I am a Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Management, where we have been closely following GPRA and the broader issues of improving government performance.
What I want to share with you today are ten reasons why GPRA can help Congress solve problems that must be solved. My argument, in summary, is this:
Citizens and public officials alike are all too correct in criticizing the way the federal government works. Performance is not what it could be--and the performance measurement required by the act is the keystone for solving this problem. But Congress is critical to making performance-based management work. Without strong congressional leadership, GPRA's impact will fade away. For members of Congress to play that leadership role, GPRA will have to provide them with answers to questions they need to solve. GPRA can in fact do just that: It can provide the missing link between authorizations and appropriations, on the one hand, the worries about government performance on the other.
The ten points are these:
1. We must tackle both the performance and budget deficits.
2. Performance measurement is the keystone to reducing both deficits.
3. Performance measurement provides Congress with critical information about agencies' strategic decisions
4. Strategic plans provide a road map to achieving results.
5. Performance measurement connects plans with results.
6. Performance management can improve the authorization process.
7. Performance measurement can improve the appropriations process.
8. Performance measurement is no magic bullet -- but it helps congress do what has to be done.
9. Performance measurement can transform the president's budget submission to Congress.
10. Performance measurement can vastly improve congressional policymaking.
Let me explore these points in turn.
1. We Must Tackle Both the Performance and Budget
Deficits
Too often, debate on cutting the federal deficit proceeds on
the assumption that, should we ever truly succeed in eliminating
the deficit, the nation's problems would end. Eliminating the
deficit would demonstrate great political will, and that would be
a huge accomplishment. Citizens worry that government doesn't
work and can't make tough choices. A serious deficit reduction
plan would show that government solve such problems.
Even balancing the budget, however, would not solve all the
critical questions. Eliminating the deficit, whether by cutting
programs or increasing taxes, would necessarily not ensure that
government would work any better. Indeed, some programs might
work even worse. Many of the downsizing and budget cutting
decisions have been made with a blunt instrument. Government
offices have often come out of the process ill-configured, with
the wrong collections of people and technology to promote
efficiency. (That has too often been the result of downsizing in
the private sector as well.) Inefficient offices could frustrate
citizens doing business with government; they could allow fraud,
waste, and abuse to grow; and they could generate fresh news
reports about a government that can't shoot straight.
Citizens are not likely to react warmly if, after having
been promised a government that works better and costs less, they
get a government that works worse and costs more. Applicants for
social security benefits expect quick and friendly service, along
with predictable and accurate checks. Midwest residents want
timely tornado warnings, while coastal residents need good
hurricane predictions. Workers expect their pensions to be safe;
flyers, the air traffic control system to guide them safely to
the ground; citizens, their drinking water to be free of toxins.
The symbol of a balanced budget will have little meaning if
citizens are angry that the services on which they rely are poor
and unreliable.
That is not an inevitable outcome. But it is a likely
result unless government's policy makers realize that shrinking
government's size is not one problem but two: first, eliminating
what can and should be cut; and second, ensuring that what is
left—what policy makers determine is the core that government can
and should manage—works well. So far, public debate has focused
on the first problem. Sooner or later, we will have to turn to
the second. And unless we solve it, public anger at government,
its institutions, and its elected officials is likely to grow
even bigger.
I have argued elsewhere that American government has not one
deficit but two: a budget deficit, and a performance deficit.
Unless we solve both deficits, citizens rightly will be
unforgiving.
GPRA frames a coherent attack on both
the budget and performance deficits by allowing a
serious discussion, for the first time in American
government, on what we get for the money we spend. It
provides members of Congress a way to bridge the gap between the
budget and performance deficits.
2. Performance Measurement is the Keystone to Reducing
Both Deficits
We are not alone in struggling with the twin deficits. Some
nations have been working for well over a decade on cutting both
deficits, while the American federal government has been single-mindedly
focused on the budget deficit. Other nations have had
greater success in reducing both deficits than the United States
has. And the most successful nations have build their efforts on
performance measurement.
