TOPICS
TOPICS
Federal program performance up slightly, OMB reports
Nearly three fourths of federal programs evaluated in time for the release of President Bush's fiscal 2007 budget request have been found to be at least somewhat effective, Office of Management and Budget officials said Thursday.
Documents accompanying the 2007 budget, to be unveiled Monday, will show that 72 percent of programs reviewed by OMB using a questionnaire called the Program Assessment Rating Tool received grades of "effective," "moderately effective" or "adequate," said Clay Johnson, OMB's deputy director for management.
Only 4 percent were deemed "ineffective." The remaining 24 percent could not be judged because they failed to "demonstrate results."
OMB now has evaluated 80 percent of the programs it set out to assess four years ago. The remaining 20 percent will be rated in time for the release of the fiscal 2008 budget request.
The evaluations are intended to provide lawmakers and other policymakers with information to use when making budget decisions. But OMB is quick to point out that the ratings do not necessarily correlate with recommendations for funding.
The White House has slated some ineffective programs for funding increases, for instance, while others have made the list for cuts. In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Bush said he will recommend reducing or eliminating more than 140 programs.
Johnson would not estimate how many of those recommendations were influenced by PART scores as opposed to other factors, such as their relative importance to other administration priorities. Some of the programs on the list have fulfilled their mission, he said. Others have not even been graded by OMB.
This year's PART ratings will represent a slight increase in the programs found to be effective, moderately effective or adequate. Last year, 67 percent of programs rated fell into those categories.
The grades also will continue a trend noticeable in past years: Increasing percentages of program managers are able to measure performance and demonstrate some form of results. Half of the 234 programs evaluated in time for the fiscal 2004 budget failed to show results, compared with 38 percent of 407 programs graded for 2005 and 29 percent of the 607 scored for 2006.
In last year's budget, Bush recommended ending 99 discretionary programs and significantly scaling back funding for 55 others; not all the recommendations were PART-related. Lawmakers acted on more of the suggestions than they have in the past, implementing 89 of them for $6.5 billion in savings, by OMB's count. In fiscal 2005, Congress enacted only seven of the administration's 65 proposed reductions, achieving $366 million in savings.
Along with the release of the 2007 budget, Monday also will mark the debut of an OMB Web site aimed at making program performance information more transparent, accessible and comprehensible. Agencies' plans for addressing shortcomings in program management will also be publicized, to increase accountability.
This effort should help to grab lawmakers' attention, Johnson said.
"One of the things that we suspect will come with greater transparency and greater candor is greater interest by constituent groups, [and] greater interest by members of Congress, on what do we really need to be doing to cause these programs to work better," Johnson said. "Is the improvement plan enough? . . . Should we be doing something other than this?
"Those kinds of conversations are encouraged and facilitated the more visible, the more transparent, the more candid the information is about what we're doing now," he said.
The PART scores to be published Monday will not reflect how federal programs, in particular those at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, performed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, because the assessments were completed before the hurricane, said Robert Shea, the administration official in charge of the reviews.
"The data [on post-Katrina performance] isn't a factor in their assessment, but it is a factor in their improvement plans," Shea said. "A lot of what we seek to address through the improvement plans were some of the weaknesses that we've recognized in responsiveness to the disaster."
COMMENTS
- How can the government state this is a new program when it is not. You still have to select out of top 3 applicants for the job and take a VA preference or spouse preference for a position. You have old original job descriptions that were not modified to reflect what your position really is and you are given an NSPS based upon old documenation since if you change your job description to what you really do you have to apply for your position. NSPS objectives are being interpreted at different installations and drawn up so differently no one knows how to create a correct one. You have a Pay Pool Manager that decides if your worthy of a rating your supervisor has written and if they can't visualize what your responsibity is they down grade the rating say of 4 to the norm of 3 and you are put into a group of similar series and you get a raise based upon how much money is in the budget and how many people in that same group divided amongst them. Now if your liked you get the money if not you can get nothing. Supervisors have no saving grace ... no union so if you get a supervisor who doesn't care for you and get a 2 or 1 rating then you can lose your job. Federal employees support facilities while our troops are fighting for our freedom. I believe this program to be unfair for civilian employees. If you wanted to change this system then change it for the better not for a system that is already being operated so differently throughout installations at the discretion of the organizations to choose how to implement and grade employees. The process to get rid of employees that need to be gone is not going to change with this system, because the if the supervisors did not document under the GS system what makes you believe it will be done under the NSPS system especially if the unions still support us. Government needs to rethink this program. Marianne Posted March 21, 2008 8:20 PM
- Somebody please explain!!! We're in the middle of implementing NSPS to get the best and the brightest, my family's livelihood is at risk if a manager doesn't like me and now I have to read this: grades of "effective," "moderately effective" or "adequate," said Clay Johnson, OMB's deputy director for management. This is sick!! How come I have to be exemplary and innovative to keep my job but highly paid program managers need only be "effective" or "adequate"??? Why doesn't someone at GovExec.com ask the "real" questions on how unfair regular government workers are being railroaded into a personnel system that is prejudiced toward the lower grade employees? Why is there a double standard for performance??? How can we be expected to swallow NSPS when the program managers (who can now cut our pay) are held to a much lower standard? Gil in Tex. Gilbert Hernandez Posted February 3, 2006 9:03 AM
