Congress urged to set clear performance standards
Lawmakers should set clear performance expectations for agencies in annual bills authorizing federal programs, according to a new report from a management think tank.
If lawmakers spelled out performance standards in authorization bills, which set parameters for various federal programs, agencies would have an easier time prioritizing among strategic goals, the report said. The explicit performance criteria would also help Congress in its oversight role, according to the study.
The study, Linking Performance and Budgeting: Opportunities in the Federal Budget Process, was completed by Philip Joyce, associate professor of public policy and public administration at The George Washington University, under a grant from the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
President Bush's five-part management agenda asks agencies to consider performance goals and results achieved on past projects when formulating budget requests. In turn, Congress is supposed to base funding decisions partly on agencies' progress at meeting goals.
The authorization process is the "most logical place for performance information to gain a foothold into the congressional budget process" because it is "already set up to deal with comprehensive questions of program design, redesign and performance," Joyce wrote in the report.
Lawmakers could also establish clear performance standards in appropriations legislation, which allocates money to programs, according to the report. But the authorization legislation is all-encompassing, whereas lawmakers only review roughly a third of federal spending during the appropriations process.
Appropriations committees could follow up on authorization committee work by demanding performance data from agencies as part of the budget process, Joyce recommended. If this information became a "normal part of the congressional debate," budget decisions would be more likely to reflect agency performance, the report said.
Congress should also use the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), a series of 25 questions that Office of Management and Budget evaluators use to grade programs, to help with funding decisions, the report noted. The assessments should not put agency managers, already under pressure to submit performance information under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), under any additional stress, the study said.
"OMB should make it clear to agencies that the current PART initiative and the president's management agenda are not new initiatives, but are fully consistent with preexisting requirements under GPRA," the report stated.