maintaining those buildings.
GSA amended its 2001 goals by replacing security cost with a customer-satisfaction measure and adding an energy efficiency target. But GAO noted the agency failed to set an outcome-oriented measure for its security program.
Another persistent criticism GAO noted was GSA's unwillingness to address the validity of the data it uses to measure performance. Without such validity, GPRA loses a great deal of its value as a policy making instrument.
"GSA's fiscal year 2001 plan does not provide reasonable assurance that its performance information is credible," the report said. "The plan ... focuses more on where data is coming from rather than what was done to verify and validate the data used to measure performance in the systems."
Similarly, both the performance report for 1999 and the plan for 2001 omit any direct measurement of the management challenges identified by GSA's inspector general, such as controls on fraud, waste and mismanagement, inexperience among Multiple Award Schedule personnel and the aging of federal buildings, GAO said.
The document did give GSA high marks for progress made in linking its performance measures to budgetary concerns. Links like those made in the GSA plan are expected to be an important part of transforming GPRA into an effective tool for congressional appropriators.
In its response to a draft version of the report, GSA agreed to address concerns about security and data validity in their fiscal year 2002 performance plan.