Results Act

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's (DOD) annual performance plan for fiscal year (FY) 1999, focusing on: (1) the extent to which DOD's performance plan provides a clear picture of intended performance across the agency; (2) how well DOD's performance plan discusses the strategies and resources it will use to achieve its performance goals; and (3) the extent to which DOD's performance plan provides confidence that its performance information will be credible.

GAO noted that: (1) DOD's performance plan partially depicts intended performance across the agency and partially discusses how its strategies and resources will help achieve its goals, but does not provide sufficient confidence that DOD's performance information will be credible; (2) this is because DOD's plan does not fully explain some key elements to the reader; (3) for example, the plan does not fully explain how DOD intends to measure performance or clearly identify DOD's performance goals and strategies for achieving them; (4) the plan also lacks a discussion of coordination efforts for most crosscutting activities it shares with other agencies and performance goals and measures for these and other functions; (5) further, DOD's plan does not address known data and system deficiencies, the extent to which these deficiencies will affect performance information, or actions planned to correct them; (6) finally, DOD placed information relevant to its performance plan in a variety of documents, making it difficult for decisionmakers and stakeholders to determine DOD's strategies, objectives, and measures for any given goal; and (7) the plan could be significantly improved by incorporating all the information relevant to achieving DOD's performance goals into one separate performance plan document and by addressing in the plan the other issues GAO raised.