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67–636 PDF 2011

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ROADMAP FOR A MORE EFFICIENT AND 

ACCOUNTABLE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: 

IMPLEMENTING THE GPRA MODERNIZATION ACT 

JOINT HEARING 

BEFORE THE

OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, 

THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT 

OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE AND THE 

FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT 

INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND 

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 10, 2011 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/ 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 

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(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisonsin 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

NICHOLAS A. ROSSI, Minority Staff Director 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

JOYCE WARD, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE 

FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

LISA M. POWELL, Staff Director, Majority 

BENJAMIN RHODESIDE, Professional Staff Member 

RACHEL R. WEAVER, Staff Director, Minority 

ALAN ELIAS, Legislative Assistant 

SEAN KENNEDY, Professional Staff Member 

AARON H. WOOLF, Chief Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT 

INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

MARY L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

JOHN KILVINGTON, Staff Director, Majority 

JOHN COLLINS, Legislative Aide 

WILLIAM WRIGHT, Staff Director, Minority 

STEVEN HUTCHINSON Detailee 

DEIRDRE G. ARMSTRONG, Chief Clerk 

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(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 1 

Senator Brown .................................................................................................. 4 

Senator Johnson ............................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement: 

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 43 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 44 

WITNESSES 

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2011 

Hon. Jeffrey D. Zients, Federal Chief Performance Officer and Deputy Director for Management, U.S. Office of Management and Budget ......................... 6 

Hon. Eugene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General, U.S. Government Accountability Office ......................................................................................................... 8 

Robert J. Shea, Former Associate Director for Administration and Government Performance, U.S. Office of Management and Budget ............................ 26 

Paul L. Posner, Professor and Director, Public Administration Program, 

George Mason University .................................................................................... 28 

Jonathan D. Breul, Executive Director, IBM Center for the Business of Government ................................................................................................................. 31 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Breul, Jonathan D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 31 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 91 

Dodaro, Hon. Eugene L.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 52 

Posner, Paul L.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 28 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 78 

Shea, Robert J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 26 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 73 

Zients, Hon. Jeffrey D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 46 

APPENDIX 

Prepared statement submitted by Senator Mark Warner .................................... 96 

Prepared statement submitted by Representative Henry Cuellar ...................... 97 

Questions and Responses submitted for the Record from: 

Mr. Zients .......................................................................................................... 100 

Mr. Dodaro ........................................................................................................ 111 

Mr. Shea with an attachment ......................................................................... 120 

Mr. Posner ......................................................................................................... 129 

Mr. Breul ........................................................................................................... 133 

Background .............................................................................................................. 137 

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(1) 

ROADMAP FOR A MORE EFFICIENT AND 

ACCOUNTABLE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: 

IMPLEMENTING THE GPRA 

MODERNIZATION ACT 

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2011 

U.S. SENATE, 

JOINT HEARING WITH THE OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT

MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE AND THE, 

FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT

INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND INTERNATIONAL

SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE, 

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 2:38 p.m., in 

room 562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thomas R. Carper, 

Chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, 

Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security, presiding. 

Present: Senators Carper, Pryor, Brown, and Johnson. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER 

Senator CARPER. The Subcommittee will come to order. 

I apologize for running a little bit late. Thank you for your patience with me. I am happy to be here with my colleagues and all 

of you. I am especially looking forward to our witnesses. 

I think, in bringing the Subcommittee to order, I want to say, unfortunately, Senator Akaka of Hawaii, broke two ribs in a minor 

accident at home last week. He is unable to be with us to attend 

the hearing today. His statement and the witnesses’ answers to his 

questions for the record will be included in the hearing record for 

today. I understand he is recovering quickly and we look forward 

to seeing him back again soon. He is one of my favorite people. We 

love Senator Akaka around here. We want him to be off the DL 

and back into the game in the starting lineup, and we are told he 

will be very soon. 

But today’s hearing will examine the recently enacted Government Performance and Results Modernization Act (GPRAMA) of 

2011 and how progress is being made toward its full implementation. This bipartisan legislation, which I sponsored with, among 

others, Senator Akaka, and I want to say Senator Voinovich, I 

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2 

sponsor? I am not sure. He could have been. Anyway, a bunch of 

us pushed this legislation. In the last Congress, it got signed into 

law. I am grateful to all my colleagues for their support and looking forward to how we are doing in its implementation. 

Seventeen years ago, Congress passed the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) to help us better manage our finite 

resources and to improve the effectiveness of Federal programs. 

Given our mind-boggling budget deficits today, there has never 

been a greater need for more informed and effective management 

of taxpayer dollars. Since 1993, agencies across the Federal Government have developed and implemented strategic plans and have 

routinely generated a tremendous amount of performance data. 

The question is, have Federal agencies actually used their performance data to get better results? 

Producing information, as we know, does not by itself improve 

performance, and experts from both sides of the aisle agree that 

the solutions developed in 1993 did not work as we had originally 

anticipated and hoped. The American people deserve and our fiscal 

challenges demand better results. 

In fact, when the bill was passed in 1993, I was just becoming 

a new Governor, but when the bill was passed in 1993, I think it 

was sort of referred to as the Results Act. They wanted the folks 

in that Administration—we had a new President and we had at 

that time, I think, a Democratic Congress, but they were focused 

on performance and on results, something that I think the three of 

us certainly focus on, results, wanting to get things done. 

Vince Lombardi used to say, if you are not keeping score, you are 

just practicing. He said a lot of memorable things. That was one 

of my favorite. He also said, winning is not the only thing—no, 

winning is not everything, it is the only thing. But we could probably spend the better part of this hearing coming up with his 

quotes, but I like this one a lot. If you are not keeping score, you 

are just practicing. 

But we have not been doing a very good job of setting clear goals 

for Federal programs, at least for some of them. We have not been 

doing a very good job of keeping score, either, and it is time to get 

into the game and play for real. 

The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act 

brings a strategic Government-wide focus to performance management by requiring the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to 

set Government-wide goals to align programs from different agencies to work together to reduce overlap and duplication. It also requires OMB to seek majority and minority views from Congress on 

those goals. With an eye toward eliminating redundancy within 

Government, the law requires agencies to support Governmentwide priorities by linking their goals to them and working across 

party lines to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work. 

I am pleased to hear that OMB is taking the new law seriously. 

In fact, OMB helped develop the new law, so it is especially encouraging that they are also taking it seriously. But in early April, 

OMB Director Jack Lew, along with Deputy Director for Management Jeff Zients, who is with us today, issued a memo to agency 

and department heads directing them to begin to implement the 

new law. The memo told agencies to submit the name of their 

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Agency Chief Operating Officer (COO) to OMB by May 2, and that 

was last Monday, I think, last Monday, and the name of their 

Agency Performance Information Officer (PIO) by June 1. These positions, codified by the new law, are crucial to improving the performance of the Federal Government. 

The memo also instructed agencies to begin holding data-driven 

progress reviews of their goals by the end of June. I look forward 

to hearing from Mr. Zients today about whether these timelines 

will be met and about how many agencies have put their Chief Operating Officer into place. 

Finally, the law requires that all the results and performance information agencies generate be placed on a single searchable Web 

site. This electronic information would replace much of the large 

performance-related documents agencies produce today that often 

go unread. It will provide the sort of transparency and accountability of agency performance that Congress and the American people demand. It will also enable us to see what is working, to fix 

what is not, and to make some tough decisions about what programs may be duplicative or not needed. 

This Web site, known as performance.gov, has yet to be 

launched, and recent cuts to the Electronic Government Fund 

make its future a bit cloudy. That is a matter of concern to me. I 

know it is to others. We hope to hear more today about the Web 

site’s status and its importance from our witnesses. 

Finally, during his State of the Union Address a couple months 

ago, President Obama pledged to merge and reorganize agencies. I 

believe Mr. Zients is leading these efforts for the President and we 

hope to hear from him and other witnesses about how this new law 

can serve as a tool for making some of the tough decisions ahead, 

and we know they will be tough. 

Today, we face unparalleled challenges both here and abroad, 

and these require a knowledgeable and nimble Federal Government that can respond effectively. With concerns growing over the 

mounting Federal deficit and national debt, the American people 

deserve to know that every dollar they send to Washington is being 

used to its utmost potential. We need to replace the, what I would 

describe as the culture of spendthrift that has become all too common in Washington, really, in Federal agencies across the country, 

replace that culture of spendthrift with what I describe as a culture 

of thrift, and making better use of performance information is an 

invaluable tool that can help us get there. If used effectively, it can 

identify problems, find solutions, and develop approaches that can 

help us to provide better service to the people who send us here 

for less money than we are spending today—better results for less 

money. 

With that said, I going to turn to Senator Scott Brown for his 

statement. Thank you. 

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OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BROWN 

Senator BROWN. Certainly, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding 

this hearing. As you mentioned, Senator Akaka cannot be with us 

today. I want to just say for the record that while I have an opportunity to serve in this Joint Subcommittee hearing, to recognize his 

distinguished service and leadership on issues concerning the improvement and management of our Federal Government. I want to 

thank our witnesses all for coming and all the people that are here 

to listen. 

As you know, just to mirror what Senator Carper said, we are 

in a financial emergency and we need to squeeze out every last dollar. When I go around the country and around the State, in particular, and people say, before I give any more taxes, I want to 

know that the Government is using my money wisely, and I think 

there is a trust issue right now, that people want to do their fair 

share, but they also want to know that when they do it, they are 

not going to be wasting their hard-earned dollars. And I think 

there needs to be an effort to reestablish trust between the American people and the Federal Government, quite frankly, and I am 

hopeful through your efforts, collectively, that you will be able to 

eliminate any overlap waste, fraud abuse. On the one hand, we are wrestling about $61 billion, and on the 

other hand, we are giving away hundreds of billions of dollars just 

through various programs and projects that are either obsolete, 

they are not working properly, and we need help. And I have said 

publicly, I am happy to help the Administration with these things, 

happy to work with my Democratic colleague, Mr. Chairman, to 

tackle these things. There are people of good will on both sides of 

the aisle who want to tackle these things and we have not been 

given the opportunity yet and I am hopeful we can do that. 

So this hearing is obviously a good step and I want to just thank 

you for coming and letting us know where you are at and what you 

are doing and I look forward to the testimony, as well. Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Good. Thank you, Senator Brown. 

Senator Johnson from Wisconsin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON 

Senator JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to acknowledge Senator Akaka, who is just a fine gentleman, and certainly wish him a speedy recovery. It is too bad he cannot be here 

today. 

I also want to acknowledge what Senator Brown just said about 

people working together in good will and good faith to tackle these 

issues. I came to Washington because we are bankrupting this Nation. We are here at a very serious time. I think our Nation is imperiled, and I knew the system was broken. I knew processes were 

broken, our budget process was broken, and unfortunately, there 

has not been a whole lot of things I have seen here in my 4 months 

and 7 days—but who is counting—that has changed my mind that 

things are pretty broken here in Washington. But there are a few 

rays of hope, and certainly working with you, Mr. Dodaro, in terms 

of what I have seen coming out of the Government Accountability 

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5 

sults Improvement Act, I mean, these are signs that maybe we do 

have a chance. When we are looking at running a $1.65 trillion, or 

as I like to refer to it, a $1,650 billion a year deficit, we simply cannot afford to have inefficient and ineffective Government. 

So, again, I am looking forward to your testimony. Thank you for 

coming. I think in particular, as I mentioned to Mr. Zients, I really 

want to talk about examples. I want to see in the past what has 

worked, and maybe more important, what has not worked and why 

it has not worked in these agencies in terms of actually improving 

them, looking at metrics and seeing how we can move this process 

forward. 

So, again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you, Senator Johnson. 

Our first witness today is the Honorable Jeff Zients. Mr. Zients 

is our Nation’s first Chief Performance Officer (CPO) and the Deputy Director for Management in the Office of Management and 

Budget. Before coming to the Government, Mr. Zients spent over 

20 years as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in the private sector, 

and we thank him for appearing today. Thank you even more for 

your service. 

Our witness alongside of—his wingman, alongside of Mr. Zients, 

is Gene Dodaro, a man who testifies time and again with no prepared testimony. He does it off the top of his head. We will see if 

he can do it again today. I tell him, the only other person I ever 

saw do this was John Roberts, who went on to become the Chief 

Justice of the Supreme Court, so you have a bright future ahead 

of you, if not at GAO. [Laughter.] 

But Gene is the Comptroller General of the United States and 

head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. What is the 

length of your tenure, is it 15 years? Sixteen years? 

Mr. DODARO. Fifteen years. 

Senator CARPER. Fifteen years, OK. Mr. Dodaro has a long and 

distinguished career at GAO, stretching back for more than 30 

years, and we thank him for being with us today and for testifying. 

I just want to say—I said this to some of my colleagues today 

and I will just say this before we turn it over to our witnesses— 

I think GAO, in terms of deficit reduction, are actually getting better results for less money. I think GAO does huge public service for 

us, if we will take advantage of it. Among other things, it is with 

their High-Risk List. It is almost like a to-do list for things that 

we can do to change the culture around here, but not just change 

the culture, but actually get better results for less money. 

