United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to Congressional Requesters

September 1998 THE RESULTS ACT

Assessment of the

Governmentwide

Performance Plan for

Fiscal Year 1999

GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

Accounting and Information

Management Division

B-279593 

September 8, 1998

Congressional Requesters

In 1993, the Congress enacted the Government Performance and Results

Act, commonly referred to as the “Results Act,” to address the growing

public demand that government become more effective and less costly.

The Results Act is a key part of a broad statutory framework enacted

during the 1990s that seeks to improve federal management by shifting

decision-making and accountability away from a preoccupation with the

activities that government undertakes and toward an emphasis on the

results of those activities—that is, for example, from grants awarded or

inspections performed to real gains in performance, quality, or

responsiveness.

Under the Results Act, executive departments and agencies (hereafter

referred to as “agencies”) developed multiyear strategic plans and

submitted those plans to the Congress and the Office of Management and

Budget (OMB) on September 30, 1997.1

 The act also requires the President

to include with his annual budget submission a federal government

performance plan. The Congress intended that this plan provide a “single

cohesive picture of the annual performance goals for the fiscal year.”2

 To

support this requirement, the act directs the Director of OMB to require

agencies to develop annual performance plans, which are provided to the

appropriate committees of the Congress after publication of the

governmentwide plan. The first annual performance plans cover fiscal

year 1999, with the governmentwide plan submitted to the Congress in

February 1998. The Results Act also requires agencies to submit annual

program performance reports, with the first report covering fiscal year

1999 to be issued by March 31, 2000.

As part of your continuing efforts to ensure that the Results Act achieves

its full promise, you asked us to review the fiscal year 1999 agency and

governmentwide performance plans. As you know, we have completed our

reviews of the individual agencies’ annual performance plans and have

issued a separate report on our overall assessment of those plans.3

 This

1

See Managing for Results: Agencies’ Annual Performance Plans Can Help Address Strategic Planning

Challenges (GAO/GGD-98-44, January 30, 1998) and Managing for Results: Critical Issues for Improving

Federal Agencies’ Strategic Plans (GAO/GGD-97-180, September 16, 1997).

2

Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States

Senate, S. Rpt. No. 58, 103d Cong. 1st Sess. p. 27 (1993).

3

Managing for Results: An Agenda to Improve the Usefulness of Agencies’ Annual Performance Plans

(GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-228, September 8, 1998).

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report responds to your request that we separately review the federal

government performance plan. Specifically, our objectives were to

(1) assess whether the plan complies with the act’s statutory requirements

and congressional intent and (2) assess the plan in the context of our

guidance developed for agency performance plans4

 and your expectations

set forth in a December 17, 1997, letter to the Director of OMB.

Results in Brief The issuance of the Governmentwide Performance Plan in February 1998

marked the culmination of the first annual performance planning cycle

under the Results Act. OMB developed and implemented an approach and

framework for this plan that generally addressed the basic requirements of

the Results Act. The plan was issued with the President’s budget

submission and included a broad range of governmentwide management

objectives and a mission-based presentation of key performance goals

based on agency performance plans. The plan’s framework should

ultimately allow for a cohesive presentation of governmentwide

performance, but the specific contents of this initial plan did not always

deliver an integrated, consistent, and results-oriented picture of fiscal year

1999 federal government performance goals.

Many of the issues discussed in this report can be traced to the challenges

of preparing the first-ever governmentwide plan for an entity as large and

diverse as the federal government. Future plans will need to go beyond the

formal requirements of the act if they are to more fully address its basic

purposes and meet the evolving needs of congressional and other users.

To add value to the government’s overall performance planning and

management efforts, attention is needed in two critical areas:

(1) addressing observed weaknesses of individual agency performance

plans that necessarily affect the quality of governmentwide performance

planning and (2) emphasizing an integrated, governmentwide perspective

throughout the plan. As we have noted in our recent individual agency and

overall assessments, much work remains to improve agency performance

plans, the “building blocks” of the governmentwide plan.5 OMB will need to

work with federal agencies to strengthen these plans to ensure a solid

foundation for the governmentwide plan. At the same time, by more

explicitly emphasizing governmentwide perspectives and better

integrating the performance implications of all federal strategies

4

Agencies’ Annual Performance Plans Under the Results Act: An Assessment Guide to Facilitate

Congressional Decisionmaking (GAO/GGD/AIMD-10.1.18, February 1998) and The Results Act: An

Evaluator’s Guide to Assessing Agency Annual Performance Plans (GAO/GGD-10.1.20, April 1998).

5

GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-228, September 8, 1998.

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(spending, tax expenditures, and regulation) within more consistent and

complete mission-based presentations, the governmentwide plan can

continue to complement and extend agency performance planning

processes and provide valuable new contexts and information for federal

decisionmakers.

