GAO

John Kamensky

The 2010 revision of the Government Performance and Results Act requires federal agencies to identify a limited number of two-year Agency Priority Goals.  These action-oriented goals appear in their recently-released fiscal year 2015 budget proposals and are aligned with their newly released strategic goals and objectives.

In meeting varied missions, government executives confront significant challenges. Responding properly to them must be guided and informed by the harsh fiscal and budgetary realities of the day. It can no longer be simply a wishful platitude that government do more with less. Leaders need to change the way government does business to make smarter use of increasingly limited resources—leveraging technology and innovation to be more efficient, effective, anticipatory, adaptive, and evidence-based in delivering missions and securing the public trust.

The forum participants comprised a range of stakeholders in the federal performance and results management system:  agency performance improvement officers, strategic planners, program evaluation leaders, and priority goal leaders.  In addition, there were participants from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Federal agencies, Congress, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, academia, state and local government, unions, and non-profits – all of whom play a role in improving government performance.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Collaboration

Fostering collaboration will be a key component of your job. The need for improved and enhanced collaboration within and between agencies in the federal government, with state and local governments, as well as with nonprofits and businesses, is now clearly needed. The federal government’s ineffective collaboration with other government organizations was clearly apparent and widely criticized during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

These four-year goals were first announced with the release of the FY 2015 budget back in March. Cobert’s announcement accompanies the first round of statutorily-required quarterly reports on the progress of the 15 Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) goals. 

The Obama Administration in 2009 directed agencies to identify a small handful of priorities that they would commit to achieving in a two-year timeframe.  This initiative was embedded into the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010.  Agencies are required to identify priority goals and report on their progress quarterly.  In late June, agency progress reports were posted on the governmentwide performance.gov website.

Increasingly, addressing public management challenges requires the use of collaborative networks across a range of agencies and non-governmental organizations. For example, the Obama Administration has designated a series of projects as “cross agency priority goals” and put networks in place to manage them. A lot of literature and practical experience show that a key element of success in any collaborative effort is the ability to create and sustain trust among stakeholders.

Background.  Early in the Obama Administration, OMB announced an initiative to create a small handful of High Priority Performance Goals in each agency, as a replacement for the Bush Administration’s

Since 2001, Dr. Behn has visited dozens of governmental organizations that are using the PerformanceStat model – some well, and some poorly.  His bold objective was to answer the research question of whether PerformanceStat really makes a difference in improving performance, and how it works.  In short, his answer is:  it depends, and it’s complicated.