New report seeks to help streamline federal performance measurement

The Obama administration's new chief performance officer, Jeffrey Zients, has only been on the job for several weeks, but he has a big task ahead of him: Building a better government performance system.

A new report, recently published by a team from Accenture, the Georgetown Public Policy Institute (GPPI) and OMB Watch, offers some suggestions as to how this might be accomplished.

Adam Hughes is the Director of Federal Fiscal Policy at OMB Watch.

He was responsible for overseeing the study and talked about it on Tuesday's Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris.

"The details of our report are similar to reforms that have been suggested in the past, particularly by places like the GAO. The program level work that the PART [Program Assessment Rating Tool] engages in -- and the more macro, long-term level that GPRA [Government Performance and Results Act] works on are not aligned. Oftentimes they actually conflict with each other. So we recommend, in this report, to have a realignment of those two existing systems. I think one of the important things that came out of this process was that people [said] they didn't want a third system to overlay on top of PART and GPRA. They were really interested in making these two systems that exist now work better together."

Hughes acknowledges that OMB Watch has been very critical of PART over the past couple of years, but he adds that his group thinks that there are aspects of PART that should be retained.

"It just needs to have some modifications and reforms instituted that actually make the process useful to people within the federal government and outside -- not just a process that goes on as a compliance exercise."

He also notes that he feels it would be easier to change PART rather than GPRA. He says this is evidenced by recent rhetoric from the Obama Administration, which has talked about reforming executive branch systems.

In the report, Hughes notes that the groups did not go into great detail about what should be changed when it comes to PART, mainly because the report was a consensus.

"When you get down into really fine detail at that level, it's hard to have the 75 or so experts that we've pulled together for this project agree on everything. One of the things that did come through at this workshop that we held last fall was that the PART is designed to focus on the rating as the end result and often glosses over the reasons why programs are working or why they're not working. So, one of the things that we would want to modify with PART is to bring the focus back to the performance data and in developing and fostering a conversation among different stakeholders about that performance data."

One of the main points, he adds, is focusing on the data, regardless of what it should be labeled. Accessing existing performance data is far more important, he says, rather than figuring out whether or not it is labeled 'effective' or 'moderately effective'.

It's the data itself, Hughes notes, that could empower federal managers and leaders.

"I think because they don't have that authority and they don't have the ability to make . . . changes, they're not empowered to use performance data to inform the work that they do."

Another issue has to do with data collection. Hughes says, currently, resources don't exist to collect some management data, which means it doesn't exist. This challenge was outlined in the recent report, as well.

"Another stumbling block that you run into with PART is, oftentimes they'll list underlying studies or outside research that's been done to support evidence of whether programs are working or not, but those studies are not made available for one reason or another. I've been told by some folks that it's federal employee resistance to making the underlying links available on the PART reviews. Others have told me it's OMB's resistance. Sometimes it's [that] the studies are done by outside organizations and they're not public. But even that little thing of [giving] everyone access to the same data can greatly impact the quality of the conversation about what's working and what's not in the federal government."

The report's authors are still trying to get the word out about their publication. Hughes says their overall goal is to engage all types of stakeholders in the conversation about government performance.

The group is currently reaching out to OMB, the White House and certain members of Congress, as well.

One of the toughest challenges has been the subject matter itself. Hughes readily acknowledges that talking about federal government management can be seen as dull by many.

"This is kind of a process issue of the federal government. It's something OMB Watch specializes in, but not a lot of people get really excited about the process of government. We believe that it's key to making government more effective -- not so much what policies are developed, but how they're developed."

He adds that he feels optimistic, judging from the fact that the Obama Administration has said it is committed to working on government performance.

As far as how federal agencies will feel, Hughes says it is anyone's guess.

"I think some agencies do a pretty good job of engaging in conversations about performance. I think others are farther behind. I think some have more advanced technical infrastructure for reporting and sharing information like this and some are farther behind. I think you'll see some jump in right away."

Hughes says he thinks one of the strongest tools that could help to solve the problem of collecting data useful for management is the IT dashboard.

He says the dashboard is a great example of one of the analytical tools necessary for helping the federal government do its job better.

"Almost all of the metrics that are used on the IT dashboard are not subjective in the way that the metrics that are used in the PART are. Whether the program is over budget or not -- you can't argue about whether its over budget or not. It either is or it isn't. Trying to make that data available in a more accessible and usable way is kind of the second part of the government performance data debate."

Hughes says he and the group that wrote the report realize that change can't happen overnight and they feel that keeping realistic goals and remaining patient are the easiest ways to facilitate change.

---
On the Web:

OMB Watch -- Building a Better Government Performance System (pdf)

OMB -- PART FAQ

OMB -- GPRA

(Copyright 2009 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)