GovernmentExecutive.com

Members of a new Senate panel and the Obama administration's chief performance officer said on Thursday they are committed to ensuring that performance informs budget decisions on federal programs.

During the first meeting of the Senate Budget Committee Task Force, lawmakers and the Office of Management and Budget's Jeff Zients lamented how little performance has influenced previous federal budgets.

"The test of a performance management system is whether it is used," said Zients, who also serves as OMB's deputy director for management. "Despite the extent and breadth of historic efforts, the current approach fails this test. Congress doesn't use it, agencies don't use it and it doesn't produce meaningful information for the public."

Elements of previous administrations' performance efforts are worth salvaging, he said, but traditionally there's been too much emphasis on producing performance information to comply with a checklist of requirements rather than using it to drive change.

Previous attempts at influencing congressional budget decisions with performance data has failed, and Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., a task force member, said it is likely to continue to be a significant challenge.

"It is no secret that Congress is not very good at cutting programs," Bunning said. "Everybody has their little program and their little fiefdom, and they protect that fiefdom as well as possible."

To overcome this challenge, Bunning urged Zients to include enforcement mechanisms in whatever performance system is established.

"It will do us no good if we come up with a way to identify wasteful spending but then do nothing about it," said Bunning.

As the administration develops its performance management system, Zients said it will follow five key principles: senior leadership ownership; cascading goals and measurements; outcome-oriented, cross-agency goals and measurements; relentless review and accountability; and a transparent process. The cascading goals and measurements principle is designed to remedy a historic failure to communicate to component agencies, units or offices how their performance on a program resulted in the success or failure of departmentwide objectives.

Zients pledged to work closely with the task force and full budget committee to ensure the performance information they receive is useful in decision-making.

"In particular, we believe you have a unique perspective for examining how the government can more effectively achieve broad goals through multiple programs that cut across agency and appropriation boundaries," he said.