And I always commend it to my colleagues and would do so again 

today, and we thank you for that, and also for your work on duplication. If we are smart, we will take Subcommittees like this one 

that are really interested in getting better results for less money 

and work with OMB, where certainly Mr. Zients, as our Chief Performance Officer, is interested in doing that, and GAO will get 

some things done. In fact, we are already beginning to and I am 

encouraged by that. 

All right. Mr. Zients, you are up. You can testify for as long as 

you want, but I will have to cut you off a little bit after 5 minutes, 

so do not. But you can keep talking. You will run over into Gene 

Dodaro. But your entire testimony will be made part of the record, 

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1The prepared statement of Mr. Zients appears in the appendix on page 46. 

so if you can wrap it a little over 5 minutes, that would be great. 

Thanks. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Great. 

Senator CARPER. Please proceed. 

STATEMENT OF HON. JEFFREY D. ZIENTS,1 FEDERAL CHIEF 

PERFORMANCE OFFICER AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR MANAGEMENT, U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET 

Mr. ZIENTS. Thank you, Chairman Carper and Ranking Member 

Johnson and Senator Brown. I appreciate the opportunity to come 

before you today to discuss our shared objective to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of Government operations. I will provide a brief update on the Administration’s performance management approach, explain how we are implementing the new Act, and 

discuss the path forward, all within 5 minutes. 

Let me start with an update. The Obama Administration’s performance management efforts buildupon the groundwork established by previous Administrations and by Congress. We are using 

a proven approach. I think it is pretty simple and straightforward. 

Leaders set clear, ambitious goals for a limited number of priorities. Agency teams then develop performance plans and set specific 

targets. And then agency leaders, working with OMB, conduct frequent performance reviews to drive progress toward these goals. 

And we are getting results. 

Let me start with our Government-wide management efforts. We 

have reviewed, case by case, over 100 troubled information technology (IT) projects and have reduced spending by roughly $3 billion. As importantly, we have streamlined these projects to focus on 

the critical business needs, and in some cases, we have actually 

terminated poorly performing projects altogether. 

For in improper payments, we have deployed state-of-the-art 

fraud detection tools used by the private sector to crack down on 

fraud and abuse. These tools have helped us avoid $4 billion in improper payments in 2010 alone. 

We have also tackled the longstanding problems plaguing the 

management of real property, making significant progress toward 

the President’s goal of achieving $3 billion in savings by the end 

of next year. We proposed to Congress just last week a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC)-like approach to civilian property 

that would save $15 billion over 3 years. 

So while we have been driving progress in these and other Government-wide areas, we have also been working very closely with 

senior leaders, deputy secretaries of the major agencies, to set clear 

goals in their agencies on their specific high priority areas. 

Take Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), for 

example, where Secretary Donovan and his deputy are working on 

a goal to assist 700,000 homeowners who are at risk of losing their 

homes. They are currently actually tracking ahead of their targets, 

25 percent ahead, for early delinquency intervention and loss mitigation. HUD is also working with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to reduce homelessness among veterans, and they are on 

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track to bring the number of homeless veterans down below their 

target of 59,000 by June 2012. 

For all of these priority goals, both the agency-specific and the 

cross-Government management goals, we have senior accountable 

officials who are executing on detailed action plans and agency 

leaders who are tracking and analyzing progress against very specific outcomes-based targets. They are driving continual progress to 

meet their goals. Where they are off-track, they are making midcourse corrections. 

We are harnessing the power of transparency and accountability 

to get these results. We are using vehicles like the IT Dashboard 

to cast light on Government-wide management priorities. In each 

quarter, agencies report progress on their agency-specific goals 

through the Web site that Senator Carper mentioned, performance.gov. As needed, myself and my team at OMB follows up with 

agencies to support their efforts or to push where we think there 

needs to be more action, all to make sure that we are making sufficient progress. 

The GPRA Modernization Act that just passed really builds on 

and reinforces our performance management approach, and we are 

working aggressively with agencies to implement the Act. As Senator Carper mentioned, last month, OMB Director Lew and I sent 

a memo instructing agencies to designate both Chief Operating Officers and Performance Improvement Officers to drive performance 

and implementation of the Act. We also outlined the process and 

the time line for setting new agency priority goals as part of the 

Fiscal Year 2013 budget process that we are starting. 

Furthermore, as all of us recognize, the Federal Government too 

often operates in stovepipes, with inadequate cross-agency cooperation and coordination. The Act enhances our efforts to address this 

problem through the creation of Federal cross-agency priority goals. 

We have started the process of identifying these cross-agency goals 

for the first time with a specific focus on opportunities to address 

the duplication and inefficiencies across agencies, like those highlighted in the GAO report. We look forward to working with Congress in the coming months as we develop these first Federal crossagency priority goals. 

Importantly, the Act also calls for us to move from the production 

of very lengthy printed performance plans and reports to more useful, more actionable online performance information. Performance.gov is the vehicle for this. It will facilitate and accelerate performance management, and we plan to make the information on 

the site available to the public soon to help hold us accountable. 

We will work to expand Performance.gov to meet the Act’s broader 

reporting requirements in advance of our October 2012 deadline, 

though, as Senator Carper has said, the exact timing and level of 

functionality will be dependent upon future funding levels. 

So in closing, our path forward, and the progress that we have 

had to date, gives me a lot of confidence that, together, we can 

change the way Government works to provide the American people 

with the efficiency, effective, and high-performing Government they 

deserve. I look forward to working closely with the three of you and 

other Members of Congress and my colleagues and Federal employees across the Nation to accomplish our shared objectives. 

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8 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Dodaro appears in the appendix on page 52. 

I want to thank the Subcommittee for holding the hearing and 

for your continued commitment to improving Federal performance. 

Post-Gene, I will be happy to answer any questions. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you very much for that testimony. 

Mr. Dodaro, you are on. Thanks. 

STATEMENT OF HON. EUGENE L. DODARO,1 COMPTROLLER 

GENERAL, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. DODARO. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Senator Brown, 

Senator Johnson. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act. I would first 

like to express my best wishes to Senator Akaka, as well, for a 

speedy recovery. 

There are five elements of the legislation that I wanted to focus 

on in my oral comments today. The first is instilling a more coordinated, cross-cutting focus on achieving meaningful results. I believe 

our report on Overlap, Duplication, and Fragmentation vividly outlined the need for a better approach in this area. For example, the 

report highlighted several areas where there are between 40 and 

100 different programs trying to accomplish similar objectives in 

the areas like teacher quality, employment and training programs, 

economic development programs, surface transportation. There is 

the need for greater coordination to make sure that the Federal 

Government’s role is clear, that there are opportunities to focus 

better on what the Government collectively is trying to achieve in 

these areas, there is a prioritization, and there are metrics that 

could be used to hold agencies accountable. So I believe this crosscutting coordinating focus can drive greater efficiencies, and the 

GPRA Modernization Act is a platform for reprioritization of what 

the Federal role should be and how it will be measured to gauge 

success. 

Also, more and more problems require multiple agencies to work 

together to tackle those problems, whether we are talking about 

homeland security or battling infectious diseases, and the GPRA 

Modernization Act offers a new, fresh start to begin those processes 

in a coordinated way across the Federal Government. 

The second major element is focusing on management challenges 

and management functions. The Act calls for focusing on five: Financial management, human capital, acquisition and contract management, real property, and information technology. These areas, 

either the whole area or aspects of the area, are on our High-Risk 

List. Now, while in most of the areas, there were efforts made during the 1990’s to pass management reform legislation, and there 

have been some benefits from that, but we are nowhere near having the type of management infrastructure and capabilities commensurate with the challenges facing the Federal Government 

right now. And I am hoping that through the requirements for 

OMB to produce plans on these management functions, that will 

provide greater impetus to making the necessary improvements so 

the Government has the management capacity to really deliver better results for less money. But it will not happen with only plans 

in each of the functional areas, but the plans need to be developed 

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9 

in an integrated fashion to look at these management tools using 

approach that provides the biggest bang for the buck. 

Third, the emphasis of the Act on use of performance measures 

is critical. The need to disclose more about the reliability of the 

performance measures, to provide more frequent reporting, or quarterly reporting, and to make it transparent through a single, governmentwide Web site, I think will have profound effects on accountability moving forward. 

Again, in our report on Overlap, Duplication, and Fragmentation, 

we found in many cases, many of these programs had not been reviewed for their impact. In the employment and training area, only 

5 of the 47 programs we looked at had a performance evaluation 

impact study since 2004. Many other programs have not been evaluated. So there needs to be rigorous discipline imposed and the capabilities enhanced of the agencies to be able to focus on these 

areas. 

The last two, the fourth and fifth areas I would mention together, which is leadership and engaging the Congress more in a 

dialogue. I would note the two areas that we took off the High-Risk 

List this past year had senior management attention in the Executive Branch and had over a dozen hearings by the Congress to get 

sustained progress and enough attention to come off of the list. So 

it is very important for the Executive and Legislative Branches to 

work together on these problems, to have ongoing dialogue. I think 

through the collective efforts of all, the Government can have systems in place that the American people expect and that could provide better results and more effective services. 

And I would close by saying that I can assure this Subcommittee 

there are several roles for GAO in the legislation to provide periodic evaluations of its implementation and we will be doing that 

very diligently and providing the results to the Congress. 

So thank you very much. I would be happy to answer any questions. 

Senator CARPER. That is great. Thanks so much. 

Let us just go back to your last point, if we could, Mr. Dodaro. 

You mentioned there are several opportunities or roles for GAO to 

play, and I think there are some for OMB certainly to play. Talk 

about, if you will, the role for us on this side of the dais, for the 

Legislative Branch. 

I go back to this idea of getting better results, focusing on performance. Eighteen years ago, President Clinton signed the original 

legislation into law, and here we are 18 years later. I think you 

could argue we have made some progress, but certainly not nearly 

enough. 

But talk, if you will, a little bit about the roles that GAO is expected to play under the legislation. And if you will, turn it around 

on us and say, well, these are some things that you and the Legislative Branch could do that would be real helpful. 

Mr. DODARO. Well, GAO’s responsibilities, first, are to provide 

evaluations by 2013 on the planning and reporting aspects of the 

GPRA Modernization Act, and then by 2015 and again in 2017, to 

provide analysis of how the performance information is being used 

to enhance performance and hold managers accountable for achieving those results, and then every 4 years after. So there is a set 

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10 

schedule in place for us to review it on a periodic basis but I focused on early implementation. I believe in getting started right 

away and laying the proper foundation. So we are already beginning our outreach. 

Now, as it relates to the Congress, I think the Act sets what I 

would call minimum requirements for consultation; that is the Executive Branch must consult with the legislature about their goals 

every 2 years and to disclose how they use the results. I think the 

Congress ought to seize the opportunity to be more proactive and 

to provide its input into the Executive Branch about these program 

activities, what they would like to see out of the results, to have 

frequent, ongoing communication, and to have formal oversight 

hearings. 

I think the other challenge for the Congress, quite frankly, will 

be in these cross-cutting areas, because they will cut across committee jurisdictions. So I think joint hearings like this type of hearing will have to become more commonplace and to have more dialogue so the Congress can express its collective views on these 

cross-cutting policy issues. I think that will be very important. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Good. Thanks. 

Mr. Zients, same question, if I could, replacing GAO with OMB, 

the first part. 

Mr. ZIENTS. OK. In terms of OMB’s role, it is central here. We 

are, as you pointed out, working with agency leaders to designate 

the COOs, the PIOs, to ensure that those quarterly reviews kick 

in at the end of June. We are going to be working very closely as 

part of the President’s Management Council (PMC), the seniormost management council across government, that I chair. It is the 

deputy secretaries, and we meet monthly. Performance has been 

our agenda since the beginning of the Administration and the Act 

has been a constant agenda item since it passed in January. 

Senator CARPER. How has attendance been at those meetings? 

Mr. ZIENTS. We make sure that we schedule around very busy 

people’s calendars. There are 20 members. We typically have 17 or 

18 at the table. 

Senator CARPER. All right. 

Mr. ZIENTS. But that is through a complex scheduling process to 

coordinate schedules. We are essential here. It is going to be a very 

important part of my effort—— 

Senator CARPER. Do you meet in person or do you do it-—can 

people do it by video, or—— 

Mr. ZIENTS. It is all in person. 

Senator CARPER. OK. 

Mr. ZIENTS. It is an hour-and-a-half meeting once a month. No 

substitutes is also the rule, so it is the deputies themselves. So that 

senior ownership and making sure that we provide the tools and 

that we hold the review sessions with senior leaders to make sure 

that they are making progress is probably the most important role. 

On your second question, on Congress, I would echo what Gene 

said in terms of giving input and holding us accountable. I would 

also say that, like the real property legislation that we talked 

about last week, we are going to need the cooperation of Congress. 

Some of these issues, real estate being a tangible one, individual 

members of Congress care a lot about individual properties, and in 

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order for us to rid ourselves of unneeded properties, we are going 

to need congressional help to do that. 

That is also true with the individual programs. There is plenty 

of work that we need to be doing in the Executive Branch, but inevitably, on some of these programs, there are members of Congress who care a lot about the individual programs, even if they 

might be less effective programs. We are going to need your cooperation in order to rid ourselves of unnecessary or poorly performing programs and unneeded real estate, and that exists across 

many of our areas. 

