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Archived Information
Demonstrating Results, An Introduction to Government Performance and Results Act, Spring 1999
The Government Performance and Results Act is a straightforward statute that requires all federal agencies to manage their activities with attention to the consequences of those activities. Agencies must state clearly what they intend to accomplish, identify the resources required, and periodically report their progress to the Congress. In doing this, it is expected that the GPRA will contribute to increased accountability for the expenditures of public funds, improve congressional decision-making through more objective information on the effectiveness of federal programs, and promote a new governmental focus on results, service delivery and customer satisfaction.
In the past, agencies justified their budgets with descriptions and enumerations of their activities, such as the numbers of applications received and educational grants awarded, the amount of training provided, or the number of people enrolled in a program. These data are important for the administration of a program, but are not necessarily linked to the program's results. Thus, the important distinctions among the purpose of the program, the activities it pursues, and the results it expects to achieve were lost. Effort was often substituted for results. This is no longer acceptable. Program accountability cannot rest on the number and cost of training classes or the number and timeliness of the grants awarded, but rather must reflect, for example, whether training projects result in more job placements and whether educational grants produce an increase in student achievement and, ultimately, an improved future for America's youth.
The Results Act requires all federal agencies to provide Congress with the public sector equivalent of a business plan. Just as corporations are required to submit business plans to banks and other financial interest-holders, agencies are now required to produce similar documents to be reviewed by agency interest-holders in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congress. Specifically, GPRA requires each agency to submit three distinct products:
GPRA differs from past management reform initiatives in two ways. First, it uses the federal budget as the vehicle to provide visibility and accountability to the process. By requiring strategic and performance plans to be presented in the context of an agency's annual budget submissions, GPRA is receiving heightened attention and review by executives throughout government.
Second, in contrast to previous reform efforts, which were Administration initiatives, GPRA is the law. Among management reform efforts undertaken in this century, only those that have been grounded in statute have remained in force. The Results Act is an amendment to the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 – the law that established GAO, OMB and most of the procedures governing the financial management of the federal government.
A key element of the Results Act is the requirement for a strategic plan. The law requires each federal agency to develop a five-year strategic plan and to maintain its relevance by revising it at least every three years. The strategic plan sets the general course and direction for what the agency, that is, the Department of Education, will be doing. It is developed from the statutory base of legislation, which states the purpose and intent of Congress and the President when programs are established and funded. In developing the plan, priorities are assigned, choices are made and commitments are given to what realistically can be accomplished.
The GPRA specifies six distinct elements that are to be contained in each agency's strategic plan:
Not legally mandated, but generally considered to be a critically important part of an effective strategic plan, are a vision statement, which elaborates on the mission by providing the Department leadership's contemporary expression of the mission, and an assessment of the societal conditions, possibly including the economic, social, cultural, demographic, political, legal, and technological trends, which set the background for the Department's goals and strategies. These two elements, along with the six noted in the statute, play a distinct role in the development of the Department's strategic plan.
As the federal government has a limited role in education and many of the current problems facing higher education are not easily solved, it is important for the Department of Education to be clear on what it can accomplish and the extent to which its efforts can contribute to its improvement. The strategic plan specifies what results the Department will attempt to achieve and how it will go about it within the broader societal context affecting education.
GPRA requires annual performance plans to be developed for each program activity set forth in the agency budget. The annual performance plan sets specific program goals, identifies resources required to reach the goals, and links the strategic plan to the annual budget by describing the progress that will occur during each fiscal year. It sets out what the public will get for the money requested in terms of results to be expected. While the strategic plan describes the long-term course of the Department, the annual performance plan defines what will be accomplished in any one year on that course.
In addition to performance goals, the annual plan includes performance objectives and performance indicators, which are the means for determining whether the program's goals and objectives are being achieved. The objectives and indicators are expressed in a quantifiable and measurable form that allow a program's accomplishments to be measured.
A performance goal, for example, might be to increase the college enrollment rates of low-income students to more nearly equal those of high-income students. A related performance objective might be to increase the college enrollment rates of low-income students who receive supplementary academic and counseling services through a specific program by 10% over a five-year period, or 2% annually. Each annual performance plan then would project a 2% per year increase in college enrollment rates. A performance indicator might compare the college enrollment rates for students who receive the services with rates for comparable non-participants.
The Results Act also requires federal agencies to prepare annual performance reports and to submit them to the President and the Congress within six months after the end of the fiscal year. The purpose of the performance report is to compare actual program results with the performance goals identified in the annual performance plan. Agencies will be asked, beginning in March of 2000, to account for their performance during FY 1999 by relating what was accomplished to what was planned and approved for that year. When goals have not been achieved, agencies will be given the opportunity to explain the reasons why. The program performance report will allow agencies to formally redirect their efforts in light of changing circumstances, thereby providing a mechanism to keep the strategic plan current and relevant.
This clear and simple requirement has the potential to fundamentally change the way many federal agencies conduct their business. The Department will have to be much more precise about its objectives, will be held to a higher standard in the implementation of these goals, and will develop new ways to measure success. The annual performance plan provides the accountability that is the centerpiece of GPRA. The information it provides will allow the Congress and the public to hold the Department's staff and, through them, its grantees to be accountable for the funds that are appropriated by expecting specific levels of performance.
By requiring annual performance plans to be submitted as a part of the agency's budget request, GPRA makes the budget an explicit aspect of the "managing for results" concept. The importance of strategic planning and performance measures is dramatically increased because they are linked to the agency budget process, and thus allow the expenditure of resources to be compared to performance as the means to improve decision making.
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[Performance Measures]