Background In addition to the Results Act, the statutory framework that the Congress

put in place during the 1990s to provide greater accountability for results

and to help resolve long-standing management problems that have

undermined the federal government’s effectiveness and efficiency includes

the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, as amended by the Government

Management Reform Act of 1994, and information technology reform

legislation, including the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and the

Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996.6

 When seen together, these laws provide a

powerful framework for developing and integrating information about

agencies’ missions and strategic priorities, the results-oriented

performance goals that flow from those priorities, performance data to

show the level of achievement of those goals, and the relationship of

reliable and audited financial information and information technology

investments to the achievement of those goals.

The Results Act was intended to address several broad purposes, including

strengthening the confidence of the American people in their government;

improving federal program effectiveness, accountability, and service

delivery; and enhancing congressional decision-making by providing more

objective information on program performance. In addition to establishing

strategic and annual performance planning requirements, the Results Act

includes a requirement for the first-ever federal government performance

plan. Specifically, the act requires that the President shall include in each

budget “beginning with fiscal year 1999 a Federal Government

performance plan.”7

 In the accompanying committee report, the Congress

stated its intent that the plan should “be submitted coincident with the

principal budget documents, so that Congress will have the plan available

when reviewing the agency budget estimates.” Given the unique nature of

this requirement, the report indicated that the Director of OMB would have

broad discretion to determine the “best manner and useful form for

submitting” the plan, but that the plan should provide “a single cohesive

picture of the annual performance goals for the fiscal year.” The

6

Managing for Results: The Statutory Framework for Performance-Based Management and

Accountability (GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-52, January 28, 1998).

7

31 U.S.C. 1105(a)(29).

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governmentwide performance plan was expected to be based on agencies’

performance plans, and the Director was authorized to “summarize or

abstract material contained in an agency’s annual performance plan,

presenting at least the key measures of program performance.”8

While broad discretion was afforded OMB, the Senate committee report for

the act identified two specific items that the federal government

performance plan should contain.

• As specified in the committee report, “To obtain a comprehensive picture

of the government’s performance,” the plan was to include a “schedule for

periodically assessing the effects of specific tax expenditures in achieving

performance goals.” Tax expenditures refer to tax code provisions, such

as deductions, exclusions, credits, or preferences, which seek to

encourage certain types of economic or social activity or provide relief to

certain groups of taxpayers. The committee report noted that although tax

expenditures are established to achieve specific national objectives,

similar to federal spending, their effect “in achieving these goals is rarely

studied.” The required assessments were expected to consider the

interactions between spending programs and related tax expenditures in

order to “foster a greater sense of responsibility for tax expenditures with

a direct bearing on substantial missions and goals.”

• The plan was also to include proposed waivers from nonstatutory

administrative requirements. Recognizing the importance of flexibility to a

results-oriented management environment, the act authorized agencies to

request, and OMB to approve, waivers of certain nonstatutory

administrative requirements. Proposed waivers were expected to describe

in measurable terms the anticipated effects on performance resulting from

greater managerial or organizational flexibility. All proposed waivers were

to be included in the governmentwide performance plan in order to ensure

that general notice was provided in advance of the effective date of the

waiver.

Scope and

Methodology

To perform this assessment, we obtained and reviewed the

Governmentwide Performance Plan issued by OMB on February 2, 1998, as

part of the President’s Fiscal Year 1999 Budget, and a subsequent revision

issued on February 27, 1998. We also included in our review some of the

key sources referenced in the plan, for example, interagency and

governmentwide planning documents accessed through referenced

Internet sites.

8

S. Rpt. No. 103-58, p. 27.

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We compared the content and format of the plan to the act and

accompanying Senate committee report to determine if the plan met basic

statutory requirements and intent. Recognizing the broad discretion

afforded the Director of OMB in preparing this plan, we interviewed key

OMB officials to determine the approaches and factors that were

considered. We also performed the following steps to provide a qualitative

basis for assessing whether the plan provided a “single cohesive picture”

of government performance.

• To assess overall coverage and inclusiveness, we reviewed the content of

each section of the plan, focusing on the manner and form used by OMB to

present performance goals. To determine agency coverage, we compared

the plan’s contents, using automated text searching tools, to an electronic

file of agency spending by budget function. We also compared selected

objectives and goals from section V of the Budget, which summarized

presidential priorities but was not formally included as a component of the

plan, to other plan sections to assess the extent of coverage of these

initiatives.

• To determine the consistency of the plan with underlying agency plans, we

selected performance goals from the management and program

performance sections of the plan and compared them to underlying

agency plans. To assess the manner in which agency performance plans

were reflected in the plan, we compared the performance plans for several

agencies9

 to relevant presentations within the plan.

