Management score card showing more top grades

Federal agencies are showing consistent progress in implementing President's Management Agenda, scoring among the highest grades yet on the administration's quarterly score card, the Office of Management and Budget said.

For the second quarter of fiscal 2008, which ended March 31, roughly half of the agencies' status scores were green, the highest grade possible, according to data released last week by OMB. Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of agency progress scores -- which rate advancements based on preestablished deliverables and timelines -- received grades of green.

The percentage of green is the third-highest since the stoplight-style grading system was introduced six years ago, OMB said.

"All this green is driven by agency interest in better management practices," said Clay Johnson, OMB's deputy director for management. "Federal employees want their agencies to be more effective and efficient, and they continue to welcome the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to perform better and better every year."

For the second consecutive quarter, the Labor Department, the Social Security Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency each earned green ratings on all five PMA initiatives: human capital, competitive sourcing, financial performance, e-government and performance improvement. Labor has earned perfect scores since the second quarter of 2005.

While the most recent score card showed improvements in some categories, progress was somewhat offset by declines in others.

For example, the Office of Personnel Management brought its e-gov score up from red to green, while OMB's score in that category went from yellow to green. The Commerce and Health and Human Services departments, however, headed in the opposite direction, dropping by two and one grades, respectively.

OMB credited itself with the most progress of any of the 26 agencies evaluated. In addition to its e-gov score, the agency also went up a notch in financial performance, performance improvement and competitive sourcing.

Johnson wrote in a memo accompanying the grades that they showed a high degree of improvement from the original score card in 2002, when "the performance of federal programs was assessed only on an as-needed, inconsistent basis. Half of all programs could not demonstrate they were achieving results, and only half had clear, outcome-oriented goals."

Regardless of whether the next administration continues the score card system, Johnson wrote, "every government program will be held accountable for improving its performance and making its performance public and transparent."

Those performance challenges will likely include tightened controls on the use of government purchase cards.

A March Government Accountability report (GAO-08-333) found that nearly 41 percent of $14 billion in purchase card transactions were not properly authorized. Federal employees, the report found, used the cards for subscriptions to Internet dating services and to purchase iPods and lingerie.

OMB officials found a silver lining in the GAO report, arguing that once the breakdown in internal controls was discovered, agency leaders moved quickly to recover inappropriately spent funds and to discipline those involved. Agencies are now in the process of implementing more stringent card usage policies.

"We are encouraged that agencies and auditors have more tools today to bring to light the unacceptable … credit card misuse," said Danny Werfel, OMB's deputy controller. "With these tools, agencies are taking immediate action to address charge card misuse through disciplinary actions and other measures and are now tightening controls and policies to eliminate abuses of the charge card program."

No agency saw its financial performance score drop as a result of the purchase card controversy.