The experience of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services highlights the role that strengthened management practices can play, said GAO.
It said the percentage of managers at CMS reporting use of performance information for various management decisions increased by nearly 21 percent from 2001 to 2007, something CMS officials attributed this change to a combination of key management practices they had employed, including leadership commitment to using performance information, alignment of strategic and performance goals, improving the usefulness of performance information, and building the analytic capacity to collect and use performance information.
GAO recommended that agency leadership demonstrate its commitment to using performance information for decision making by reviewing performance results with subordinate managers on a regular and recurring basis and communicating decisions based on performance information to show that performance information is reviewed and acted upon.
