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."