Observations on the General Services Administration's Fiscal Year 1999 Performance Report and Fiscal Year 2001 Performance Plan

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the General Services Administration's (GSA) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA).

GAO noted that: (1) the performance goals in the FY 1999 performance report for the first key outcome--quality products and services are provided to federal agencies at competitive prices and significant price savings to the government--were typically outcome oriented, measurable, and quantifiable; (2) the measures generally indicated progress toward meeting the goals, and the performance report clearly articulated the degree to which performance goals were achieved; (3) the performance report said that GSA met or exceeded various goals related to such activities as supply and procurement, vehicle acquisition and leasing, travel and transportation, information technology, and telecommunications services; (4) goals that were not met or not measured related to activities such as childcare, leasing and meeting client space needs, and disposal of excess real property; (5) the second key outcome--federal buildings are safe, accessible, and energy efficient--only had one goal in the FY 1999 performance report; (6) the goal as stated in the performance report was to reduce the number of buildings that have protection costs in the high range of the benchmark set by the private sector experts while maintaining effective security in government buildings; (7) GSA was unable to measure this goal because it did not have the data to do so; (8) the FY 2001 performance plan no longer has this goal; (9) instead, the FY 2001 performance plan replaced this goal with a goal related to customer satisfaction with security services; (10) the third key outcome--federal buildings are adequately maintained--had two goals in the FY 1999 performance report, and they were objective, measurable, and quantifiable; (11) the measures for these goals generally allowed for gauging progress toward meeting them; (12) the performance report said that GSA exceeded the goal to minimize cost escalations on repair and alteration projects, but did not meet the goal related to completing repair and alteration projects on time; (13) for the unmet goal, GSA cited a variety of conditions, including poor contractor performance, for why the goal was not met; (14) GSA revised both of these goals in the 2001 performance plan; (15) with regard to management challenges, neither the 1999 performance report nor the 2001 performance plan has goals that effectively respond to them; and (16) although the 2001 performance plan does not have specific goals that effectively respond directly to the GSA Inspector General's management challenges, the performance plan does discuss various issues related to the challenges.

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.

Director: Bernard L. Ungar Team: Government Accountability Office: Physical Infrastructure Phone: (202) 512-4232