We used our assessment guides10 to make judgments about the overall

quality and usefulness of agency performance plans and incorporated

those judgments into this review as appropriate. To identify opportunities

to improve the usefulness and value of the governmentwide plan, we

considered expectations described in your letter dated December 17, 1997,

to the Director of OMB, our assessment guides, and related work we have

done concerning Results Act implementation.

We performed our work from February through May 1998, in accordance

with generally accepted government auditing standards. We requested

written comments on a draft of this report from the Director of the Office

of Management and Budget or his designee. The Acting Deputy Director

for Management provided us with written comments, which are discussed

9

Department of Defense, Department of Education, Social Security Administration, General Services

Administration, Department of Commerce, National Park Service, and Drug Enforcement

Administration.

10GAO/GGD/AIMD-10.1.18, February 1998, and GAO/GGD-10.1.20, April 1998.

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in the “Agency Comments and Our Evaluation” section and are reprinted

in appendix II.

OMB’s Approach to

Develop the First

Governmentwide

Performance Plan

OMB officials told us that they sought to develop the federal government

performance plan as an integral component of the annual budget

preparation process, an approach consistent with the requirements of the

Results Act. OMB developed the plan around a general framework intended

to broadly capture the government’s fiscal, management, and program

performance and used budget function classifications11 to present a

mission-based aggregation of agency performance goals. The process of

preparing the plan was decentralized, with involvement by both OMB and

agency staff, and was affected by the developmental status of agency

performance plans. After issuance of the Fiscal Year 1999 Budget, OMB also

published the plan as a separate document.

OMB officials stressed that developing the governmentwide plan was

viewed as an essential and integral component of the President’s budget

and planning process. From OMB’s perspective, both the plan and the

budget submission are intended to serve as communication tools for a

range of possible users. In their opinion, the plan adds value by reflecting a

governmentwide perspective on policy choices made throughout the

budget formulation process. OMB acknowledged that the plan itself did not

serve to change the process through which decisions on government

priorities were made but enhanced it by placing a greater emphasis on

results. As one official described it, the governmentwide performance plan

was a derivative document, reflecting the budget and management

decisions made throughout the process of formulating the President’s

budget submission.

OMB officials told us that development of the federal government

performance plan was based on (1) specific requirements of the act,

(2) expressed congressional interests, which emphasized the need to

include key administration management priorities to address long-standing

problems, and (3) recent analyses of changes affecting foreign government

central budget offices,12 which identified the need for an aggregate fiscal

11The budget function classification system is a method to classify budgetary resources and tax

expenditures according to the national needs being addressed. National needs are grouped into 17

broad areas to provide a coherent and comprehensive basis for analyzing and understanding the

budget, plus three additional categories (net interest, allowances, and undistributed offsetting

receipts) to cover all other budgetary transactions.

12The Changing Role of the Central Budget Office, Organization for Economic Co-operation and

Development (OCDE/GD[97]109), Paris, France, 1997.

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context for governmentwide performance planning. The resulting

governmentwide plan includes three main sections, corresponding to the

fiscal, management, and program performance of the federal government.

• Section III, “Creating a Bright Economic Future,” describes economic and

federal fiscal performance and presents the administration’s forecasts.

This section of the plan was intended to broadly define the fiscal

context—specifically, overall economic projections and aggregate

estimates of federal revenues and outlays—for the other sections of the

plan. OMB officials said that this section was primarily developed by its

Economic Policy staff.

• Section IV, “Improving Performance through Better Management,”

describes the administration’s management reform agenda. This section

has four components addressing proposals from the National Performance

Review13 to reinvent federal agencies and address service and citizen

responsiveness concerns (i.e., the “High Impact Agencies” initiative);

interagency and agency-specific priority management objectives;

additional management support initiatives; and objectives and initiatives

from nine interagency working groups that deal with crosscutting issues

and represent a variety of key agency officials, such as chief operating

officers, inspectors general, chief financial officers, and chief information

officers. According to an OMB official, this section was primarily developed

by OMB staff from its Office of Federal Financial Management.

• Section VI, “Investing in the Common Good: Program Performance in

Federal Functions,” contains key performance goals and measures

derived from agency performance plans. To present a more thematic

picture that groups together similar programs and allows for different

agency performance goals and measures to be related, OMB chose to

aggregate agency performance information into 17 chapters corresponding

to budget functions—a well-known and long-used budget classification

structure that focuses on federal missions, or “areas of national need,”

rather than organizations. Each of the chapters begins with a 7-year

(1997-2003) summary of federal resources supporting the function,

differentiated in terms of spending, credit activity (i.e., loans and loan

guarantees), and tax expenditures; the tables are generally followed by 4-

to 7-page narratives, which begin with brief descriptions of the federal role

in the function, in some cases specific governmentwide goals, and selected

goals and measures from agency performance plans. OMB officials told us

that staff in its resource management offices (RMO), working with their

13The National Performance Review is now called the National Partnership for Reinventing

Government.

