OMB to brief appropriators about federal program ratings

In the upcoming weeks, the Office of Management and Budget will brief lawmakers in charge of funding decisions on the administration's process for evaluating federal programs, OMB Deputy Director for Management Clay Johnson pledged Wednesday.

For the past two budget cycles, OMB evaluators have rated a sampling of federal programs on how well they deliver results to taxpayers. The ratings are intended to help administration officials and Congress link budgets to program performance, as part of the president's management agenda.

OMB will reach out to "key legislators" to show them that OMB's program assessments are a useful tool for making informed budget decisions, Johnson said. Lawmakers do not necessarily need to reward programs that the administration rates highly with more money, or punish those that fare poorly, he explained, but they should at least be aware that such ratings exist.

Since agency budget requests will contain an increasing number of references to OMB program evaluations, it is crucial for the administration to brief lawmakers on the subject in a matter of "weeks, not months," Johnson said during the Excellence in Government conference in Washington. The Council for Excellence in Government and Government Executive sponsored the conference, which ended Wednesday.

Aside from lawmakers on the House Government Reform Committee and Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, most members of Congress, including appropriators, have little knowledge of OMB's program assessments, Johnson said.

At a June forum hosted by the Performance Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank, Michael Stephens, a senior staff assistant on the House Appropriations Committee, said he has never used OMB's formal program evaluations. He added that he has rarely heard fellow staffers discuss the Program Assessment Rating Tool, or PART, a series of 25 questions that OMB evaluators use to grade programs as "effective," "moderately effective," "adequate," "ineffective," or "results not demonstrated."

Stephens was unaware that OMB had used the PART to evaluate 100 programs for the fiscal 2003 budget cycle and 234 programs-20 percent of all federal programs-for the fiscal 2004 cycle. The majority of programs rated for the 2004 budget could not demonstrate results.

If the administration is serious about drawing attention to the PART, Stephens said, OMB should keep congressional appropriators more informed about the assessments. Right now, appropriators have a tendency to dismiss the ratings as one of many management tools that come in and out of fashion. These tools often distract agency managers and make information harder to find when combing over thousands of pages of budget justifications, the traditional material appropriators base decisions on, he said.

But Johnson said he suspects that appropriators will take to the PART after OMB explains the tool to them and promotes it. "Nothing in Washington is automatically triggered," he said.