The Results Act

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Office of Thrift Supervision's (OTS) annual performance plan for calendar year 1998 submitted to Congress to meet the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993.

GAO noted that: (1) OTS' performance plan is a good early effort in preparing a plan that incorporates the basic elements required by the Results Act; (2) the plan contains performance goals and measures that attempt to reflect OTS' mission and strategic goals; (3) it also covers all the program activities in the OTS budget submission; (4) however, the plan would be more useful to congressional decisionmakers if it was improved in several ways; (5) specifically, the plan could better define expected performance by stating measurable objectives in performance goal statements, having more outcome-oriented goals, and more fully addressing strategic plan goals; (6) in addition, the plan could more explicitly lay out additional actions to develop crosscutting efforts with other financial institution regulatory agencies; (7) with regard to strategies and resources, the plan could be improved by better connecting strategies to results and connecting resources to individual performance goals; and (8) the plan could be more useful if it enhanced data verification and validation efforts and discussed data limitations.