Agencies urged to make better use of performance measures

The number of federal managers who measure program performance has increased over the past decade, but managers are not using the results to inform their decisions any more than they have in the past, a Government Accountability Office official told lawmakers on Thursday.

GAO credited agencies and the Office of Management and Budget with making program planning and measurement "slowly, yet increasingly" part of the government's culture. Bernice Steinhardt, GAO director of strategic issues, told members of a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee that she has observed a transformation in the government's ability to manage for results.

This progress provides a solid foundation for improving government programs, Steinhardt said, but she added that the value of measures in and of themselves is limited.

"Unless federal managers use performance data to make management decisions and to inform policy-makers, the benefit of collecting performance information cannot be realized and real improvement in management and program results are less likely to be achieved," Steinhardt stated in her report (GAO-08-1026T). GAO's assessment was based on an October 2007 to January 2008 survey of 4,000 federal managers at the GS-13 level and higher. The watchdog agency conducted a similar survey in 1997.

Marcus Peacock, deputy administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency and former OMB associate director, echoed Steinhardt.

"A thermometer just tells you the temperature; a thermostat not only tells you the temperature, but gives you a way to change it," Peacock said during Thursday's hearing. "Performance management systems should be thermostats not just thermometers."

Peacock identified five barriers to using performance information: a lack of fresh and frequent data, a focus on money rather than results, too many meaningless measures, limited access to the data and cultural resistance.

Steinhardt told the subcommittee that the next presidential administration will have an opportunity and responsibility to build on the progress agencies have made. She called for a commitment to results-oriented management at the highest levels to more closely tie individual performance with organizational results and to bolster agencies' ability to collect and use performance data.

Peacock and other witnesses agreed that a clear commitment by agency leaders to performance-based management was a prerequisite for success.

Steinhardt also said OMB must work with agencies to increase confidence in their performance assessments. "For the collection of performance information to be considered more than meaningless paperwork exercises, it must be useful to and used by federal decision-makers at all levels, including Congress," she said.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the subcommittee, said the effective use of performance information was particularly important given the urgent fiscal and security threats facing the nation.

"We need to move away from how these management tools can be used in theory and begin to actually put them into practice to improve the federal government," Carper said.

A number of witnesses shared best practices for the use of performance information. Gov. Martin O'Malley, D-Md., touted the CitiStat and StateStat programs, which identify problems such as crime spots and Chesapeake Bay pollution and target resources toward addressing them. The success of these programs, O'Malley said, has hinged on four tenets: timely, accurate information shared by all; rapid deployment of resources; effective tactics and strategies; and relentless follow-up and assessment.

Representatives from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NASA and the Veterans Affairs Department also spoke about their relative success in using performance measures.

Steinhardt said GAO will issue a second report stemming from the survey of managers. It will examine which agencies are putting performance information to the best use and how certain agencies could improve.