Although the private sector can provide interesting insights
for performance, the really useful models on these questions are
countries like Australia, France, New Zealand, and Sweden, and
the United Kingdom. The drive to shrink government has been
surprisingly global. Where it has been most successful, the
government reduction movement has been coupled with tactics to
improve government performance. In Australia, the focus has
been on "letting managers manage" by working to remove barriers
to energetic administration. In New Zealand and the United
Kingdom, the focus has been on "making managers manage" by
introducing market competition into government services. But in
all of these cases, performance measurement has been at the
core.
Performance measurement in these countries has been
important for two reasons. First, performance measurement has
helped government policy makers move from a focus on
inputs—how much they spend on programs—to a focus on
outputs—what results they get from the money they spend.
The American reform effort has concentrated just on the first
half of this equation. It is little wonder that it has proven so
frustrating, because the input focus (how much money to spend)
has proceeded independently of what really matters, what the
money buys. With this disconnection, it is hard to ask the
important questions or to provide answers that satisfy anyone for
long.
Second, performance measurement has helped government policy
makers move from process—how decisions get made—to
results. For a decade, the American federal government
has struggled to devise procedural solutions for tough
substantive problems. Elected officials have tried automatic
deficit reduction tactics like Gramm-Rudman and have proposed
spending ceilings like the balanced budget amendment. No
process, however, can force elected officials to make decisions
they do not want to make. And no process can prove a guide
through tough substantive problems.
GPRA builds on the success of other
nations by demanding that government agencies make
performance the touchstone for their actions. It
provides members of Congress with a way of focusing
government on what it does instead of what it
spends.
3. Performance Measurement Provides Congress with Critical
Information about Agencies' Strategic Decisions
The fate of the laws Congress passes depends on how agency
officials manage them. Members of Congress rightly expect that
managers will administer the laws as passed. From the
administrators' point of view, however, the situation is often
far more complex and full of conflict. They face competing
demands on how aggressively to administer these laws, which can
lead to inconsistent decisions, and different laws can ask them
to do conflicting things. They sometimes do not have enough
money to do all that a program's beneficiaries might expect,
which can produce frequent complaints. And they rarely have
enough time to satisfy all legislative goals simultaneously,
which means they must make hard choices.
Executive branch officials must constantly make strategic
choices about where to invest their energy, how to balance
conflicting demands, and how best to achieve the goals they seek.
Sometimes they do it like explorers in a jungle, hacking their
way with dull machetes through the policy forest. Sometimes they
do it much more carefully, planning their steps to maximize
legislative goals. One way or another, these decisions determine
what gets done and what public programs produce.
Recent rounds of budget cutting have made this process much
harder. Downsizing of the federal government's workforce have
hit some agencies harder than others, so those remaining have
frequently had to learn how to do new jobs with less help. If
budgets have been cut, citizens' expectations rarely have shrunk,
so government workers have faced even harder problems.
This leads to two implications. First, government managers
can solve these problems only by thinking and acting
strategically. They need to decide how to balance competing
demands, which problems demand the most immediate attention, how
to apply new technology to do their jobs smarter, and how to
deliver more for less. In the midst of such turmoil, government
managers often feel they have no time to plan strategically. But
in the face of such hard problems, the only possible solution is
for them to act and think carefully. The tougher the problems,
the more important strategic planning becomes.
Second, congressional authorization and appropriation will
increasingly need to build on these strategic plans. The more
important strategic planning becomes, the more important it will
be for members of Congress to review these plans. They will
frame the important tradeoffs that managers deep inside agencies
will make. GPRA requires agencies to write strategic plans
(which is important in itself), to publish those strategic plans
(which is critical to Congress), and to use these strategic plans
as the foundation for measuring results (which in the end is most
important). This process might seem obscure and esoteric. The
transparency it creates, however, can vastly improve
congressional oversight, authorization, and appropriations
processes because it opens a window into the most important
decisions of executive agencies.
