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The Smithsonian Institution, home to 16 museums and galleries, is the black sheep of the President's Management Agenda.

It has received failing scores for all five PMA initiatives, including competitive sourcing, financial performance and e-government, since the Office of Management and Budget started issuing its quarterly scorecard in 2002. It is the only agency to have red scores, the lowest ranking, across all categories.

The real mystery, according to the Smithsonian, is why they are on the scorecard at all. "I can't tell you why we are included," said Linda St. Thomas, a Smithsonian spokeswoman. "We are atypical," adding that only OMB could explain its decision to include the agency.

"OMB and the Smithsonian concluded that it was consistent with the President's Management Agenda and it would serve the public well to include it, even though it's a smaller agency," said an OMB official.

As for the failing scores, the official said the Smithsonian's progress has been slow because the agency wasn't exploring best management practices prior to the start of PMA, and it doesn't have access to the same resources as larger agencies.

Hundreds of small units are left off the list of graded agencies, which includes mostly large departments governed by the 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act. The Smithsonian is the only agency on the list that gets a large chunk of money--$297 million out of its $925 million fiscal 2005 budget - from private trust funds. The other $628 million came from federal appropriations.

Other agencies in a similar situation, such as the Library of Congress and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which also are funded by federal appropriations as well as private donations, are not listed on the PMA scorecard.

OMB started issuing the scorecard as a way of marking agencies' progress on the Bush administration's management agenda. Achieving a "yellow" status, the midway point between red and green, requires having completed or announced at least one job competition involving 65 or more employees for the competitive sourcing initiative, the most controversial of the five campaigns.

According to OMB data on fiscal 2003 job competitions, the Smithsonian had identified only 20 positions that could be contested and had not held any competitions.

"We've always been red in outsourcing; that's just the nature of the Smithsonian," said St. Thomas, noting the agency's small size. The Smithsonian employs 6,000 people.

Moreover, Smithsonian jobs, said St. Thomas, are "very specialized. It makes it hard to outsource." She said the Smithsonian considered competing security jobs, but decided against it.

"Because of the national collections and special security, including working with Park Police, we decided that it's not wise for us to outsource that. We'll handle our own security on the National Mall," she said.

The union that represents Smithsonian workers, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2463, is not complaining. "If you outsource to people who don't have a connection to the institution, you're opening yourself up to real problems," said Dwight Bowman, president of the local and a former Smithsonian photographer.

Proponents of the PMA say the Smithsonian should follow the management initiatives as strictly as other agencies. "They use taxpayer dollars like the rest. While they have a unique mission, it is not one that should exempt them from good financial and management practices," said Geoffrey Segal, director of government reform for the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization.

While the Smithsonian's overall grades are all red, they received a green score for progress on their human capital initiative and yellow scores for progress in e-government, financial performance, and budget and performance integration. Competitive sourcing was rated red for progress.

"It looks to me like we've done everything we're supposed to do," said St. Thomas of the human capital initiative.

She said the low financial performance grade is probably caused by a delay in implementing the Smithsonian's new financial system. The agency received a clean audit on their fiscal 2004 financial statements. The OMB report on the Smithsonian also noted it did not meet the early Nov. 15 reporting deadline last year.

COMMENTS

• Somebody needs to look at OMB because they are causing government to spend large amounts of money to implement accounting systems that are of absolutely no use to the agencies and involve spending billions of dollars to comply. There absolutely is no reason for the DoD and services (or probably any other government agency) to develop an accrual accounting system as mandated by OMB in connection with the CFO act. Stop this foolishness and save billions immediately! Government operates on appropriations that represent "funds". Funds accounting has always been the basis of government. Operations are based on available "funds" and cash flow and not on accrual accounting. The accounting groups are not going to object to this move because they all reap billions in revenues from such a stupid move! Congress needs to tell OBM to stop this total waste of taxpayer money and forget Gore's reinventing government. Gore had no idea what he was doing and his idea has cost taxpayers billions without any significant benefit and a misfocus of management onto irrelevant topics. taxpayer Posted February 8, 2005 7:15 AM
• Besides its "yellow" rating on human crapital, OMB has four Reds, almost as many as the Smithsonian. Yet an OMB policial hack (sorry, "administration official") gets to take a shot at the Smithsonian. If the OMB-run scorecard is such a big deal, why is OMB itself still almost entirely in Red, even after 3+ years? What, doesn't OMB take the PMA seriously? Answer: The scorecard, like the PMA, and OMB, is a complete pathetic bad joke. If OMB doesn't take it seriously, why should anyone else? Art Posted February 3, 2005 2:46 PM
• OMB only included the Smithsonian on it's pathetic scorecard to embarrass it. Some small-minded political hack in OMB has it in for the Smithsonian. They probably want to outsource the Smithsonian to Lockheed Martin. Then, Lockheed could charge $20 per visitor, and reap "efficiencies," aka buckets of money. Guess what OMB: We like the Smithsonian. The fact the Smithsonian doesn't hire Wackenhut to protect our nation's treasures doesn't bother me for a minute. I'm not offended to see a security guard make more than minimum wage. Now: Why not outsource OMB? I bet Lockheed could be more "efficient." Art Posted February 3, 2005 2:38 PM