Managing for Results

Although some federal agencies are making progress in establishing well-defined, meaningful, and sound performance measures, most have a long way to go. The experience of leading state and foreign governments, federal agencies, and businesses provide valuable lessons for federal agencies as they begin to implement the Government Performance and Results Act's performance assessment requirements and redesign their critical work processes to achieve significant improvements. Agencies are confronted with the central issue of developing performance measurement processes that focus on outcomes that are important to key stakeholders while providing the critical management information needed to improve processes to achieve those outcomes. Given the challenges that agencies face and the need to make major performance improvements during a period of severely limited resources, Congress has an essential role to play through its oversight, appropriation, and authorization responsibilities.