The law and logic of GPRA requires
government agencies to write strategic plans. These
plans will guide members of Congress to the truly
critical decisions that these agencies make in
implementing the law.
4. Strategic Plans Provide a Road Map to Achieving
Results
It is one thing to focus on results. It is another thing to
determine how to achieve them. Strategic plans not only provide
transparency to the process by which managers set their
priorities. They also provide a road map for how managers
propose to reach results.
Businesses, of course, have used strategic plans for years,
but they are far newer to government. Good strategic plans have
six steps:
Define the mission. Legislation defines public
programs. It does not—and cannot—prescribe the operating focus
for an agency's operations. Talk about writing "mission
statements" can sometimes seem like abstract consultant-speak.
But mission statements can explain to the world outside the
agency how agency officials view their work. And the process of
producing such a statement can prove extremely powerful in
stimulating a conversation within the agency about what really
matters.
Frame the goals. The mission and culture combine to
describe the general purposes of the agency, what it seeks to
achieve, and how it goes about achieving them. Framing the
goals, in clear and specific language, provides the critical link
between the law and the specific activities of agency officials
to manage the law.
Set the objectives. Operating managers must translate
broad agency goals into specific objectives for managers.
Framing objectives create a bridge between goals and the work
plans for individual units. It charts how each manager's work
fits into the agency's overall mission.
Assign responsibility for achieving objectives. Not
only is it important to define what ought to be done. It is also
critical to decide who ought to do it. Performance measurement
can improve accountability only if it helps link organizational
goals with specific objectives and clearly defines responsibility
for producing results.
Specify output/outcome measures. Agency officials must
define measures (or "indicators") to assess whether managers are
achieving their objectives, and then collect information on
those measures.
Compare results with goals. Finally, agency officials
must compare results with goals. The outcome measures allow them
to compare their actual performance with what they sought to
achieve.
The Internal Revenue Service, for example, has already
developed a strategic plan that charts the agency's path through
these steps. The agency has defined a broad mission:
Mission: The purpose of the Internal
Revenue Service is to collect the proper amount of tax
revenue at the least cost; service the public by
continually improving the quality of our products and
services; and perform in a manner warranting the
highest degree of public confidence in our integrity,
efficiency, and fairness.
It has set three goals:
1. Increase voluntary compliance
2. Maximize customer satisfaction.
3. Achieve quality-driven productivity through systems improvement and
employee development
Under the first goal, IRS has specified two objectives:
1a. Collect at least 90 percent of the
total tax dollars due and owing, through increased
voluntary compliance and enforcement.
1b. Achieve the recognition of the public,
outside stakeholders, and IRS employees for the ethical
conduct of IRS regarding: fair and uniform application
of tax laws; maintenance of the highest standards of
integrity; and confidentiality of tax
information
The measurable indicators for the first objective is the amount
that IRS collects of taxes due and owing. It has set performance
goals of 86.6 percent in fiscal year 1995, 86.8 percent in fiscal
year 1996, 87.2 percent in fiscal year 1997, increasing to 90
percent by 2001. IRS has also assigned specific responsibility
to individual units for achieving these objectives. It has gone
through a similar process for the other goals and objectives.
The IRS strategic plan tells everyone:
what mission IRS seeks to accomplish.
how IRS plans to meet its mission.
what success IRS has had in achieving its mission.
who has been responsible for successes and failures.
More than any other tool at Congress's disposal, strategic
planning provides a road map to what agencies are trying to do
and how well they are doing it.
More than any other tool at Congress's
disposal, the strategic planning that GPRA requires of
government agencies will provide an important road map
to what agencies are trying to do and how well they are
doing it.
5. Performance Measurement Connects Plans with Results
What agencies do, in the end, matters much less than whether
what they do solves the problems for which they were created. It
is one thing to forecast the weather; it is another to provide
timely information that minimizes the loss of life in a
hurricane. The Customs Service can inspect passports and
luggage, but that doesn't necessarily reduce drug smuggling.
When we worry about performance, what we really want is to solve
problems, not count how much activity agencies have.
