Feds urged to set standards for state, local performance

Federal managers must hold their state and local counterparts accountable for the performance of programs that have a national impact, according to a report recently released by the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

When results achieved by state and local programs influence a government agency's ability to meet strategic goals, federal managers should push states to gather and disseminate appropriate performance data, said Maryland School of Public Affairs Professor Shelley Metzenbaum, the report's author. Federal agencies should compile information from states and publish it in an understandable format for "everyone to study," she recommended.

Metzenbaum said agencies should include the state and local data in annual reports required by the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act. Even if agencies do not include all the details in GPRA reports, agencies should at least reference the data.

"Federal failure to carry out these tasks lessens the potential benefit, both motivational and informational, of state performance data," Metzenbaum cautioned.

Federal managers also should take pains to standardize performance data, ensuring that states and localities use similar measurements and report equivalent statistics for like programs, the report recommended. In instances where federal managers are not familiar with a program's objectives, they could allow states or nongovernmental organizations to design standard measures.

Congress can play a key role in prompting state and local officials to collect program performance information. "When common metrics do not already exist, Congress should require and financially support the full spectrum of state performance measurement, along with annual training of state information handlers, in areas where federal agencies depend on states to accomplish their objectives," Metzenbaum said.

In addition, federal managers or lawmakers could set goals for states and require states to gather certain types of performance information, the report noted. Federal agencies could punish states that fail to demonstrate achievement of mandated goals with budget cuts or other penalties and reward those that exceed expectations, the report said.

But federal managers would have to strike a balance between dictating performance measures and allowing flexibility. While a carrot-and-stick approach can motivate state program heads, agencies must ensure that "those being measured [at the state or local level] do not feel so strongly threatened that they try to have the [federal] goals repealed or destroy the measurement system, either by dismantling it or by undermining it with inaccurate and untimely measurement submission," Metzenbaum said.