Last, the more that these priorities are hard-wired into budget 

and appropriations, the more real they become. So I think it is 

going to be very important that we work closely with you and that, 

ultimately, budgets and appropriations reflect these priorities. 

Senator CARPER. Great. I would like to say, and I say this as 

much to my colleagues as anybody else, but one of the things that 

we are trying to do, this is just one little Subcommittee in Homeland Security with fairly broad jurisdiction, and what we are trying 

to do is to figure out how to leverage our role, and by working with 

OMB, by working with the Government Accountability Office, by 

working with the Inspector Generals (IG) across the Federal Government, by working with nonprofit groups, Citizens Against Government Waste and David Walker’s new organization and Pete Peterson and those initiatives, maybe together—none of us by themselves can get this job done because it is so huge, but I think by 

working together—these are not partisan issues. Nobody likes 

waste. It is not a Democrat or Republican issue. So I am encouraged by what you are doing. 

Somebody said to me recently that one of the best ways to get 

better performance was through transparency, by being more 

transparent. We are actually opening up to the full light of day 

how well we are doing or not doing a particular job or role, then 

that is a pretty good way to get better results, and I think there 

is something to that. 

With that in mind, we have, unfortunately, in the Continuing 

Resolution cut significantly the amount of money that is going to 

be available to help pay for, among other things, performance.gov 

and some of the tools that we have in mind that Vivek Kundra has 

been pushing for us to do, the Dashboard stuff and others. 

I want to ask, if I could, Mr. Zients, when does OMB plan to release the final public version of the Web site, and will the schedule 

be affected by the Fiscal Year 2011 budget reductions to the Electronic Government Fund? 

Mr. ZIENTS. Yes. As you pointed out, the Continuing Resolution 

(CR) did result in much reduced funding for efforts like the IT 

Dashboard, USAspendingperformance.gov, and these other vehicles, which I do think have a real impact on performance. The IT 

Dashboard looks at every major IT project across the Federal Government, to see it is performing versus costs and budget. That set 

us up to do the very detailed project by project review that resulted 

in the $3 billion of savings and cutting delivery times in half. 

So I, too, am a big believer that this transparency can help drive 

performance and hold us accountable. We will be able to keep most 

of the current sites going, but we are not going to be able to do the 

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enhanced functionality that begins to integrate sites and make 

them more user friendly and more applicable to performance with 

the level of funding that we have. 

We do anticipate that the very early version of performance.gov 

will be available in the next few weeks. Getting it to the standard 

that the Act calls for by October 2012, will depend upon getting the 

funding, because it really envisions a much more robust site than 

the one that we will be able to make available in the next few 

weeks. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Good. 

We have been joined by Senator Pryor. Welcome, Senator Pryor. 

Glad to see you. 

And I would just say, one of the things I was just asking them, 

Mark, is what we can do to be a good, full partner in this, and I 

think one of the ways is to make sure, if we are interested in the 

transparency, if we are interested in transparency driving performance, I think we need to make sure—these are very modest 

amounts of money, very modest. We are talking about $20 million, 

which in the whole scheme of things with a government this size 

is like—it is very, very small. 

Mr. ZIENTS. The government spends, $80 billion a year on IT, so 

the idea of a relatively small amount of money to open up performance across an $80 billion annual spend is, I think, money well 

spent. 

Senator CARPER. Yes. I agree. All right. Senator Brown. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Zients, could you tell me the top five areas you have established as having the greatest need for improvement, and can you 

go into detail on how the initiative will ultimately save us money, 

and potentially how much? 

Mr. ZIENTS. I think that the top five areas are actually in Gene’s 

second category, which are the management areas that cross all 

agencies. So I will start with contracting, where one out of every 

six dollars is contracted out. It is over $500 billion a year. It doubled during the Bush Administration, so it had about a 12 percent 

compounding annual growth rate. You can imagine with that kind 

of growth, that there are inefficiencies. There is too little competition, so we cranked up competition. We rely too heavily on costplus or cost reimbursement contracts rather than fixed-price contracts, so we have set targets for moving contracts from cost-plus 

to fixed-price. 

We purchase in the Federal Government, Mr. Johnson, like we 

are hundreds of small or medium-sized business, when, in fact, we 

are the world’s largest purchaser. So we are using strategic 

sourcing and for the first time, really pooling our purchasing 

power, and office supplies is a very basic example. We are pooling 

purchasing power for the first time and we are saving 10 to 20 percent on the same pens and paper that agencies purchase every day. 

Another area is IT, as I mentioned, $80 billion a year. Probably 

to me the most important area—— 

Senator BROWN. Can I interrupt for 1 second? 

Mr. ZIENTS. Sure. 

Senator BROWN. I just want to go back to what you talked about, 

the office supplies issue, only because I was recently contacted by 

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some folks. I guess my concern is when you are doing that sort of 

thing and you are actually doing the bulk purchasing, which I actually have a bill that is dealing with a lot of that stuff—— 

Mr. ZIENTS. Mm-hmm. 

Senator BROWN [continuing]. I am hopeful that when you do 

that, that you are not going to squeeze out the smaller business 

people and then have no competition to the point where you are 

just going to one entity ultimately—— 

Mr. ZIENTS. No, it is something that we are very cognizant of 

from the beginning, both small businesses, veterans’ owned businesses, disabled businesses, and the like. Out of the 15 suppliers 

that are part of the final list there, 13 are not large businesses. 

They are small businesses, veterans’ owned businesses and all the 

rest. So it is not to say there are not small businesses that have 

lost out relative to small business competitors—— 

Senator BROWN. Well, in Massachusetts, there are quite a few, 

actually. I received quite a few calls on it. So maybe offline, we can 

talk about it—— 

Mr. ZIENTS. Sure. 

Senator BROWN [continuing]. So I am clear. I want to make sure 

that I understand—— 

Mr. ZIENTS. But to be clear, if you are going to do strategic 

sourcing and consolidate purchasing power, definitionally—— 

Senator BROWN. Oh, yes. No, I get it. 

Mr. ZIENTS [continuing]. You are going to have a funnel. But in 

terms of the 15 that are on the list, 13 are small businesses. 

Senator BROWN. Right. I did not mean to interrupt. 

Mr. ZIENTS. No, sir. IT, as we have talked about is $80 billion 

a year in spending. To me, it is probably the most important category, if you think about the year over year productivity gains in 

the private sector, 1.5 to 2 percent a year for the last couple of decades. IT has been at the center of those gains, those gains both in 

efficiency and quality. And if you were to go to a typical government operation, for the most part, you would see processes and 

technologies that are a decade or two old. So if we are going to 

drive productivity, do more with less, we are going to have to get 

better at IT—— 

Senator BROWN. I am going to interrupt you there again. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Please. 

Senator BROWN. Another Senator and I have already had a hearing or two on that very issue because the amount of just inefficiency and waste in that area is huge, especially with the technology that we have now. It seems like we are reinventing the 

wheel and the wheel is moving so quickly, we are always two or 

three generations behind. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Yes. We have agencies that are relying too heavily 

on proprietary development. There is an opportunity to do shared 

services. There is an opportunity to leverage the cloud. So, again, 

I think—we are 0-for-2. We spend $80 billion a year and we get a 

very low return for that—— 

Senator BROWN. And we are fighting about $61 billion, remember, in the last budget round. So that just goes to show you, when 

we are wasting—you said we are spending, but we are also—there 

is a tremendous amount of waste in here that I am glad—— 

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Mr. ZIENTS. As I said, when we went through 100 projects, we were able to reduce it by $3 billion, and I think more importantly, 

halve the delivery time for those projects so they can actually start 

to work to increase productivity efficiency and service quality. 

Another area is improper payments, one that Senator Carper has 

been—— 

Senator BROWN. We had a hearing on it a couple of weeks ago, 

in the Medicare and—— 

Mr. ZIENTS. Right, $100 billion a year. There, we are importing 

from the private sector fraud detection tools that are enabling us 

to recapture funds. We actually piloted some of those in the Recovery Act. We are taking those to Medicare and elsewhere. Recovery 

audits, which Senator Carper helped pioneer, the idea of bringing 

in private sector firms to actually recover payments that should not 

have been made, $700 million in recovery last year. So a lot of 

work still needs to be done in improper payments, a major area of 

focus, and clearly, we need to reduce waste and inefficiency there. 

Senator BROWN. I just want to jump in. As you are hitting it, it 

is kind of triggering a few things. Is there, like, a hotline where 

the ordinary citizen can call in and say, hey, by the way, I am 

aware of all this—it may be inefficiency or waste. Is that something 

you guys deal with or put out there at all? 

Mr. ZIENTS. Yes. I do not know the specifics. I believe there are 

through the Inspectors General and elsewhere, but I would need to 

get back to you on specific outlines. Certainly, the Inspectors General play a feature role here. 

Senator BROWN. Right. I did not know if you guys had specifically anything—— 

Mr. ZIENTS. Another area is real property. We are the country’s 

largest property owner, over a million properties. Already, 14,000 

have been identified as unneeded. We made those public last week. 

But beyond the 14,000, there are tens of thousands of properties 

that are underutilized. It is way too difficult to get rid of unneeded 

property, too many steps in the process, a lot of red tape. And as 

I mentioned earlier, there can be political interests, too. So we are 

executing on $3 billion of savings, but that is really just the tip of 

the iceberg. If we can get this BRAC-like process set up, I think 

we can save $15 billion across the first 3 years. This is not even 

taking into account innovative space management practices like 

teleworking and hoteling that the private sector has been doing for 

years now. 

Senator BROWN. Yes. No, that is good. I appreciate it. I just have 

one comment and then one last question and then I will move on. 

I was wondering if we could speak offline about just a couple of 

things—— 

Mr. ZIENTS. Please. 

Senator BROWN [continuing]. Maybe today or tomorrow or the 

next day, whatever. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Please. 

Senator BROWN. And I was wondering, what can OMB do to ensure that the agencies create a performance culture? I know you 

referenced that only a handful of agencies actually do any type of 

review, and where all agencies are accountable and then actually 

rewarded for contributing to the success of the goals, not just the 

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senior executives, so the low-level, mid-level, every employee feels 

like they are part of the team. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Yes. I do think you have to start at the top. I think, 

historically, one of the problems had been the turnover and lack of 

focus of political folks, and we have been working very hard to 

make sure that deputy secretaries and senior teams are focused on 

a handful of priorities. I think Senator Carper mentioned it up 

front. We tend to measure everything, and then nothing really matters. So I think central to the Modernization Act, and to our effort 

here, is to pick a number of priorities and track them relentlessly. 

You are right, Senator Brown. Celebrate victories. Mid-course, 

correct where you are off-line. And we have the bulk of the President’s Management Council now extremely focused, a few laggards 

who are catching up, and really driving performance at their agencies, and it is contagious. As you start to make progress and show 

that results can happen, it trickles down in the organization and 

everybody gets on board. 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. I would just say, what I think we are getting 

at here is really trying to change the culture. Again, one Subcommittee does not change it, but all of us working together, because we are all in this together, all of us working together, I 

think, actually can. It is a little bit like changing the course of an 

air craft carrier. But even those carriers’ courses can be changed. 

The other thing we have had hearings on, and I do not know that 

Senator Johnson was here, but Senator Brown and I have had 

some hearings where we actually brought in the Department of Defense (DOD), and among the things we focused on, major weapons 

systems cost overruns, which are up last year about $402 billion, 

up from $42 billion a decade earlier. And what we found out is 

there are major gaps, where we had nobody literally at the top in 

the Pentagon whose job is procurement for months, in one case, 18 

months, in another case for, like, 15 months. I mean, just stuff that 

is—no wonder we have problems in this. 

We have to have continuity. Sometimes I look at the Executive 

Branch and it almost looks like what I call Executive Branch Swiss 

cheese. Whether it is the Bush Administration or the Obama Administration, that is no good. That is no good. 

Senator Johnson, thanks for being here. 

Senator JOHNSON. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I used the analogy earlier today, because I have a dirty garage, 

but if you are going to try and clean it, you start somewhere. You 

start in that corner. I think that is what we are talking about here, 

too. I mean, we have a massive, behemoth government and there 

are all kinds of waste and inefficiency, but you have to start somewhere and utilize those examples across the board. 

I just wanted to ask a couple of followup questions on the properties. Mr. Zients, when you are talking about $15 billion savings 

over 3 years, is that savings in the cost of renting those properties 

or is that just receipts from selling the properties? 

Mr. ZIENTS. Both. We have properties that are abandoned that 

might not have much market value. Those, we have to either give 

away or demolish and save the maintenance and energy costs. The 

majority of the savings, I think it is about 60 to 65 percent, is in 

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the sale, but the other 35 percent, obviously, is important maintenance and energy costs. 

Senator JOHNSON. Do you have an estimate—this is maybe getting a little off-subject, but do you have an estimate of total property, what the total receipt might be if we sold it? 

Mr. ZIENTS. It is carried on the books at over a trillion dollars, 

but the book value is a funny number here given the market fluctuations, where some are probably worthless and some are worth 

much more than we carried on the book. I think the figure is high 

one-point-something trillion. It is $20 billion a year of maintenance 

and energy expense. So that is our annual expense. 

Senator JOHNSON. Again, so you can save on maintenance and 

you could have money coming to Treasury to fill a budget gap? 