This puzzle moves us directly into the arcane distinction
between outputs and outcomes. Such talk
immediately produces the MEGO (my eyes glaze over) phenomenon.
But this distinction matters critically to Congress's ability to
solve the problems for which it legislates, for this reason: Most
federal agencies and most federal managers do not directly
produce goods and services. Important exceptions include
agencies like the State Department, the Social Security
Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the
National Weather Service. But most managers spend their time in
partnership with other managers—in other federal agencies, at
other levels of government, in nonprofit organizations, and in
the private sector. It is this partnership that in the end
actually produces the goods and services that the government pays
for.
For example, the Department of Education actually provides
little education; it makes grants to others who educate. The
Department of Defense does not build missiles or fighters;
private contractors do. OSHA does not make workplaces safe; it
regulates and inspects workplaces to ensure that private
companies keep their facilities safe. The Health Care Financing
Administration does not provide Medicare services; it funds and
manages a vast array of nonprofit and for-profit organizations
who do so.
This creates a dilemma for measuring results. What matters
most is what results federal programs produce. This leads
logically to measuring program results. But most of these
results depend on how well the partnerships work and therefore
are out of the direct control of federal managers. Federal
managers understandably are nervous about being measured and held
accountable for results they cannot directly control. Instead,
they argue that performance measurement ought to focus on their
activity. Should GPRA focus on holding managers responsible for
results they can control but risk losing sight of the bigger
picture, or should it measure the broader impact of government
program but risk losing a clear sense of who is responsible for
what?
In the language of performance measurement, the question
resolves itself to this: Should government measure
outputs, the services produced? Or should government
measure outcomes, the results achieved?
On the most basic level, the answer is simple. Government
must seek to do both. We need information about the
specific activities of government managers and about the broader
results they produce. But we also need to be very frank: This is
very hard to do. The measurement issues at play rank
among the toughest technical challenges in public management.
The degree of difficulty, however, should not prevent us from
trying as hard as we can to do it right. If the solutions are
hard, the questions are critical.
On a deeper level, moreover, the return even from basic
information can be so great that we ought not be hindered in
developing a system just because we cannot fully implement it
immediately. The experiences of other nations demonstrate quite
clearly that performance measurement emerges only from a very
long—probably decades-long—process. In the meantime, however,
getting better information about who is doing what, even if that
information is rudimentary, can so substantially improve public
debate that we ought not be hindered by the scope of the total
task.
Does a federal job training program work? It makes much
more sense to gauge how many people are trained, what their
characteristics are, what kind of jobs they get, and how long
they keep them, than simply to declare a program a success
because it spends a certain amount of money. Does the air
traffic control system work? Comparing delays with on-time
arrivals makes far more sense than simply counting outlays.
None of these measures gives a full picture. But basic output
data is always better than any input data. Advocates of the
crime bill several years ago declared success by putting 100,000
more cops on the street. What really matters, of course, is
whether the cops actually got to the street and what they did
when the got there.
More experienced nations have developed different approaches
to these tough questions. New Zealand officials are quite
explicit in arguing that the system should be limited to output
measures. That, they say, keeps the system firmly grounded and
allows clear analysis of who does what. The British government,
likewise, has focused on outputs. In Canada and Australia,
however, the government has broadened the focus to assessing
outcomes, although output measurement remained the basic building
block.
We quite simply will not know what works best in the
American system until we get more experience. But any
output/outcome-based system will be vastly superior to our
current non-system, which too often judges performance based on
tax dollars spent. GPRA requires agencies to measure outputs; it
asks them to move toward outcome assessment. It is thus the
first step toward the more sophisticated performance measurement
system the nation needs.
The output/outcome question is not an either/or choice.
Output measurement is the building block for everything that
follows. Moreover, it yields information far superior to input-based judgments.
We ought to move aggressively through better
strategic planning to output measures.
GPRA builds an important foundation
for better policy making by making managers identify
and measure outputs.
