Performance Pressure

Here's what Congress, the Office of Management and Budget and the General Accounting Office expect to see in agency performance plans.

Congress

• On-time submission with agencies' fiscal 1999 budget justifications.
• User-friendly, complete, clear and concise pictures of what agencies will accomplish at given levels of resources.
• A format and organization useful to authorizers, budgeteers and appropriators.
• Compliance with the Results Act and OMB and GAO guidance.
• Information that was left out of strategic plans about coordination of cross-cutting programs, major management problems, data sources and capacity, linkages between strategic goals and day-to-day operations, specifics on how performance will be measured.

Office of Management and Budget

• Several iterations of an agency's plan: one reflecting agency budget requests, a second reflecting the President's request for the agency, a third reflecting authorizations and appropriations.
• Strategic plans only covered major agency functions; performance plans must cover
  every program in the Program and Financing schedules in the budget appendix for
  the agency.
• Performance goals for management problems, especially those highlighted in congressional reviews of strategic plans.
• Objective, quantifiable and measurable annual performance goals corresponding to goals and objectives in the strategic plan. The annual plan should contain performance goals for each strategic goal.
• Goals should reflect core program functions, not highlight minor accomplishments.
• Goals for fiscal 1999, not fiscal 1998, performance.
• Goals agency managers actually will use to run programs.
• Performance should be measurable and indicators should be included.
• Goals based on prior years' funding should be highlighted.
• Plans should include means and strategies for achieving performance goals. Inputs and processes are means and strategies, not performance goals. Means and strategies should include streamlining, contracting out, privatization, business process reengineering and other approaches for increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
• Descriptions of how performance will be verified and validated, including the extent to which goals reflect performance data the agency already collects.
• Descriptions of data sources and how goals can be measured using agency systems and currently collected data.
• References to agency mission and overall goals and objectives.

General Accounting Office

• Succinct statements of intended performance for subsequent comparison with actual performance.
• Links between performance goals and measures and the agency's mission, strategic goals, and program activities in the budget request.
• Explanations of how agencies with related goals are coordinating.
• Strategies and resources for achieving performance goals.
• Descriptions of how capital, human, financial and other resources are being applied to achieve performance goals.
• A method of assuring performance information is credible, complete, accurate and consistent.
• Identification of data limitations and their implications for assessing performance.