Mr. ZIENTS. Exactly. 

Senator JOHNSON. Mr. Dodaro, you were talking about oversight 

hearings. One thing I have learned in business is I have generally 

received better results trying to be positive, but when that fails, I 

mean, you have to get negative. Can you just talk to me a little 

bit about how you would envision those oversight hearings? I would 

imagine, again, talking about that corner of the garage, you would 

try and use examples, correct, to highlight it, and then maybe 

other agencies would start toeing the line? 

Mr. DODARO. I would use examples of the two areas that came 

off the High-Risk List. First was the personnel security clearances. 

It was taking a huge amount of time, months, right after September 11, 2001 to get people their security clearances. So we put 

it on the High-Risk List. Congress imposed some metrics including 

the Deputy Director for Management. OMB, the Office of Personnel 

Management (OPM) and DOD got involved and they brought that 

metric down over time to less than 60 days to process the original 

clearance. There were clear goal and metrics. Congress had discussions. It was a constructive process. 

The same thing happened with the Decennial Census. That got 

off-track for this last 2010 Census. We put it on the High-Risk List 

in March 2008, out of our normal 2-year cycle, because we were 

concerned. We gave a lot of specific recommendations. Commerce 

got involved. The Congress got involved. Senator Carper and this 

Subcommittee, a lot of hearings were held. They brought it down 

on track. An IT project was out of control on these hand-held devices, and they were able to do it. 

So my belief is—and I have participated in a lot of oversight 

hearings over the years—that I think when there are clear priority 

goals, clear metrics, Congress can play a very constructive role in 

keeping the agency on track, and this is particularly important because of the lack of continuity on an issue that might occur in the 

Executive Branch, both within Administrations and across Administrations, and that is why we have maintained our High-Risk List, 

since 1990 across Administrations so that we can keep the focus on 

trying to move forward in these areas. 

So it is a very positive thing and it could focus on accomplishments in terms of achieving results. For example, Senator 

Voinovich said he would actually come back from Florida from vacation if we took the personnel security clearances off the HighRisk List. He ultimately decided the weather was better in Florida 

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than it was here, but I think those things can happen. So those are 

just two examples. I could give you more. 

Senator JOHNSON. OK. We talked a little bit earlier about congressional action. Would either of you envision with either of your 

agencies recommending for sunset certain programs, a list that 

Congress could then act on? Is that kind of in the offing? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. The GPRA Modernization Act calls for OMB, 

after programs do not meet their goals over a 3-year period, to recommend termination, redefining, or some other action. So that concept is built into the Act. I think that is healthy. 

I think there are normal reauthorizations that are supposed to 

occur already in programs, but they are typically postponed. No 

Child Left Behind, for example, is up for reauthorization, as are 

Head Start programs. So I think that the idea of regular reviews 

is a really good idea. It is a healthy idea and it ought to be implemented effectively. 

Mr. ZIENTS. The President each year in his budget puts forward 

terminations and reductions as a separate volume. Last year, or for 

the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, it was over $33 billion and 200 different programs. Now, some of those have been on the list for quite 

some time across different Administrations. We would imagine 

those efforts ramping up even further in this fiscal environment, 

and the Federal cross-agency goals that the Act calls for will certainly be in these areas of duplication and overlap and we would 

envision finding programs that are less effective that either need 

to be turned around or terminated as part of that effort. 

Senator JOHNSON. As just a basic estimate, how many of those 

programs need congressional action versus just that could be terminated by the agencies themselves? 

Mr. ZIENTS. I think that most—the vast majority of them need 

congressional action. 

Mr. DODARO. Yes, I would agree. 

Senator JOHNSON. OK. So we need those lists. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Yes. 

Senator JOHNSON. You talked about cross-agency action. Is there 

any kind of clearinghouse for just best practice methods within government? 

Mr. ZIENTS. Yes. 

Senator JOHNSON. Across the management sphere? 

Mr. ZIENTS. Yes, and that absolutely is something I am a big believer in. My private sector work was sort of centered around best 

practices, the basic theory being that some executives or some organizations are further ahead on certain issues and others can benefit from that. 

The senior-most management body, the President’s Management 

Council that I talked about earlier, is a clearinghouse for best practices at the senior-most level. We also have councils in each of the 

functional areas. There is a Chief Acquisition Officer Council 

(CAOC), a CFO Council, a Chief Human Capital Council, and so 

on across the major functional areas, and we have ensured that 

those become primarily best practice clearinghouses, what is working, what is not working, how can we work together more efficiently. 

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Senator JOHNSON. I was going to say, how well are those utilized? 

Mr. ZIENTS. I think increasingly well, and that has been one of 

our priorities. There is some variability. The way that we have 

tried to make sure those councils have a high return is to ensure 

that the senior-most people are there, and in order to get the senior-most people there, you have to have agendas that matter, and 

we have found that the sharing of best practices on important 

issues with real granularity and analytics to support them is the 

way to get people there and to find that the council is a good return 

on their time. 

Senator JOHNSON. I cut you off. I am sorry. 

Mr. DODARO. That is fine, Senator. I would say the functional 

councils and the sharing of best practices work fairly well. They 

could be better, and we have made some recommendations. But 

where there are not really good processes in place are in individual 

program areas. 

For example, we found in our report on overlap and duplication 

there were 82 programs focused on improving teacher quality 

across 10 different agencies, and there really was no process there 

to coordinate. There are multiple programs trying to provide assistance to the disabled and there is no real regular forum for that. 

So when these individual programs are run by different agencies— 

there needs to be more of a focus. 

Now, the GPRA Modernization Act requires OMB to designate a 

few cross-cutting goals, but it also requires agencies to identify for 

their programs who else they should be coordinating with. And so 

if that part can be implemented effectively, I think you can have 

a more comprehensive approach, the coordination could ferret out 

a lot of this overlap and duplication by having the dialogue within 

the Executive Branch itself. 

Senator JOHNSON. OK, thank you Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. 

Before I yield and recognize Senator Pryor, I just want to mention, in the National Governors Association (NGA), we actually had 

a Center for Best Practices and there was a clearinghouse for good 

ideas that worked from A to Z, and the States that were doing a 

particularly good job, thought they had something to offer, would 

submit their best practice to the clearinghouse and provide contact 

information. If other States wanted to find out what was working, 

reduce recidivism, reduce welfare, reduce drop-out, all kinds of 

stuff, and improve educational outcomes. Tommy Thompson, your 

former Governor, was one of the real heroes in getting that started 

and I enjoyed very much working with him on that. 

The other thing that came up in, I think, this exchange between 

Senator Johnson and our panel, about the President submitting a 

list, I think in the budget, of programs that could be maybe—the 

President and the Executive Branch would suggest being terminated. A lot of times, the President, whether it is submitting rescission proposals, reducing spending or sending spending, a lot of 

times, they are sent to us by Republican Presidents and Democratic Presidents, we just ignore it and we never vote on the rescissions. 

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One of the things that a number of us on this panel have suggested is not that we give the President carte blanche. I am not interested in giving the President the kind of powers that the Congress was willing to give to the former President Clinton, nothing 

against him, but basically what was in the 1996–1997 line item 

veto bill that has really shifted powers enormously from the Legislative Branch to the Executive Branch. I am not interested in doing 

that. But the idea of saying that somebody needs to be held accountable, and the President and the Congress and the partnership 

need to be held accountable for programs that need to be basically 

eliminated or greatly reduced or spending needs—we should have 

to vote on that stuff and not ignore it. 

And the last thing I would just say, I think, as Mr. Dodaro, who 

mentioned the Census Bureau, and we had a huge run-up in costs 

of the Census. We could do it again if we do not figure out how 

to use technology to do a much better job in holding down costs, 

maybe social media, as well, social networking. 

One of the big problems there, going back to Executive Branch 

Swiss cheese, we have—in the Census Bureau, we had three different Census Bureau Directors in the 27-month run-up to the Census—three. That is—no wonder we had problems. One of the things 

we are trying to get done is to change the law, and it comes literally through our Committee, and we discussed this a couple of 

weeks ago when we were doing a mark-up, and I think you and I 

are very much of a like mind on this. But we said the Census Bureau Director should have a 5-year tenure. We do that with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner. That way, you do not 

have to worry about, when you are doing the run-up to the Census, 

well, you are going to have two or three different Census Directors. 

That is just crazy. So there is a lot here to chew on, I will tell you. 

Senator Pryor, we are delighted that you could join us here. 

Thanks. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Thanks for doing this. This is very 

helpful. 

Mr. Dodaro, let me start with you, if I may. You have said a few 

things. You have never used the term ‘‘zero-based budgeting,’’ but 

I feel like you are in the zone on that. Would you support a zerobased budgeting approach on the Federal level? 

Mr. DODARO. Well, again, there have been a lot of different approaches tried in the past, and there are some limitations to the 

zero-based approach, of going back and trying to build it from the 

base on up. I am a big believer, though, of reviewing what is currently there and beginning to pare back and to try to focus on core 

responsibilities. There needs to be a regular review process and it 

needs to have something in it that has some staying power. 

Senator PRYOR. Should the review come from the Executive and 

the Legislative? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes, I believe. 

Senator PRYOR. I do, too. The reason I am interested in zerobased budgeting is because around here, a lot of times, we start 

with last year’s budget and then we kind of tinker with it from 

there and usually we tend to add. You kind of start with a costof-living, inflation-type adjustment and you go from there. That is 

how it starts. 

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But it seems like part of the review, at least, not even every year 

but for every agency, every 5 years or whatever it may be, take 

them back to zero and justify everything. I know that probably 

would add to your workload and probably add to our workload, as 

well. Through the authorizing Committees and the Budget Committee here in the Senate, we would have to figure that all out. But 

I think it is something that is worth fuller discussion, so I appreciate your thoughts on that. 

Mr. Zients, you mentioned contracting a few moments ago. In 

fact, you started to give your top five list. Did you ever get through 

your top five, or do you have a top five? 

Mr. ZIENTS. I definitely ran through contracting, information 

technology, improper payment, real property, so I got four out of 

five. 

Senator PRYOR. Do you have a fifth? 

Mr. ZIENTS. It is probably the people side, in that performance 

ultimately needs to be driven by people. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. 

Mr. ZIENTS. We are obviously in a tight period of time. At the 

same time, we are going to need to be hiring new people, and you 

are not going to get the best and brightest when it takes you 140 

days to hire someone. So bringing down the hiring time has been 

a top priority of mine and Director Berry’s, and we have actually 

made good progress there, making sure that we are ramping up the 

performance management is also important. So the people would be 

the fifth category. 

Senator PRYOR. Let me ask you about contracting. I think you 

said one in every six Federal dollars goes to a contractor, somehow, 

some way. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Mm-hmm. 

Senator PRYOR. When I look at an agency that does very important work, like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), in my 

area of the world, they engineer that levee system that is holding 

right now. It is under great stress with all the water running 

through the Mississippi. It just seems that when they do a contract, it takes so long and it is so expensive. And I understand, to 

some extent, they want to over-engineer things, and I get that, because they are doing things for the long haul. They are more or less 

permanent and do not need that much maintenance. And so I think 

they do a good job in the engineering phase. 

But that would be one example. It is so expensive and takes so 

long to do some of that, and I am curious about your thoughts. 

First, is my perception correct? And second, I am curious if that is 

a function of bureaucracy and added requirements that just do not 

exist in the private sector. Why does it seem that government 

agencies take much longer than private sector and are much more 

expensive than the private sector? 

Mr. ZIENTS. I cannot comment on the level of the specific agency—— 

Senator PRYOR. Right—— 

Mr. ZIENTS [continuing]. But across government, it is definitely 

an issue in terms of the complexity of the process. I think there are 

opportunities to leverage technology here, also. 

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21 

At the end of the day, though, it reminds me a little bit of, Senator Carper, your observation about the money that can be spent 

on transparency a relatively small amount given the $80 billion in 

the IT example. The same thing here in contracting. We really do 

not have the capabilities or the capacity in the contracting workforce, both in terms of setting up the bid process and then overseeing contractors once they are selected. More importantly, in a 

very fiscally constrained environment, I would argue that a little 

bit of investment in the capacity and the capability of the contracting officers could have a big return on the $535 billion a year 

we spend on contracting. So it does lead to a process that too often 

is too slow, not competitive enough, and relies too heavily on costplus contracts as opposed to fixed-price contracts. 

Mr. ZIENTS. I think, Senator, broadly speaking to contracting and 

not just to the Corps, one of the most common problems that we 

find in looking at contracts is the lack of setting definitive requirements up front. Many times—and things are allowed to proceed 

through the different phases without having technology matured, a 

good idea of exactly what the costs could be. This leads to cost overruns over a period of time. And also, we found in many cases, when 

the contractors were not performing, they were still awarded 

fees—— 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

Mr. ZIENTS [continuing]. For performance. Now, we are trying to 

correct that within the Administration. But the lack of definitive 

requirements up front is a common problem that starts on a bad 

path. 

Senator PRYOR. Yes. I used to serve on the Armed Services Committee and periodically the military would issue a bid of some sort 

and then change the requirements midway through the process. 

Then they would change them again, and then before you know it, 

they would change them again. It really just prolongs and adds a 

lot to the expense. 

