Setting Performance Priorities: It's The Law

A group of government management improvement experts--including those who worked on reform efforts in the Reagan, Clinton and Bush I and II administrations, have come together to urge the Senate to pass a measure (already approved by the House) that would require agencies to set high priority goals and measure their progress toward achieving them.

In a posting on the Center for American Progress website, Jonathan D. Breul, John Kamensky, Jitinder Kohli and Robert J. Shea argue that "setting agency goals that target real-world results for the American people will force leaders to prioritize initiatives that are the most effective at achieving these results."

Breul worked in the Office of Management and Budget on governmentwide management policies from 1980 to 2002. Kamensky was deputy director of Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government. Kohli spent 15 years in the British government, including leading an effort to reduce the administrative burden of regulation. Shea led the George W. Bush administration's performance improvement efforts.

The authors suggest the Senate sharpen the House bill by, among, other things, limiting the number of high priority goals to about 5 per agency, or 100 across the whole government. They also warn that the new legislation potentially just layers more reporting requirements on top of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act.

GPRA, they point out, already requires agencies to adopt strategic plans, publish performance plans and issue annual reports on what they've accomplished. "GPRA already ensures that agencies produce lots of information, but few decision-makers make use of the information," they write. "To some extent, that's because of the sheer volume of information produced. This is a recipe for confusion and does little to improve government performance."

Perhaps, the authors delicately suggest, it's time to put GPRA out to pasture -- or at least scale it way back. It would be "sensible," they suggest, "for the Senate to reform the GPRA so that it no longer requires agencies to produce voluminous reports. The new legislation could limit reporting requirements to high-priority goals--requiring that agencies describe which agency programs contribute to a high-priority goal and to what extent they will help accomplish the goal."

Makes sense to me. GPRA came in with much fanfare about how it would revolutionize agencies' approach to managing the performance of their programs. Now, all these years later, people still aren't paying attention to it. That strongly suggests it's time for the law to go.

By the way, it's worth noting that the Obama administration already has made setting high priority goals a centerpiece of its reform efforts. The proposed law would simply make such efforts a requirement for future administrations, too.