Despite an increase in performance measures since 1997 for federal programs, the use of those measures as reported by federal managers in decision making has not changed significantly over the past 10 years, GAO told the Senate federal financial management subcommittee recently.
The subcommittee held a hearing to glean lessons-learned for the next administration on using performance information to improve results.
According to GAO’s testimony, over the past 15 years, legislative and executive branch reform efforts have attempted to shift the focus of management from the activities themselves to actual results.
That caused a transformation in the capacity of the federal government to manage for results, including an infrastructure of outcome-oriented strategic plans, performance measures, and accountability reporting that provides a solid foundation for improving the performance of federal programs, GAO said.
However, agencies have made less progress in getting their managers to use performance information in their decision-making, GAO said.
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, according to GAO-08-1026T.
It said that in order to get there, the next administration should promote three key practices: demonstrate leadership commitment to results-oriented management; develop a clear "line of sight" linking individual performance with organizational results; and, build agency capacity to collect and use performance information.
The next administration should also adopt a more strategic and crosscutting approach to overseeing government-wide performance; improve the relevance of performance information to Congress; and build agency confidence in assessments for use in decision making, GAO said.