Let me ask about IT. I know that is very important and I like 

everything you said on it. Is that an area where you have to spend 

more money to get more efficient? 

Mr. ZIENTS. No. I think it is an area where we should be thinking about how can we leverage technology to make processes more 

efficient and raise quality at the same time. But given we spend 

$80 billion a year right now and we do not spend it very well or 

very effectively. Too often, projects run 5, 6, or 7 years before they 

deliver any functionality or—— 

Senator PRYOR. There is a lot of contracting there, right? 

Mr. ZIENTS. A lot of contracting there, yes. 

Senator PRYOR. Yes. 

Mr. ZIENTS. And at the same time, we need to have competent 

professionals in-house to oversee any contracting activities or to do 

work themselves. So I do not think it is an area, given how much 

money we spend, that we need to spend more. We have to spend 

it much more effectively than we currently do, and as we have 

talked about in the 100 projects that we have gone into great detail 

on, we actually think we can save money and bring forward 

functionality at the same time. 

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Senator PRYOR. And tell me about these 100 projects. How did 

those get selected and what did you find there? 

Mr. ZIENTS. These are larger projects, with bigger dollars, that 

were identified by the IT Dashboard, the transparency vehicle, as 

being behind schedule or over budget. And what we did is we got 

OMB and senior leadership from the agency in the room, not just 

IT folks but business line leaders who are actually going to ultimately be responsible for deploying the technology and using the 

technology, to go through the project to see what is working, what 

is not working, what functionality is nice to have versus need to 

have. How do we streamline this? How do we get deliverables in 

6 or 8 months rather than 2 or 3 years? Where can we save money? 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Where do we just terminate the project altogether, 

because now we know enough to realize that there is another technology out there that can leapfrog this that is less expensive and 

we are throwing good money after bad to continue on this path. 

Senator PRYOR. Yes. I would say one of the real challenges we 

have in the Federal Government is partly because of the size and 

partly because of the culture and other reasons. The Federal Government is not known for being nimble, and IT would be a good 

example of where it needs to become much more nimble because 

IT changes so quickly. 

Mr. ZIENTS. And the budget, the way we budget in the Federal 

Government—— 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

Mr. ZIENTS [continuing]. We are budgeting years in advance for 

technologies that change every 18 months. 

Senator PRYOR. So any suggestions or recommendations you can 

make to the Subcommittee to let us become more nimble or more 

flexible, so we can become more efficient and get more bang for the 

tax dollar, would be of interest to us. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Good. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks so much for those points and for joining 

us today. 

I think it was Senator Tom Coburn a couple of years ago, and 

I think he had just gotten to the Congress, I think it was about 

2005. Barack Obama was a new Senator from Illinois. One of the 

things that Tom Coburn started encouraging us to do was to try 

to provide greater transparency in Federal spending. The effort and 

its actual implementation has not been perfect. It has been, I 

think, somewhat flawed, although we are trying to get better and 

I think maybe we are. But I mentioned earlier how important it 

is for the Subcommittee to sort of leverage our job to do oversight 

with OMB, with GAO, with all the Inspector Generals, with a 

bunch of nonprofit organizations that are focused on government 

waste. 

One of the great ways—it has just dawned on me fairly recently 

that, and Senator Coburn came up with it a lot sooner than I did, 

but a great way to leverage our collective efforts is by really investing a relatively small amount of money in ensuring that there is 

transparency. And what we do in doing that is enlist not just us, 

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23 

not just the Legislative Branch, not just the Executive Branch in 

terms of trying to police inefficient spending, but anybody who 

wants to go online, including the media or other folks who can go 

online, and the potential there is actually rather substantial and 

we are starting to see some payoff from that. So I hope we continue 

to do that. 

Senator PRYOR. Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Yes, sir? 

Senator PRYOR. Speaking of Senator Coburn, who served on the 

Debt Commission, there is a story that I have heard some of the 

Debt Commissioners say. I do not think I have heard Senator 

Coburn say it. When they sat down with the Department of Defense, they asked the DOD how many contracts they had and they 

could not answer that question. I do not know if that particular 

person could not answer it or if the agency just really does not 

know because it is so big, but that is a telling revelation. DOD is 

so enormous, but you just get the impression that they really are 

not on top of this. They may be trying, but I do not think they are 

there yet. 

Senator CARPER. Yes, and our hands are not clean. I mentioned 

earlier in one of the hearings that we had, I think it was on C5M, 

aircraft modernization, and we were looking at for what extended 

period of time there are vacancies for some of these senior acquisition positions. One person said 18 months. It was 18 months between the time his predecessor left and when he was confirmed on 

board, and once he got on board, he had six direct reports. Only 

two of them were full. 

And then the fellow, Frank Kendall, who came in and testified 

for us last month, testified I think he was waiting, like, 15 months 

to be confirmed. I mean, this system, if it is not broken, is mighty 

close to it. It is mighty close to it. 

All right. I have one last question, and if I can, this is a question 

for Mr. Zients. I think during the President’s State of the Union 

Address, President Obama called for reorganization of the Federal 

Government to merge and consolidate overlapping and duplicative 

programs. He appointed you to head up these efforts and asked for 

you to report back to him in 90 days. We have, I think, less than 

a month until we hit that deadline. I would ask you to give us just 

a brief update on these efforts and how they are progressing, realizing you have another month to go. But specifically, do you think 

you will be able to meet that June 9 deadline, and what sort of report might we expect to hear from you at that time? 

Mr. ZIENTS. Yes. Thank you. The place that we are focused initially is on trade exports and competitiveness, so those agencies 

that help businesses compete. We have spent a lot of time. We have 

done over 250 meetings with current agency leadership, front-line 

employees. In fact, we created a Web site for front-line employees 

to give their ideas on how we might be more efficient, more effective, and so they can share what is working and what is not working. We have been out and about with former cabinet members and 

agency leaders. We have met with GAO. 

But I think, most importantly, we have spent a lot of time with 

the customers here, which are the small, medium, and large businesses that call on these agencies to help them in their efforts to 

H605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

24 

compete both domestically and abroad, and we do see inefficiencies. 

We see confusion in the marketplace. So we do see opportunities 

here to get more streamlined and to, I think, both be more efficient, 

and most importantly, more effective in helping businesses compete. 

Yes, we are on target to hit our June 9 deadline. We have a lot 

of work ahead, but we have a good base of facts and opinions to 

pull together for recommendations to the President. 

Senator CARPER. Good. Thanks. Senator Brown. 

Senator BROWN. I just have one final one, Mr. Chairman. I know 

you keep referring to the State of the Union. Do you remember who 

you sat next to? 

Senator CARPER. I think I sat next to Senator Thune and some 

guy from Massachusetts. I forget his name. [Laughter.] 

It was not Kerry, though. I remember that. 

Senator BROWN. I am glad you recall so much from that evening. 

[Laughter.] 

So, Mr. Dodaro, I do not want to let you feel left out here. I know 

in 2008, before the Subcommittee, GAO testified that only half the 

Federal managers reported even having efficiency measures. I note 

that we had a hearing, Senator Carper and I, on just the Census 

Bureau, how those costs rose from $8.2 billion in 2000 to over $13 

billion in 2010, and actually, the results were not even as good as 

yesteryear. 

Are we measuring the right things? In these times of fiscal constraint, is it not imperative that we determine how efficient Federal agencies are with the taxpayer dollars, and how do you think 

we can achieve that? 

Mr. DODARO. I think you are definitely right. I do believe that 

there needs to be more attention to the cost of delivering levels of 

performance, and this is something that we want to monitor, and 

we are going to do as part of our evaluation role under the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act. It is one thing 

to focus on results and see what is actually being delivered, but 

what is the cost to achieve that level of results and can it be 

achieved at a lesser cost? 

So that is definitely something that we are focused on. It is 

something that I believe the Administration needs to be focused on. 

It is why financial management reform is very important, because 

in a lot of cases, the government does not have reliable cost information that it needs to make those type of decisions. 

Senator BROWN. Great. Thank you. 

Senator CARPER. Gentlemen, fortunately for you, your time has 

expired. 

Mr. ZIENTS. Thank you. 

Senator CARPER. We are just deeply grateful, not just for your 

testimony today and responding to our questions, but really grateful for the work that you and the folks around you are doing. 

We are all in this together, and this is not just OMB, this is not 

just GAO, it is not just this Subcommittee. We are all in this together. One of the things that we need to do is just work like a 

team. I think I am encouraged to see that maybe we are. Hopefully, we will have to show for that results, and results for maybe 

less money, and that is what our goal is. Thank you so much. 

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25 

Mr. ZIENTS. Thank you. 

Mr. DODARO. Thank you. 

Senator CARPER. Panel two. This is the panel that everybody has 

been waiting for. I am happy to see you. Thank you for sitting 

through that panel one until they finally finished up. No, I thought 

that was just a great first panel. 

The first witness on our second panel, Mr. Robert Shea, the 

former Associate Director for Administration and Government Performance at the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Shea, I am 

told, led President George W. Bush’s Performance Improvement 

Initiative and administered the Program Assessment Rating Tool, 

affectionately known as PART. Before that, Mr. Shea served as 

counsel to this Subcommittee. Is that true? 

Mr. SHEA. That is true. 

Senator CARPER. When were you counsel to this Subcommittee? 

Mr. SHEA. Nineteen-ninety-seven to 2000. 

Senator CARPER. OK. That was when I was laboring as Governor, 

so I did not get to work with you then, but thanks for your service. 

That was when this Subcommittee was known as Government Affairs and you worked with Senator Roth and a bunch of others, 

probably John Glenn—— 

Mr. SHEA. Senator Thompson. 

Senator CARPER. Yes, there you go. Glad to see you. Thanks for 

your work then and thanks for being with us today. 

Our next witness is Dr. Paul Posner. Is it ‘‘pose-ner’’? 

Mr. POSNER. Posner. 

Senator CARPER. Posner. Do people ever call you ‘‘pause-ner’’? 

Mr. POSNER. They do, but it is wrong. [Laughter.] 

Senator CARPER. What do you say when they do that? Do you 

correct them? 

Mr. POSNER. It depends on who they are. 

Senator CARPER. OK. [Laughter.] 

Well, here today, for our purposes, Dr. Posner, Professor and Director of the Public Administration Program at George Mason University. Dr. Posner is the former President of the American Society 

for Public Administration. How do you get elected President of 

that? Do you campaign? How do you do it? 

Mr. POSNER. Lowest common denominator. 

Senator CARPER. All right. You are not, like, selected when you 

are out of the room, is that—— 

Mr. POSNER. That is exactly true. Do not leave the room. [Laughter.] 

Senator CARPER. All right. But former President of the American 

Society for Public Administration. Before entering academia, he 

worked with GAO for over 40 years. 

Mr. POSNER. Fourteen. 

Senator CARPER. No, I am just kidding, 14. Fourteen. Good. Who 

was Comptroller General when you were there? 

Mr. POSNER. Chuck Bowsher and Dave Walker. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Good. Two n’er do wells, right? No, 

they are great guys. 

Our final witness is Mr. Jonathan Breul, Executive Director of 

the IBM Center for The Business of Government. Mr. Breul formerly served at OMB, where he led efforts to reform governmentH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

26 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Shea appears in the appendix on page 73. 

wide management policies, among other responsibilities. When 

were you there? 

Mr. BREUL. Nineteen-eighty to 2002. 

Senator CARPER. Oh, that is a long time. You were at OMB for 

all those years? 

Mr. BREUL. Yes, indeed. 

Senator CARPER. Where you saw how many Administration 

fights? There were at least three, maybe four. 

Mr. BREUL. Ronald Reagan—— 

Senator CARPER. Reagan, so George Herbert Walker Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. That is four. You saw it all. Well, good. 

You probably heard a lot of this before and you can help us cut to 

the chase here today, so that is great. 

Gentlemen, your entire statement will be made part of the record 

and we will allow you, if you would like, just to summarize. If you 

go over 5 minutes a little bit, that will not be bad, but if you go 

over it a lot, I will have to rein you in so we can get done and go 

vote later today. 

All right. Mr. Shea, you are up first, so please proceed. Thanks 

a lot. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT J. SHEA,1 FORMER ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR ADMINISTRATION AND GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE, U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET 

Mr. SHEA. Thank you, Senator. Thanks for having us this afternoon. My name is Robert Shea. I am a Principal at Grant Thornton. Grant Thornton provides expert performance management advice to major Federal departments and agencies as well as State 

and local governments. 

I am proud to talk about effective ways to implement the GPRA 

Modernization Act before the Subcommittee that enacted the first 

GPRA almost 20 years ago. The new law builds on progress made 

and enhances the tools we have to improve the government’s performance. For it to be successful, though, Congress must ensure the 

Executive Branch appoints leaders who understand the power of 

performance information and are not afraid to use it to transform 

organizations. Congress should take an active role in ensuring the 

provisions of the Act are implemented urgently, and as intended. 

Agencies must be held accountable for taking the Act’s requirements seriously and invest the time, effort, and resources required 

to make them work. 

The first GPRA was a key milestone in the transition of government from one that measures activities or outputs to one that 

measures outcomes and evaluates impact. Despite the progress, 

though, still not enough of our time in government is focused on 

assessing whether goals are being achieved, and if not, what to do 

about it. This new Act provides an excellent framework for ensuring greater focus on what works, what does not, and what we can 

do to improve. 

