When Goals Collide

All federal agencies have multiple -- and sometimes competing -- goals that they're pursuing simultaneously. Why do they succeed in achieving some of them and fail to meet others? In a new research paper, Eric Biber, an acting professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, provides an answer: "Agencies will systematically underperform on goals that are hard to measure and that conflict with the achievement of other more measurable goals. The lack of information about these hard-to-measure goals means that there will be fewer rewards to agencies for any success on those goals."

So what can be done about the problem -- especially at land management agencies, where tradeoffs on goals can be very difficult to reconcile? That's where it gets tricky. Biber explores a range of direct options, such as having Congress take back some authority from agencies, splitting agencies into components focused on different goals, or requiring that an agency figure out how to track progress on hard-to-measure goals. He also looks at other potential approaches, such as having a different agency monitor -- and even issue legally binding opinions -- on an agency's efforts.