Managing for Results

Federal agencies' first annual performance plans showed the potential for doing performance planning and measurement as envisioned by the Government Performance and Results Act to provide decisionmakers with valuable perspective and useful information to improve program performance. For example, almost all of the plans showed how agencies' missions and strategic goals related to the performance plans. However, most of the plans that GAO reviewed contained major weaknesses that undermined their usefulness. Specifically, they did not provide a clear picture of the agencies' intended performance, did not relate strategies and resources to performance, and provided limited confidence that agencies' performance data will be sufficiently credible. All of the plans contained valuable information, but their shortcomings caused their usefulness to vary considerably. GAO believes that Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and the agencies need to build on the first round of annual performance planning by working together and targeting key performance issues that will make future plans more useful.

GAO noted that: (1) the agencies' first annual performance plans showed the potential for doing performance planning and measurement as envisioned by the Government Performance and Results Act to provide decisionmakers with valuable perspective and useful information for improving program performance; (2) however, overall, substantial further development is needed for these plans to be useful in a significant way to congressional and other decisionmakers; (3) most of the plans that GAO reviewed contained major weaknesses that undermined their usefulness in that they: (a) did not consistently provide clear pictures of agencies' intended performance, (b) generally did not relate strategies and resources to performance; and (c) provided limited confidence that agencies' performance data will be sufficiently credible; (4) GAO believes that Congress, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the agencies need to build on the experiences of the first round of annual performance planning by working together and targeting key performance issues that will help to make future plans more useful; (5) most of the performance plans had at least some objective, quantifiable, and measurable goals, but few plans consistently included a comprehensive set of goals that focused on the results that programs were intended to achieve; (6) the plans generally did not go further to describe how agencies expected to coordinate their efforts with those of other agencies; (7) most agencies' performance plans did not provide clear strategies that described how performance goals would be achieved; (8) the performance plans generally provided listings of the agencies' current array of programs and initiatives but provided limited perspective on how these programs and initiatives were necessary or helpful for achieving results; (9) most of the plans did not adequately describe the resources needed to achieve their agencies' performance goals; (10) most annual performance plans provided only superficial descriptions of procedures that agencies intended to use to verify and validate performance data; and (11) the absence of program evaluation capacity is a major concern, because a federal environment that focuses on results depends on program evaluation to provide vital information about the contribution of the federal effort.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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