The most critical element in an organization’s implementation of 

the Act will be leadership. In a performance improvement officer 

survey that Grant Thornton recently conducted in collaboration 

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27 

with the Partnership for Public Service, leadership was often cited 

as the key to the success of an agency’s performance management 

improvement efforts. I have a copy of that survey for the Subcommittee should you like it. Leaders can ensure that initiatives 

like this Act will not become just another compliance exercise. They 

are in the ideal position to harness the energy and creativity of the 

workforce to identify improvements. 

Party loyalty and policy familiarity should take a back seat to 

questions of managerial expertise and past success when choosing 

leaders for these important positions. Leaders with strong experience in managing successful organizations should either have direct experience with or at least be able to sift through countless 

management improvement initiatives thrust on agencies. These 

abilities will enable them to put together accountability mechanisms that fit the environment in which they are working and address their highest priorities. 

There is a tendency, especially in government, not to want to report performance information if it will highlight failure or poor performance. In our political environment, the opposition to transparency is based in part on the fear it would put the organization 

or its political leadership in a negative light. But if we want to 

achieve important objectives, clear outcome oriented goals and honest, accurate, and timely data are critical. Congress should give 

agencies clear feedback on what goals are important and assess the 

timeliness, accuracy, and usefulness of publicly reported data. 

I hope the Committee is consulting closely with OMB on what 

guidance agencies will receive. I hope the Committee engages OMB 

in a constructive dialogue on just what it meant when it wrote the 

law and what it expects in implementation. The Committee should 

hold OMB’s feet to the fire—easy for me to say now that I am no 

longer there—to ensure the tenets of the new law are implemented 

faithfully and constructively. A strong partnership between Congress and OMB in this implementation is critical. 

Using performance information and decisionmaking does not 

come naturally to the Federal Government. There is a tendency to 

measure things that are easy, but there is no limit to the use of 

reliable performance information given that Federal agencies have 

been collecting it now for so many years. 

The GPRA Modernization Act makes it clear that agencies are 

responsible for using data to manage and report in a transparent 

manner for public consumption. The quarterly review process can 

greatly improve agency attention to performance, but the public 

Web site required of the Act should include candid, actionable data 

on progress toward reported goals that is meaningful to the public 

at large. 

I want to highlight a number of Administrative initiatives that 

I think will really enhance implementation of the Act. One is the 

Administration’s Administrative Flexibility Initiative, which has 

the potential to improve collaboration among like programs trying 

to serve similar constituencies. A February memo and OMB guidance issued last month gives detailed guidance to agencies on how 

they should identify and implement greater flexibility to reduce unnecessary burdens on State and local governments in order to improve the achievement of common outcomes. If implemented as inH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

28 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Posner appears in the appendix on page 78. 

tended, this initiative can vastly improve cross-agency and crossgovernment collaboration. 

Another important Obama Administration initiative is the one 

that focuses on more rigorous evaluation of program impact. The 

Evaluation Initiative promises to vastly expand the body of evidence we have with which to judge what works and what does not. 

Many programs, when subject to such evaluation methodologies, 

will not live up to their promise. Without such evidence, however, 

programs are implemented blindly without knowing their intended 

impact. 

In short, the Act is an important milestone in our ongoing quest 

to make government more efficient and effective. This Committee 

played an important role in GPRA’s early success and can play an 

even more constructive role today. Assigning accountability for improved performance and outlining transparency requirements can 

go a long way toward improving program success. If Congress and 

the Executive Branch work together to provide active, persistent 

oversight, the potential benefits of this effort are enormous. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you, Mr. Shea. Dr. Posner. 

STATEMENT OF PAUL L. POSNER,1 PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR, PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PROGRAM, GEORGE MASON 

UNIVERSITY 

Mr. POSNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The 14 years I was at 

GAO, I led GAO’s work on the Federal budget and performance 

budgeting and I had the opportunity to look over both of their 

shoulders at OMB. 

I think the first thing to say, because there is a lot of cynicism 

about government these days and always in our republic, is this is 

a success story and we should not forget this. The conventional 

wisdom is we will never make progress and reform is a fool’s errand. We are destined to a series of stops and starts and reinventing things all over again. If you are a bureaucrat, you can hide 

under your desk and wait for the next one. 

Performance Management and budgeting has not experienced 

that. We have had 17 years, as you indicated, of sustained progress 

through three Administrations with different kinds of foci. The 

Clinton Administration initiated the reform with passage of GPRA. 

It was focused on the agencies and getting the plans up. The Bush 

period marked a new way of getting the President to focus on performance through his budget process. The Obama Administration 

GPRA Modernization Act is kind of looking more at high-priority 

goals and working, preparing to implement the Act. But each one, 

I think, has kept to some extent the momentum. 

The problem is, momentum can easily be lost. We have seen 

some real changes in places like the Coast Guard, the Food and 

Drug Administration (FDA), the Veterans Health programs that 

have saved lives because of more analytic approaches to data. But 

progress is difficult. We throw a lot of goals at agencies. The Forest 

Service has to cut wood, protect the spotted owl, and protect every 

American’s God-given right to ski on Federal lands. Those are 

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sometimes incompatible, and we throw that on agencies and expect 

them to come up with it and sometimes it is difficult to reconcile 

those. 

It is difficult to measure outcomes, as we know. The Federal Government is not like a local government. It does not repair potholes. 

It sometimes delivers the mail and Social Security checks, which 

are easy to measure, but most of the time, it delivers subsidies, 

which are leaky buckets where we are delivering 5 to 10 percent 

of the action and we are expecting results. And how you do that 

through six layers of delivery in our complicated system is very difficult to track and measure. 

So it is understandable progress is slow. It is difficult. It is difficult to get agreement. It is difficult to even specify what impact 

you are having, and attention is often diverted, and that is why I 

think this Modernization Act came at the right time, because I 

think, periodically, we need to reenergize Federal agencies and the 

Congress, and this, to me, gives an opportunity to do that. 

In doing so, I think there are going to be some balancing acts. 

In some ways, we have had the supply lead the demand. Federal 

agencies have been remarkably persistent in producing information, performance, and plans that we never had before, but at some 

point in time, you lose the momentum if Congress and the Administration and other actors in the system fail to use it. And I think 

what we are trying to do is move from a passive approach to a 

more active approach with OMB working more actively with agencies and, hopefully, Congress to instill that sense that there is 

somebody listening. 

I think there are tensions between different users. The agencies 

have assembled telephone books of reports that, frankly, lose value 

and interest for most of us, and somehow, we need to kind of reinstill the interests of top-level decisionmakers and policymakers in 

performance. We are going to have to, frankly, find a balance between the high-priority goals, which hopefully will instill interest 

among top-level people, and doing the regular work of government 

that is not so glamorous but is important with performance, as 

well. 

Frankly, we need a balance between different kinds of accountability and leadership. The Act, as has been noted, puts new central leadership on the point on this, with the COOs and the performance officials and things like that, and OMB has a strong role. 

But we also need to remember that, fundamentally, as you indicated, really instilling a long-term commitment to performance involves instilling a culture of learning and innovation in these agencies, and you do not do that from the top down. You do that from 

the bottom up. So how can top down managers instill, in some way 

counterintuitively, the will to manage, the will to change at the 

local level? OMB has been saying some good things lately about 

networking, about providing information and best practice to enable others to kind of manage more innovatively and things like 

that. 

The final point I wanted to make is the cross-cutting feature. 

This is really new, and it is something that was in the old GPRA 

Act that nobody ever did anything about and I used to complain 

about it, but now I realize, I think you have to crawl before you 

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walk and run. The question is, are we ready to run, because, essentially, when you focus on outcomes and extend it through, you cannot just contain it to one agency. Outcomes spread across our government, it is spread across levels of government, the private sector, whether it is homeland security, food safety, and the like. 

I am working with Steve Redburn, who is here, with the New 

America Foundation, on a project we call portfolio budgeting, which 

has been done in the Netherlands and Australia, where you are 

trying to reframe the budget process away from a focus on agencies 

and programs toward the portfolios of programs and tools we use 

to achieve common goals. That is going to be a major undertaking. 

It is counterintuitive. It in some ways involves a personality transplant for both the budget process and the executive and certainly 

in the Congress. This involves first of all, focusing on a vital few 

areas to start the ball rolling, working absolutely collaboratively 

with the Congress and the Committees and OMB and facilitating 

those interactions, and integrating a look across policy tools, not 

just focusing on spending, but the tax expenditures, which, now 

have greater value than discretionary spending. So when you look 

at housing, for example, efforts to encourage housing, you have to 

look at tax expenditures and spending at the same time. We do not 

have Committees that can do that. It is very difficult even for the 

Executive Branch to bring Treasury into the OMB process to do 

that. 

How can we achieve more integration and partnership? This reform was initiated in the Clinton Administration where they attempted to initiate a management focus in budget examiners by 

eliminating the management branch. In so doing many of us worried that we would lose the cross cutting capacity in OMB. A number of us—I testified up here on the OMB 2000 back in the Clinton 

Administration, where we instilled the management focus really in 

the budget examiners and we kind of lost some of the cross-cutting 

capacity at OMB. Thanks to people like Jonathan Robert, they kept 

the light on. I think now we are starting to build that capacity 

back up. We absolutely need that to carry out this Act. 

And finally, ultimately, Congress, to me, is the keystone for making everything happen, and in my testimony, I talk about three 

models. One is collaboration, which I just talked about, where 

when OMB and the President select these cross-cutting goals, Congressional Committees like this one have to be at the table. 

No. 2 involves, oversight coordination. When we did some studies 

with GAO on State performance budgeting, one of the things we 

found, for example, in Arizona, is they had two or three goals that 

drove their whole oversight process in a given year. One was juvenile delinquency, and they had all their committees focusing on 

that with the goal of reauthorizing those programs. Obviously, we 

are not a State legislature here, but the question is can we do more 

to coordinate our oversight. 

And finally, the congressional budget process itself, I think, offers significant opportunities. It is the one time Congress looks at 

the whole picture and they use budget functions which are already 

kind of performance mission related. I think the question is, can 

we make the congressional budget process about performance as 

well as budgeting? Can we really integrate that in the Budget 

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31 

1 1AThe prepared statement of Mr. Breul appears in the appendix on page 91. 

Committee? Senator Warner has led a task force. I think it opens 

up some opportunities. Clearly, there are tremendous tests to get 

these cross-cutting areas off the ground and sustain them. It is a 

real test for our system of government, in some sense. 

Thank you. 

Senator CARPER. Well, you gave us a lot to chew on there. Thank 

you so much, Dr. Posner. All right. Mr. Breul. 

STATEMENT OF JONATHAN D. BREUL,1 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

IBM CENTER FOR THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT 

Mr. BREUL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to have the 

opportunity to talk to you this afternoon. The GPRA Modernization 

Act is an important recommitment by the Congress and the Administration to results-based management. It builds, as you noted, on 

the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, which I had 

a hand in developing and then had quite a hand in leading the governmentwide implementation at OMB for many years. Based on 

that, I want to highlight for you three very important arrangements that are in this new law that are codified for the first time. 

One is a significant but so far very little noticed provision which 

requires the designation of Chief Operating Officers. Management 

responsibility is now assigned to an agency—a position of political 

leadership, primarily at the deputy secretary level. The COO position now elevates management to a level where both policy and 

management report. It brings them together in a nexus where they 

can really get traction in the department. And this new provision 

in law now provides both an incentive and a discipline to seek people with the right qualifications for this job. 

Going forward, therefore, I think Presidential Personnel is going 

to have to be explicit about the COO’s job expectations when they 

start recruiting deputy secretaries. Whenever possible, in addition 

to the substantive experience, they should be seeking deputies that 

are genuinely interested in management, and importantly, possess 

experience in managing very large organizations. 

A second provision that has not received much notice to date is 

one that codifies the designation of agency Performance Improvement Officers and statutorily authorizes the Performance Improvement Council (PIC). The new law codifies these positions and defines some duties for the Council, which is modeled on a number 

of other successful Federal management councils that are in operation today. With this structure, Performance Improvement Officers now have a platform to share best practices across government 

and the law now allows the Council to develop an interagency staff. 

And in addition, the Council will now assist the Director of OMB 

in carrying out his responsibilities for governmentwide planning 

and reporting. 

Now, if organizations treat their goals merely as words on paper 

and something used in the paper requirements for strategic and 

annual plans and they are never mentioned by managers, few of 

these goals are going to have anyone pay any serious attention to 

them. For this reason, the Act requires a third institutional change, 

which is that agency priority goals now have to have a clearly idenH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

32 

tified official known as the Goal Leader, responsible for achieving 

that goal. It is going to become the Goal Leader’s responsibility to 

help motivate, cajole, and, if necessary, pressure agency officials to 

actually get on and begin achieving these results. 

And I would suggest that taking these three provisions together 

is going to be a significant step to heightening the profile of management improvement and providing the leadership needed to 

achieve real results in the agencies, both on an agency level and 

for the cross-cutting requirements on a governmentwide level. 