6. Performance Measurement Can Improve the
Authorization Process
Members of Congress face tough questions in authorizing
programs: What is the best way to attack a problem? How much
money should we spend on trying to do so? What works? Given
impossibly competing demands, where should we spend extra
money—and which programs should be cut? There are no easy
answers to what inevitably requires tough political judgments.
But performance measurement can provide some clues.
First, performance measurement generates real information
beyond the usual round of claims made by program advocates. What
does an agency do and how well does it do it? The experiences of
other nations, as well as of state and local governments who
have experimented with this system, is that performance
measurement greatly informs political judgments. Hard data,
moreover, can help counter strong political pressure.
Second, performance measurement provides a way to allocate
scarce tax money. Economists talk about the marginal
productivity of an extra dollar: Where can we invest the next
dollar so that it produces the greatest impact? Performance
measurement can identify which programs work best so that members
of Congress can tell where money will be best spent.
Third, performance measurement suggests which policy
strategies are likely to be most effective. The more agencies
describe what they are trying to do, how they are trying to do
it, and what they accomplish, the more members of Congress will
know about what works. Should federally funded job training rely
on federal grant programs to state governments or vouchers to
those who need training? Do private companies provide better
payroll services than the government's own operations?
Performance measurement can never provide foolproof answers to
hard problems. But it can shine a searchlight into the dark
recesses of government programs and provide valuable clues about
what works best—and why.
By focusing conversations on outputs
instead of inputs, on results instead of dollars, GPRA
can help members of Congress make better decisions
about which programs to authorize and how much money
they ought to receive.
7. Performance Measurement Can Improve the Appropriations Process
The Appropriations Committees face even tougher problems:
comparing the value of competing programs, and weighing how much
to spend overall with the tax dollars available. The struggle
revolves around how to create a picture of the whole, how to talk
about critical tradeoffs, and how to move the debate from
particularized claims to the big policy issues.
As long as the debate centers on how much to spend—that is,
on inputs—it will be impossible to jump the gap to the big
questions. The United States has spent a decade devising and
debating procedural fixes to these questions. Results have
proven modest because it is fundamentally impossible to join the
symbol of a balanced budget (supported by everyone in theory)
with the detailed decisions needed to reach it (contested by
everyone in practice). This is a fundamentally unbridgeable
gulf.
It makes far more sense to debate what to spend in the
context of what results the federal government produces. First,
the search for a balanced budget has produced some leverage in
making hard appropriations decisions, but it cannot drive all of
the tough decisions. Second, a balanced budget might some day be
reached, but members of Congress will then need a new instrument
to enforce spending discipline. Third, members of Congress are
likely to discover that, despite widespread rhetorical support
for the idea of a balanced budget, voters might provide little
political payoff unless they are also convinced that a smaller
government also works better.
Quite simply, Congress in general and the Appropriations
Committees in particular need a far more sophisticated tool to
make the decisions that lie ahead. The experience of other
nations suggests that focusing on results helps provide that
tool. It helps crack the door for more competition, and hence
more efficiency, in providing government goods and services. It
helps build a base for the badly needed restructuring of
government agencies and processes. And most important, it
changes the very language of the debate.
Information about results has changed the fundamental
dynamics wherever performance measurement has been tried. One
Phoenix city official told me that it is hard for politically
well-connected contractors to push for expensive contracts if the
data show that they are twice as expensive as the alternatives.
Collecting the information cannot make hard decisions easy. It
can, however, fundamentally alter the nature and language of the
debate: about what the real issues are, and what the effects are
likely to be. I like to think about performance measurement,
therefore, as a system of political communication: how we
think and talk about the fundamental issues of government.
GPRA can assist the Appropriations
Committees by providing a subtle tool to bridge the gap
between deficit reduction goals and the decisions
needed to reach them. More important, its performance
focus can fundamentally alter the terms and language of
the debate.
