Letters

Tanya Ballard's Executive Memo item (Still Seeing Red, September) makes me see red. In my more than 40 years of association with the federal government, I have observed that both Republican and Democratic administrations measure things because they are measurable, not because they are meaningful in trying to evaluate the performance of government units.

The Defense Department is deployed all over the world and by all accounts is doing a good job. Yet on the Office of Management and Budget's charts, Defense's ratings are all red. The current administration has proposed the largest boost in defense spending in several decades. But if its measures are correct, according to OMB Director Mitch Daniels' criteria, Defense's funding should be cut, not boosted. According to OMB's criteria, if we invaded Iraq and lost, but Defense's human capital, outsourcing, financial management, e-government and budget integration efforts met their goals, the department would be doing a good job. By the same token, if we invaded Iraq and quickly disposed of Saddam Hussein with minimal loss of life on all sides, but the department did not meet its management agenda goals, Defense would be judged a failure.

While planning is desirable and attainment of goals laudable, effectiveness of mission accomplishment is the critical criteria of government performance. If Social Security gets the checks to the right people at the right time, it has done a good job. If the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention detects the onset of an epidemic and stops it, it has done a good job. We always worry about the efficiency and administrative neatness of an organization-and not its effectiveness.

We do so simply because it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of a nonmarket based institution. The simple parameter of profit and loss makes judging the performance of private sector institutions straightforward. Judging the performance of public institutions is much harder. So we continue to measure that which we can, whether it is meaningful or not. As soon as the players learn the rules of the game, they will meet OMB's demands, though they may or may not improve their agency's performance.

We should implore our schools of public administration to develop and test measurement techniques appropriate to public agencies, not continue to try to force public institutions into the private sector's glass slippers.

James Colvard
Former deputy director of the
Office of Personnel Management

An error appears in the preprinted Service to America Medals supplement in this issue. In "Serving Justice," Thomas Blanton's sentencing date should read May 2001.