Archived Information
Demonstrating Results, An Introduction to Government Performance and Results Act, Spring 1999
Obtaining appropriate information through assessments about the performance of projects and programs is the key to meeting the intent of GPRA. The Act has two purposes. One is to report to the Congress on the results being obtained by the various programs. But, equally important, is the continual improvement of the programs, and the projects they support, to assure that the purposes for which the programs were established and funded are achieved in the best way possible. Program measurement and assessment are the means that lead to the accomplishment of both of these purposes.
Without a special emphasis on program assessments to determine the consequences – both positive and negative – of the program, HEP management is limited to anecdotal information to evaluate the effectiveness of programs, identify obstacles to be overcome, modify strategies, and make decisions on allocating resources. The information gained through reliable and continuing assessment allows the program staff to be able to provide more effective technical assistance to the projects to aid them in improving their activities, to demonstrate how well HEP programs are achieving their goals, and for reporting to the Congress and the American people on the benefits attained through the expenditure of public funds.
Higher Education Programs is developing a system of assessments to satisfy these various aims. Through the annual performance reports submitted by the grantees and with regular monitoring site visits, information will be gathered about individual projects that will be used to provide technical assistance to the grantees on ways to improve their activities. This information will be aggregated on a periodic basis to provide state-of-the program reports to the HEP management so that, when needed, modifications can be made to the programs to enhance their effectiveness and report to Congress as required by GPRA. There also will be occasional, long-term evaluations of the programs and their impacts. The relationship of these various sources of information and their uses are illustrated in the Figure 3.
Figure 3: Uses of Data
The first level of assessment, and the closest to the grantee, is the monitoring of individual projects. Information on the performance of projects is gathered in several ways – through the use of the original application, specific project objectives, performance agreements between the grantee and HEP, the performance reports that the grantee submits annually to the program staff, and site visits. Information gathered from these sources will be used to determine the effectiveness of individual projects, and to make suggestions or take actions for improvement when warranted.
To a large degree, the success of the overall program is dependent upon the feedback received from grant recipients. No matter how well conceived, financed or managed, the realities of operating projects are such that there must be a continuing dialogue between the HEP staff and the grantees to assure high levels of performance. The site visit is an opportunity for a personal part of that dialogue. While site visits traditionally have been conducted to assure compliance with statutes and program regulations, the emphasis in the future will be on performance in line with the project and program objectives.
Site visits are an excellent opportunity to provide technical assistance to the grantee visited. This assistance can take the form of suggestions on how to improve the operation of the project, provide information on similar projects that are successful and can be used as models, or explain aspects of the program regulations or operations with which the grantee may not be familiar. Some site visits will be conducted by HEP program officers. Others will be conducted by or under the auspices of Area Representatives. The grantee should not take as mandatory any suggestions made during a site visit unless they are said to be required by the grantee's program officer who has direct responsibility for the project being visited.
The information gathered through monitoring individual projects will be aggregated and analyzed periodically by PMIT staff on a program basis to develop state-of-the-program reports for the appropriate HEP managers. These reports will not address individual projects, but will describe the strengths of the program, its perceived weaknesses, and changes that have occurred since the last report, as well as provide an overall summary of how the program is meeting its performance goals, and provide suggestions for program improvement.
These reports will be designed to assist the program staff and HEP senior management take administrative and management actions to make the programs more effective, develop the annual performance reports to be sent to Congress, and create budget justifications. They can also assist the grantees to gain a better idea of how their projects contribute to the overall program goals and how they fare compared to the program as a whole.
Program evaluations are the third and most global level of program assessments. GPRA defines a program evaluation as "an assessment, through objective measurement and systematic analysis, of the manner and extent to which federal programs achieve intended objectives." In a sense, they highlight the "bottom line" for federal programs, by providing the data needed to understand the extent to which legislated programs are having an impact on the problems, usually national in scope, that they are funded to address.
HEP's program managers are cognizant of the problems facing American higher education, such as the extent to which high school dropout rates are changing, first-generation Americans are enrolling in and graduating from college, instructional programs are being modified, educational opportunities are increasing and the quality of education being enhanced. Moreover, although data frequently have not been available, program managers are generally intuitively aware of what specific accomplishments are taking place in the programs for which they are responsible. What remains elusive is the ability to determine a direct or even infer an associative relationship between HEP's programmatic activities and changes in the social and economic environment. This is what the GPRA refers to as the impacts of the program. Since broad-scale changes usually are the result of a variety of forces and since federal agencies have not traditionally been asked to link program activities to issues of long-term impact, data are not generally maintained that can clarify the relationships between program activities and intended results.
Program evaluations should not be equated with performance monitoring. The latter involves the ongoing review of performance data to manage program performance. Program evaluations, on the other hand, are intended to illuminate broader, longer-term aspects of program performance. While monitoring is done by or under the direct control of the HEP staff, program evaluations, especially those dealing with long-term impacts, are often done by third parties, who are experts in the analytical methodologies of evaluation, working in conjunction with the HEP staff. These broader, in-depth evaluations are often coordinated by or done under the auspices of the Department's Planning and Evaluation Service.
The combination of assessment vehicles – the monitoring of individual projects, developing periodic program assessments through an increasingly accurate system of performance measurement, and occasional program evaluations – should provide grantees and the HEP program staff with the information required to improve, on a continuing basis, both project and program performance and to better meet the needs of the students and institutions they serve.
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