8. Performance Measurement is No Magic Bullet—But It
Helps Congress Do What Has to Be Done
It would be easy to overpromise on what GPRA can do and then
to be disappointed by what it actually produces. That, after
all, has been the track record of previous reforms, like
Planning-Program-Budgeting in the 1960s, Zero-Based Budgeting in
the 1970s, and Total Quality Management in the 1980s. Frankness
demands that we admit two things about GPRA: It is very hard to
do; and even if done well, it cannot possibly solve all of our
problems.
Indeed, as Australian officials have frankly admitted to me,
they have been at the process for a decade and still don't have
it right. But they have also had more than a decade to abandon
the process, and they have not. That is because it gives them
leverage over important problems that they can get no other
way.
Performance measurement will never prove a panacea. It
imposes huge technical problems. Quite frankly, it produces few
immediate rewards. Doing it well requires time, patience, and
investment in new technology and training for the workers
developing it. It might well be, moreover, that voters will take
excellence for granted and see anything less as a failure. The
immediate political payoffs are likely to be modest.
But performance measurement is an inescapable step toward
tackling decisions that cannot be ducked. It is, in a sense, the
price of admission to the next set of decisions that will face
members of Congress: what to do if the balanced budget campaign
runs out of gas, and members of Congress need a new tool for
gaining leverage over the budget; or what to do if it succeeds,
and tough new questions surface—as they surely will. GPRA might
be a low-visibility project, but like a strong foundation under a
skyscraper, the government's work is likely to sink and sag even
more without it.
GPRA provides no magic bullet for
solving government's problems. But it does provide the
foundation for doing what must be
done.
9. Performance Measurement Can Transform the President's Budget
Submission to Congress
Because the congressional budget review builds on the
president's submission, the form of that budget can greatly
affect Congress's ability to make critical decisions. If the
president's budget were to be submitted in a performance-based
format, it would greatly increase Congress's ability to ask the
important questions. It would also focus the debate between
Congress and the president on the issues that matter most.
Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin has
made GPRA the core of her OMB 2000 restructuring effort. OMB has
sought to change the focus of its budget examiners from budget
requests (inputs) to performance results (outputs). The budget
office will have to complete this transition—and so, too, will
executive branch agencies—before a budget submission in
performance format would even be possible. It might well take
the full seven-year GPRA phase-in period to get to a place where
a performance-based presidential budget would be feasible. (All
federal agencies are not required to submit annual performance
reports until March 2000.) But such a performance-based budget
surely is a next-round target at which to aim.
GPRA can provide the foundation for
even more sophisticated improvements in federal
budgeting. Most notably, it could aid the transition
to a performance-based presidential budget submission
to Congress. Such a budget could enormously improve
the ability of the president and Congress to grapple
with the truly fundamental budgetary issues.
10. Performance Measurement Can Vastly Improve
Congressional Policy Making
Members of Congress today are wrestling with immensely
complex problems. And they need the best tools they can get.
GPRA is an invaluable addition to the congressional toolbox. In
reviewing the steps it requires, it would be easy to mistake GPRA
purely as a set of techniques for executive branch managers.
However, GPRA is at its core a tool of greatest use to
members of Congress. The very process GPRA creates shines a
light on the issues that most demand congressional attention: the
choices and tradeoffs executive branch officials make in
implementing the law; which policy strategies and tactics work
best, and which ones don't; who is responsible for which results;
and where new resources can best be put to use.
In struggling with these issues, members of Congress often
find themselves trying to straddle an unbridgeable chasm: on one
side, with admirable goals that win enthusiastic support; and on
the other side, with tough decisions on the details of policy.
What performance measurement can provide is a bridge between
them. It does not necessarily make the trip painless, but it can
make it possible.
Effective implementation of GPRA therefore ought not to be a
goal in itself. That can only promote mindless bean counting.
Members of Congress, instead, ought to pursue GPRA because it
provides a tool to do what has to be done: grapple with the
truly important and fundamental issues that lie inescapably over
the horizon, past the balanced budget debate.
GPRA should not be viewed as an end it
itself. It provides, rather, a tool to help members of
Congress do what they have to do, and to do it in ways that no
other existing tool allows.