However, simply having these institutional structures and leadership is not sufficient. In the face of the mounting complexity, 

fact-based decisionmaking is going to be more important than ever 

to drive decisions. Today, most agencies spend more time collecting 

and organizing information than they do analyzing it. 

A recent report that Robert mentioned indicates from a Performance Improvement Officer in one agency, quote, ‘‘We are good at 

collecting data, but not so good at analyzing it.’’ Analytics competency is a game-changing management innovation. It consists of 

tools and techniques to make data consumable, insightful, and predictive. It enables smarter decisions and consequential actions that 

improve results. 

I would suggest that with help from OMB and Congress, agencies need help to build their performance management capacity, including embracing analytics as a core management capacity. 

As you know, Senator, mismanagement is often the only type of 

management that gets attention on its own. Good government efforts usually remain hidden in relative obscurity. Persistent attention and persistent followup is going to be required to build on the 

new Act and to make performance management and performance 

information useful and used. The Administration cannot improve 

the Federal Government’s performance and accountability on its 

own. It is a shared responsibility and it must involve the Congress. 

Thank you, and I would be happy to answer your questions. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks so much. 

It is unfortunate that my colleagues had to leave. They are also 

on other Committees and Subcommittees and other hearings are 

going on. It is unfortunate they could not be here to hear the testimony from the three of you. This has been just really quite helpful 

to me. 

What I am going to ask you to do is maybe a few things here. 

One is I want each of you to take a moment or two—a minute or 

two—and reflect on what you have heard your colleagues here say, 

and I want you to reflect back on what earlier we heard Mr. Zients 

and our Comptroller General say, anything there that comes to 

mind that you think you would just like to kind of maybe reinforce, 

maybe question, maybe modify. But let me ask you to just reflect 

on what others have said, either at this table now or in the previous panel, please. Mr. Shea, do you want to go first? 

Mr. SHEA. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

Senator CARPER. Maybe some things you want to emphasize—— 

Mr. SHEA. Right. Well, I think Paul’s point that this is a success 

story is important. A lot of folks have invested a great deal of energy articulating the outcomes that they are trying to achieve. You 

have to remember what a sea change that is from when the GovH605-41331-79W7 with DISTILLER

33 

ernment Performance and Results Act was first enacted. People 

were counting regulations issued, hours worked, memos issued, 

things that really did not relate to what you were trying to achieve, 

and now you have an environment in which people at least know 

what direction it is they are supposed to be rowing and now we can 

be more sophisticated in how we evaluate whether or not we are 

getting there, and if not, what we can do to get there quicker and 

cheaper. 

The Comptroller General made a point about the very few number of programs that have been rigorously evaluated, and I think 

that is a little misleading, because if we wanted to rigorously 

evaluate all the programs in existence tomorrow, it would be prohibitively expensive and take decades to get results. So you really 

have to pick what programs you are going to assess with that kind 

of rigor. 

I highlight in my testimony the importance of the Administration’s rigorous evaluation initiative, and that is isolating what you 

are doing—what we are doing from a lot of other factors so you can 

say definitively whether what we are doing is having the intended 

impact. We have very little of that today. As a result of this initiative, we will have a lot more, and hopefully we can build onto that 

and have even a lot more so that we can really highlight those few 

precious programs that we can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, 

are working. 

And I think in the end, you will have dozens of the thousands 

of programs in existence that can say they are working like that. 

And you might be pessimistic about that, but you can also say that 

information is invaluable, because that information can really help 

you impact some of the most intractable problems that our Nation 

faces. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thank you. Dr. Posner. 

Mr. POSNER. Well, I am struck by something Jonathan said, that 

we focus exclusively on mismanagement rather than management, 

and I think that is right. What we have as a culture that emphasized the urgent as opposed to the important, and I think that is 

why what Robert said is important. Those of us who have institutional knowledge and information on cross cutting management 

issues have a responsibility to preserve and share our perspectives 

because at some point in time, there will suddenly be a need for 

that information in the process. 

And so the tension is how do you anticipate the needs of decisionmakers without getting demoralized. I used to try to have to keep 

my staff’s morale up when we issued a GAO report. Occasionally, 

we would call it an Olympic diver. It was beautiful, but made no 

splash. I would tell them sometimes 6 years passes before this report might be used. 

Being a professional manager in Washington involves partly reacting to crises but also anticipating the next crisis by being 

proactive in thinking around corners and developing information 

and reports that might not be useful for several years. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks. Mr. Breul. 

Mr. BREUL. Senator, I was struck by two statements or thoughts 

in all of the previous comments. The first is that we are really on 

the right track here. The GPRA had the right intentions and it has 

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34 

just simply been harder to do than we had anticipated. And more 

importantly, that the new Act, the Modernization Act, did not reject or cancel the old effort or the old progress and push the reset 

button and go back to zero, but actually, it was a recommitment 

to buildupon it, and I think that is a huge note of optimism and 

a very constructive step and I thought I heard that throughout all 

the previous comments. 

But the second, and perhaps most important for you, is the notion that I heard in everyone else’s comments, that Congress has 

a role here and an important role, that this is not just a matter 

that is up to the agencies, but the use of this information and attention and persistent followup is something Congress has a role 

in, as well, and I think that is a very positive sign, as well. 

Senator CARPER. Mr. Shea, go ahead. 

Mr. SHEA. If you will indulge me to add, I think this Subcommittee in particular has a model to follow which every other 

Committee should emulate, and that is security clearance reform. 

GAO highlighted it as a high risk. The Committee enacted legislation that set very clear and aggressive targets in the interim and 

final for the improvement of that effort. And it worked—you had 

more hearings on that topic than, I believe, any other, to monitor 

progress and hold people’s feet to the fire. 

OMB led that interagency effort. I was heavily involved while I 

was at OMB. And let me tell you what. Some of the most volatile, 

vicious interagency meetings I have ever participated with. We had 

to strategize about where people were going to sit so that people 

did not get killed before the end of the meeting. [Laughter.] 

Unfortunately, that is a model for collaborative oversight of Congress and the Executive Branch to achieve an outcome, and it 

worked. That effort is not over, obviously. You should continue to 

monitor it. But I think if you take a handful of areas and apply 

that same methodology, you will see some of the same success. 

Senator CARPER. Well, good. I wish Senator Akaka and Senator 

Voinovich were here to hear you say that, but thank you very, very 

much for those words. 

Anybody else for some comments on how the Legislative Branch 

can be most constructive in this process? As I said earlier, we are 

in this together and it is not—please. 

Mr. BREUL. Senator, there are a number of questions that are 

still, in my mind, very open, and I have not heard much details on 

to date. But the Act now requires the Office of Management and 

Budget to be serious about a governmentwide performance plan. 

We did issue one for a year or two in the early 1990’s, but that sort 

of disappeared. And it further requires Federal priority goals, 

cross-cutting kinds of goals. And there is a requirement for consultation by OMB with a series of Committees up here in the Congress. 

What is unclear is exactly how that will happen. One of my colleagues joked 1 day that when the budget is prepared next February, the Director is going to go downstairs and get in his limo 

and tell the driver to drive to the Congress. He is going to go up 

and do his consultation. And the driver will turn around to him 

and say, ‘‘Where should I go to first?’’ And it is not clear which 

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Committee or which member or exactly how that process would unfold. 

It seems to me it is an important way to start thinking, and perhaps some leadership from this Subcommittee on how that might 

happen and how it might be coordinated in a way that would provide the kind of support that OMB needs and the kind of input the 

Congress should be providing. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Yes, Dr. Posner. 

Mr. POSNER. I think all these things are important. I think we 

have to look inwardly to our institutions to determine whether we 

are ready for collaboration. In the budget era, Congress has developed effective institutions and rules to coordinate its positions in 

negotiations with the White House when it comes to the question 

is whether performance has risen to the level that the performance 

budget has—whether Congress can similarly coordinate its performance and oversight agenda for work collaboratively with the 

President on cross cutting issues. 

From OMB’s standpoint, there is also a question whether the 

budget process will be sufficiently open to invite to Congress into 

the determination and formulation of cross cutting goals. Input into 

that process is considered pre-decisional, and that includes performance plans. In years past, it has been difficult, and that is one 

of the kind of challenges of marrying performance and budgeting. 

Performance is long-term, broader, open. Budgeting tends to be important, but closed and focused on budget line items and accounts. 

When you blend the two, what is going to come out of the blender? 

And this is not just true in Washington, it is true in the States, 

as well, that budgeting tends to prevail in these kinds of situations. 

So this is a real challenge to these institutions at the real heart 

of what they are all about and it will change the way they do their 

business, I think, if we can pull it off. 

Senator CARPER. Sitting here, I am going back in time a little bit 

when I was privileged to, in my last job as Governor of Delaware, 

we said early on our overarching goal for our Administration, that 

I was privileged to serve for 8 years in that role, but our overall 

goal was to strengthen the basic building block of our society, our 

families. And I used to say that if every kid had at least one, 

maybe two, loving, caring, involved parents nurturing those kids, 

making sure that they were prepared to start kindergarten at the 

age of five and making sure that the parents were involved in the 

education of their children, being good role models, we had that 

going for us, the rest is pretty easy. And for 8 years, that is what 

we focused on. 

And one of the things that we did, we created an idea suggested 

by Tom Eichler, who was our Secretary of what we called the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. We called it the Kids 

Department. But he said, maybe we should have an interdepartmental cabinet council with all the departments within our State 

government—and it turned out to be seven—that are literally used, 

touch every day families in a very direct way in terms of education, 

in terms of health, in terms of corrections, job creation, you name 

it. And every month for the better part of 7 years, every month, 

I met with my cabinet secretaries, and once a month, they met 

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without me, with senior staff in the Governor’s office. But we just 

focused on what can we do to strengthen families. 

I thought it was the smartest thing that we did. I think it was 

the smartest thing that we did. You can do that in a little State 

with less than a million people. But it required, in terms of going 

up through stovepipes, we did a great job of knocking them down, 

and it sort of encouraged us to use that Center for Best Practices 

that was in the National Governors Association to see what was 

working in other States to reduce teen pregnancy, to reduce dropout rates, to do just all kinds of positive things. 

One of my hopes is that the current Administration—we have a 

fairly new Governor, he is in his second year—third year, actually, 

now—that somehow that idea of the Family Services Cabinet Council might be resurrected. 

I think it was Dr. Posner who talked about the Federal Government really being a small dollar participant in a lot of initiatives 

that we are trying to do nationwide. That is especially true with 

respect to education. I think in my State, for every dollar that we 

spend on education, probably about 70 percent of the funds come 

from the State. Unlike most places, 70 percent comes from the 

State. Twenty or 25 percent come from local property taxes. The 

Federal Government is only 5, maybe 10 percent of the remainder. 

Arne Duncan, our Secretary of Education, has somehow figured 

out how to leverage that 5 or 10 percent in amazing ways to drive, 

I think, performance and to get us focused not on process but on 

results. Pretty amazing. I do not know if there is some way that 

we can maybe use that approach as a model in other parts of the 

government. I would just lay that at your feet and ask you to comment. 

Mr. POSNER. There are other agencies that are considering that 

model, Transportation, for example, Housing, because it has been 

so successful. I would point that it has been successful in a moment 

of time when the States were desperate for money and they were 

largely in agreement with the Federal agenda. I think since this 

past January, States are still desperate for money, but I think you 

see States now kind of peeling away from that agenda and reconsidering the original bargains that they made. So I think that the 

environment is changing. 

But in some ways, you have to—it brings you back to the Great 

Society of Lyndon Johnson, which he called creative federalism, 

where the government used State and local governments, but very 

adroitly managed these competitive grant funds to really shine the 

light on critical national problems and with very small money leveraged a lot of change. 

A lot of development has occurred at the Federal level on managing Federal employees and managing Federal assets and direct 

Federal operations. This idea of bringing partners together around 

goals and metrics and areas where the Federal influence is far 

more indirect is a real future challenge. 

One of the areas in particular is tax expenditures. The original 

GPRA required tax expenditures to be covered, and frankly, that 

has been one of the disappointments so far. And it is difficult to 

do. Tax expenditures are very leaky bucket, whether you are talking about the mortgage deduction, or higher education tax credits. 

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We do not really look at the impact of these subsidies on the behavior we are trying to stimulate because it is so difficult because we 

are so far removed. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Mr. Shea. 

Mr. SHEA. I think the education reform is something to study in 

many respects. First and foremost, I think, is the bipartisan collaboration in Congress with the Executive Branch on these reforms, and that is a 20-year collaboration. 

I also think the Department of Education (DOE) has one of the 

most mature entities that invests in real research on the impact of 

the various interventions going on to improve education throughout 

the Nation. So those two things, I think, enhance the chances that 

this race to the top program would be successful and is something 

worthy of greater study and emulation throughout the government. 

Senator CARPER. Good. Thanks. 

I think it was David Osborne in his book—what is that book he 

wrote in the early 1990’s—Reinventing Government. Reinventing 

Government. I think one of his central premises was that the role 

of government is to steer the boat, not row the boat, and I think 

with the Race to the Top, I think that is being realized, or at least 

I would like to think so. And I say that as a recovered Governor 

of a State that won the race to the top, at least the first leg of it. 

Let me change the focus here. If I do not ask these questions, 

John Collins is going to shoot me, and so I am going to go back 

a little more on script here and make sure we do not overlook these 

questions. 

