Managing for Results

The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 was intended to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of federal programs by establishing a system to set performance goals and measure results. This fact sheet reviews the Justice Department's implementation of the act. As GAO was systematically collecting information from each Justice component about its implementation of the act, the Department asked GAO to describe what it had found because this information had not been consolidated at Justice. This fact sheet provides information that addresses questions from the Department's components to help them develop performance measures and discusses the processes used to develop the fiscal year 1996 exhibits, implementation questions and concerns, and performance measures used in the exhibits.

GAO found that: (1) in accordance with National Performance Review and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recommendations, DOJ is developing output and outcome measurements, but DOJ has not described a departmentwide process for components to use in developing their performance measurement exhibits; (2) DOJ components have used five general processes to develop annual performance goals with input from program staff; (3) components' questions and concerns about implementing a performance measurement system generally include how to develop both general and program specific performance measurements and how OMB would use performance data in the budget process; (4) OMB has stated that it is not required to use performance data until 1997 and it is still learning how to use such data; (5) OMB believes that it is crucial that it interpret program results and account for why programs do not meet their performance goals, but it will not prescribe common governmentwide performance measures; and (6) although Congress has expressed a preference for outcome measurements, DOJ components have selected a variety of performance indicators based on their data collection operations and understanding of the measures.