OMB program assessments viewed as flawed budget tool

The Bush administration's annual evaluations of federal programs are good for improving management, but problematic for budgeting because they fail to take into account congressional intent and can be politicized in ways that can harm the review process, a legislative staffer said Tuesday.

The reviews, conducted each year with the Program Assessment Rating Tool questionnaire, are a valuable management tool, as 75 percent to 80 percent of the recommendations made are management-related, said Mike Hettinger, staff director for the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Finance and Accountability, at a conference hosted by the Performance Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank.

Hettinger said he expects to see program evaluations carried out by future administrations, following the attention they have received from the Bush team through the President's Management Agenda and the PART process.

"My problem," Hettinger said, "is with using [the PART] as a budget tool."

The PART -- especially the numerical score that is designed to sum up the assessment -- can be subjective, he said. "Some of the political judgments of the administration don't match the political judgments of the Congress," he said, noting that the president's budget request, which the Office of Management and Budget prepares taking PART scores into account, is a political document.

Hettinger said differences of intent between Congress and the administration can lead to differences in how programs are evaluated. Congressional recipients of the PART data therefore tend to focus more on the information behind the score than on the number itself, he said.

As an example Hettinger cited Even Start, an adult literacy program run by the Education Department. That program, he said, was originally established by Congress to boost adult reading levels, but its PART evaluation is based largely on the number of participants who obtain general equivalency degrees. As a result, Hettinger said, the program received an ineffective rating in 2002 and OMB recommended that its funding be zeroed out. But Congress ultimately continued to fund it.

Some members of Congress would like to see the PART score eliminated, as it exposes members to criticism when they are on the record as backing a program with a low effectiveness rating, even though they may disagree with the assessment, Hettinger said.

He noted that a program assessment tool should incorporate congressional intent at the beginning of the process and said the Program Assessment and Results Act (H.R. 185), introduced by Rep. Todd Platts, R.-Pa., last year, would do that, while also improving transparency in the assessment process.

When preparing information for their PART assessments, it is important that agencies see congressional appropriators as a target audience, Hettinger said, noting that agencies participate in separate budget processes with OMB and with Congress. But ultimately, he said, "You don't want to have agencies trying to pass the test -- you want agencies trying to make management better."