GovernmentExecutive.com

The Bush administration is committed to improving systems for rating employee performance, its management chief said Wednesday, but doesn't expect Democrats in Congress to go along with efforts to tie employees' pay more closely to their ratings in such systems.

Winning approval for a governmentwide pay-for-performance system will be "almost impossible to do with a Democratic-led Congress," Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Clay Johnson said during an appearance at a Government Executive Leadership Breakfast. "I expect very little movement on that in the next couple of years."

Other parts of the Bush administration's management agenda are more bipartisan, Johnson said. On management issues in general, he said, "I don't believe there's going to be a sea change with the change of leadership in Congress."

To the extent the administration's objectives ever run into opposition on Capitol Hill, Johnson said, it usually comes from congressional staffers rather than members themselves. For example, he said, efforts to restrict the use of the administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool at the Labor and Health and Human Services department and other agencies are the work of a single employee.

"It's one staff member who has a thing about PART, and we know where he lives," Johnson quipped.

Similarly, an effort to include language in legislation that would limit the Bush administration's e-government initiatives was the work of a lone staffer with an interest in the issue, according to Johnson. "I bet his boss doesn't even have a clue that's in there," he said.

Johnson noted that he meets with President Bush once a year to update him on agencies' grades on the administration's traffic-light-style management score card. Last year, he said, Bush asked, "When everybody gets to green, then what?"

Green grades mean agencies have the ability to do well, Johnson said, but don't necessarily mean that they are. Agencies need to be able to translate their grades into real-world results. "They might be all green," he said, "but if they can't put it in plain English and dollars and cents, they have not in fact caused their agency to work better."