As you know, the new law that was passed and signed by the 

President asks agencies to break down their operational silos and 

to come together on government priorities and efforts that cut 

across Federal agencies. How do you believe this new law can be 

implemented to address concerns about cross-cutting policy areas 

and potential for unnecessary overlap or duplication, including possible cost savings? We have already talked around this, but I am 

going to ask you to just come to that straight, directly, if you will, 

please. 

Mr. SHEA. I am skeptical that we will be able to reduce a lot of 

duplication in government by consolidating programs. There may 

be some outright elimination. But I think the Act actually provides 

a better framework for improving efficiency by enhancing collaboration among duplicative programs. 

The Administration’s effort is focused in the trade area, and I 

think that is important. The Act takes a broader look, I think, 

across government, and I, frankly, think that the Administration’s 

Administrative Flexibility Initiative ought to be swept into GPRA 

Modernization Act implementation, because it says what they are 

doing is that OMB has to inventory duplicative programs and find 

ways that those programs can reduce burden on State and local 

governments by consolidating funding streams, eliminating duplicative or sometimes inconsistent audit requirements. All that 

should bring the cost of government down and actually enhance the 

performance of those activities. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Thank you. 

Another comment? Dr. Posner. 

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Mr. POSNER. If I could just build on your point about your Family 

Council, I think it is important that we have the vital few, we select a handful, because it is going to need a lot of leverage from 

the President himself to get anything done, as well as up here. And 

so the fewer we concentrate on, the greater chance that he will be 

able to personally invest himself in it. 

Senator CARPER. Mr. Breul. 

Mr. BREUL. Senator, I would keep an eye on the requirement for 

Goal Leaders. It seems to me that is an opportunity where you can 

put someone sort of as a trail boss on a particular goal or effort 

across departments and therein, I think, have an opportunity to 

make some improvements in both efficiency and, importantly, effectiveness. 

In my mind, a lot of the savings and improvements that are 

going to be possible are by removing a lot of the redundancy and 

complexity within programs. It is not just the programs themselves 

as an entire line item, but the operations within each of these programs, and if you have this Goal Leader who can harmonize the 

way the agencies are approaching these problems, a lot of the redundant behaviors or single action costs and activities in different 

organizations can be eliminated and consolidated in a way that has 

enormous improvements in terms of time, service, cost, and ultimately program effectiveness. That is going to be nitty-gritty hard 

work, but again, if you have someone inside who has some leadership responsibilities, the potential there is huge. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thanks. Dr. Posner. 

Mr. POSNER. Just one more. I think and part of that process Jonathan is talking about is it would be helpful to have an implementation map that shows a spaghetti chart of how each of those funding streams percolates down through our system. And when we did 

that, for example, for first responder training, 21 programs that I 

testified on a few years ago, some went to the States. Some went 

directly to fire chiefs. Some went directly to police chiefs. Some 

went to mayors. I mean, it was a crazy quilt pattern. So part of 

that is understanding, what impact does that fragmentation have 

at the service delivery point, and that is not easy stuff to do, but 

it is vital. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thanks. Mr. Shea. 

Mr. SHEA. Yes, just to add one more point, Congress has author- ized $70 million to be spent on the development of a key national 

indicator system. Stateoftheusa.org is developing a set of data 

points for a handful of major areas that can be used to gauge the 

health of the Nation in health, education, a number of areas. The 

Committee might look to that as a framework for inventorying the 

government’s programs, mapping them to that, so that at least you 

have a credible data source with which to assess the success of the 

overall enterprise. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thank you. 

I mentioned to the first panel an interest that a number of us 

have had, Russ Feingold for a number of years, John McCain and 

myself, John Kerry, as well, to strengthening the President’s rescission powers, and I offered legislation in the House in 1992, my last 

year in the House, to take what I call a 2-year test drive with enhanced rescission powers for the President and to, for 2 years, give 

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the President the ability to propose rescissions that were somewhat 

constrained. Nothing involved rescissions on entitlement programs. 

Nothing involved the rescissions with respect to tax policy, but just 

focused on domestic discretionary spending, defense spending, and 

actually providing some constraints as to how much the President 

could do there, but be able for 2 years to suggest rescissions and 

the Congress would have to vote on it. 

They could vote it down, a simple majority in either the House 

or Senate, and the responsibility—it was constitutionally sound because that is the approach we took, that it was not like you needed 

a two-thirds override by the House and Senate to override the 

President’s proposed rescissions. That was declared unconstitutional later on. But to say that the rescission comes, we have to 

vote on it. And if either the House or Senate muster a majority 

vote, a simple majority vote, against the rescission, it is dead. It 

does not take place. 

We have updated that, and Senator McCain and I—Russ Feingold worked on this before with us—but say, let us do a 4-year test 

drive, and the 4-year test drive would, again, not get us into entitlements. It would not get us into tax policy. But it would enable 

us to go into domestic discretionary spending, defense spending, 

and we do it for 4 years and with fewer constraints so that the 

President could actually propose rescissions which would rescind as 

much as 100 percent of certain kinds of programs. 

And I think when we are looking at these issues today, I am just 

reminded, I think this actually might be a more valuable tool than 

I had considered. It may even be more valuable than I thought. We 

would not do it forever. We would not make it permanent. We 

would do it for 4 years, see how it works. If Presidents abuse it, 

then they will lose it. 

But let me just ask you to reflect on that for a moment, if you 

would, please. Mr. Shea. 

Mr. SHEA. At the risk of getting into budget issues next to the 

Nation’s top budgeting expert, I will wade in here. I do not think 

it is as controversial as you might even think if you look at the 

amount of unobligated balances that remain at the end of a Fiscal 

Year (FY) or even at the beginning, in September of any fiscal year. 

I think if you benchmark an amount of rescission authority to that, 

then you are basically saying, what you were not otherwise going 

to spend, the President should rescind. So I do think it has some 

merit for savings, I want to say marginal, but they would certainly 

equal the amount that was just in controversy a few months ago. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Dr. Posner. 

Mr. POSNER. I mean, I think the expedited rescission is what we 

call it, I think, versus enhanced. I think you are right. The enhanced, I think, goes too far in giving away the congressional powers. 

Senator CARPER. No, we are talking about expedited. 

Mr. POSNER. Expedited, makes some sense, and you force an up 

and down vote. Again, I am not sure if it is kind of the answer to 

the broader problems we are talking about here. At one point, the 

President could do this with reorganization. He could propose a reorganization plan. The Congress would have to vote up and down, 

right, or in some cases, did it not actually get—— 

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Mr. BREUL. Before Chadha. 

Mr. POSNER. Yes, before Chadha, it was a one-House veto, which 

we cannot do anymore. So theoretically, that same concept could be 

used to package proposals for consolidations and the like that come 

from these cross-cutting reviews. But I think that is running at a 

very fast speed and we have to first—so I think what you are proposing is useful for a period. However, someone in the appropriations process once, though, told me a valuable lesson. He said, you 

can do anything in budgeting once. And so the item veto, for example, as you said with Clinton, the President got to do some things 

the first year. The second year, let us just say, Congress has equal 

and opposite reactions that in some ways counterbalance that. 

Senator CARPER. Thank you. Mr. Breul. 

Mr. BREUL. The interesting question to me is whether you would 

attach to it as a condition of performance and make some failure 

or disappointment in performance the qualifying factor for those 

actions. That would make it even more intriguing, it seems to me, 

and make it not simply a budget matter, but also one that hinged 

on whether we were getting results for those dollars. 

Senator CARPER. OK. John Collins just handed me a note. He 

says, ‘‘I think we can wrap it up whenever you are ready.’’ I am 

just having too much fun to stop, but we have other things to do 

and I know you do, as well. 

Let me ask each of you just to take a moment to just give us a 

summary, something you would like for us to really emphasize, 

some take-aways for me and for my colleagues, for our staff, anything that comes to mind. It could be something you have already 

said, if you just want to say it again or maybe say it a little differently, but just some good take-aways for us. I do not care who 

goes first. Mr. Breul, do you want to go first? 

Mr. BREUL. I think you heard from a number of speakers, Mr. 

Dodaro and Jeff Zients, that accenting the positive is perhaps the 

strongest way to move some of this forward. So I would—— 

Senator CARPER. We actually tried to do that in the Subcommittee. We brought in our Director of the Census when we actually got things straightened out and did a much better job in the 

last year or so. So we try to do that from time to time. I agree with 

you. We cannot just always ‘‘gotcha’’ and embarrass—— 

Mr. BREUL. So perhaps with some of these new positions that 

have been codified, whether it is the Chief Operating Officer or perhaps the Performance Improvement Officers, bringing some of 

them in for a bit of attention and to showcase good progress and 

show best practice to some of the others might be a way of showing 

the recommitment of Congress and giving this a positive boost 

along the way. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thanks. Dr. Posner. 

Mr. POSNER. I think you can use the budget situation we are in 

as a possible kind of window of opportunity, and working with the 

Budget Committees, obviously, to at least have a portion of that 

budget process and, say, a reconciliation focused on performance, 

where the Committees would have to be doing some—where the 

Budget Committees would outline an agenda with you of performance goals that you want the Committees to work toward as they 

kind of put reconciliation savings packages together, the idea being 

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that you are not just kind of cutting all the blades of grass equally. 

You are targeting cuts on the programs that, as one Budget Director said at one time, we should be focusing on weak claims, not 

weak claimants when we do budgeting, and I think this tool and 

this Act enables you to do that. 

Senator CARPER. Before I go to Mr. Shea, I would say there are 

four ways to reduce budget deficits. No. 1, cut spending. No. 2, 

raise taxes. No. 3, grow the heck out of the economy. And No. 4, 

really change our culture around here to show that we are looking 

at every nook and cranny of the Federal Government, looking at all 

of our programs, domestic discretionary, entitlements, and saying, 

is there a way to get better results for less money. It really moves 

us toward a culture of thrift. 

The President said in his State of the Union Address, I believe 

he said if America wants to win the 21st century, we have to outeducate, out-innovate, out-compete the rest of the world, and that 

seems to suggest, at least to me, that as we trim back on spending, 

we find ways in order to grow the economy, to invest money in 

ways that actually do move us toward a more productive workforce, 

invest in ways that actually provide us a more efficient infrastructure, broadly defined. And also invest in Research and Development (R&D) that actually—not just government, but encourage investment in R&D that has commercial application that will enable 

us to develop innovations and products that we can sell all over the 

world. Those are three things that would seem to me to make a lot 

of sense. 

Mr. Shea. And one other thing you said that I had actually written down earlier in my testimony—while you all were testifying— 

one of my favorite quotes, and it is Albert Einstein. ‘‘In adversity 

lies opportunity.’’ ‘‘In adversity lies opportunity.’’ I like to say I 

have made a life of that in almost everything that I have done. And 

there is a heck of a lot of adversity right now, but there is actually 

opportunity here, as well, as we are learning. Mr. Shea. 

Mr. SHEA. I would hope that this Committee takes a strong leadership role in working with OMB to implement the law, to ensure 

that it is implemented to your satisfaction, that it is implemented 

aggressively, that you review the qualifications of the leaders who 

are chosen for the positions articulated in the bill, and that they 

are actually doing what it is you hoped they would, which is using 

data to manage and improve operations, and that the data is transparent enough for you to be able to hold them accountable for that. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thanks a lot. 

I spent about 23 years of my life as a Naval flight officer, retired 

Navy Captain, and was a P–3 mission commander, the aircraft that 

we used to hunt for Red October, flew a missions off of Vietnam 

and Cambodia during that war, did a lot of ocean surveillance, saw 

the oceans of the world. It was great fun chasing those Russian 

subs, catching them sometimes. 

But our airplanes were too big to land on aircraft carriers. That 

is one of the reasons I wanted to be on them. That way, we could 

land on land and go home at night, or at least go home to our quarters. But I still like to use a Navy term and that is changing the 

course of the aircraft carrier. It is a hard thing to do and it takes 

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42 

the efforts of a whole team to be able to change the course of an 

aircraft carrier. 

The Federal Government is much bigger than any aircraft carrier. It is really tough to change course. I think we are trying to 

get the team pulling together, and I am encouraged it may be 

starting to happen. We still have too many members of the team 

that are, I will not say AWOL, they have just never been added to 

the team. We have what I call Executive Branch Swiss cheese. 

There are still at this point in this Administration way too many 

positions that are still vacant, key positions that need to be filled, 

and my hope is that we are going to use in this adversity some opportunity to actually fix that and reduce the number of confirmable 

positions that exist in the Executive Branch, which would be very, 

very good. 

But this has been a wonderful hearing and I appreciate, really, 

for those of you who have labored in these vineyards in the past, 

I appreciate very much your past service and for your willingness 

today to help us slave more effectively and constructively going 

ahead. But we are much appreciative of your help in this regard. 

We look forward to the challenge that lies ahead of us. We will 

work hard to get better results for less money. Thanks so much. 

And with that, to our staff on both sides, Democrat and Republican who have worked to help get us to this day, our special 

thanks to that. 

All right. And with that, this hearing is adjourned. Thank you 

all. 

[Whereupon, at 4:49 p.m., the Subcommittees were adjourned.] 

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