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agency counterparts, were principally responsible for developing their

respective chapters.14

Finally, in addition to these three principal sections from the President’s

Budget, OMB also published a stand-alone document, “The

Governmentwide Performance Plan.” This separately published document

included the three sections described above and also relevant supporting

material contained elsewhere in the President’s budget submission. The

supplementary material was added to present a fuller discussion of

approaches—in addition to spending—that are used to achieve federal

performance goals and includes the following.

• “Regulation: Costs and Benefits,” chapter 32 from section VI of the

Budget, discusses the important role federal regulation plays in pursuing a

variety of federal performance goals. This section also discusses the

efforts and progress made in estimating the benefits and costs of

regulation. In section VI, some of the budget function presentations

included more extensive discussions of the role of regulation in achieving

relevant performance goals.

• “Tax Expenditures,” chapter 5 in the Analytical Perspectives volume of

the Budget, discusses the implications of tax preferences, deductions,

credits, and exclusions in various federal policy areas. This chapter also

includes a discussion of the need to compare tax expenditure, regulatory,

and spending policies for selected budget functions. Summary estimates of

the value of tax expenditures by budget function are included in the

section VI presentations.

A significant factor affecting preparation of the fiscal year 1999 plan was

the developmental status of agency strategic and performance plans.

Under the Results Act, annual performance plans are both a culminating

step in the agency performance planning process that begins with strategic

plans and the building blocks for the governmentwide plan. OMB guidelines

called for initial performance plans to be submitted to OMB with the agency

budget request in September; for fiscal year 1999, the target date for

submissions was September 8, 1997. However, most federal agencies were

also completing during this time frame their first strategic plans, which,

under the Results Act, were to be sent to the Congress by September 30,

1997, and provide the necessary foundation for subsequent annual

14In 1994, OMB announced a reorganization of its structure and staff responsibilities that was intended

to better integrate its budget analysis, management review, and policy development roles. Among

other changes, this reorganization created RMOs as successors to the budget review groups. See Office

of Management and Budget: Changes Resulting From the OMB 2000 Reorganization

(GAO/GGD/AIMD-96-50, December 29, 1995).

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performance plans. According to OMB officials, the initial agency

performance plans went through several iterations, which delayed the

selection of goals and measures for inclusion in the governmentwide plan.

OMB officials told us that agency performance goals and measures

incorporated into the governmentwide plan were expected to be

consistent with presidential priorities and fiscal projections, included in

the underlying agency performance plans, and subject to two final criteria:

relevance to OMB and agency managers and importance to the public.

About 3 weeks after issuing the separately published plan, OMB chose to

reissue this document, revising six chapters15 within section VI to capture

late-developing presidential priorities. Those priorities had been generally

summarized in 10 broad subject areas16 within section V of the Budget

entitled, “Preparing for the 21st Century,” but this section was not

designated by OMB as a component of the governmentwide performance

plan. Although much of this section appeared to be incorporated in

relevant chapters of section VI, some key initiatives were not included. For

example, reducing tobacco smoking among young people was not

included in the original Health chapter of section VI, although it was

regarded as one of the administration’s top priorities. Updates of the

federal government performance plan are not required under the act, but

OMB decided almost immediately to revise and reissue the fiscal year 1999

plan to respond to congressional inquiries about the relationship between

the administration’s priorities and the governmentwide performance plan.

OMB officials emphasized that they view the governmentwide performance

plan as part of a larger planning and budgeting process, reflecting more

than causing decisions that are made in those other contexts and forums.

However, as annual performance planning improves and reliable

performance information becomes more available, OMB expects that

governmentwide and agency performance planning will provide valuable

information and have a more direct effect on the decision-making process.

15International Affairs; Transportation; Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services; Income

Security; Health; and Veterans Benefits and Services.

16Investing in Education and Training; Supporting Working Families; Strengthening Health Care;

Protecting the Environment; Investing in Infrastructure; Promoting Research; Enforcing the Law;

Strengthening the American Community; Advancing United States Leadership in the World; and

Supporting the World’s Strongest Military Force.

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Governmentwide

Performance Plan

Generally Addressed

the Requirements and

Intent of the Results

Act

As required by the Results Act, a “single” federal government performance

plan was issued on February 2, 1998, as a part of, but separately identified

within, the President’s Budget. OMB’s subsequent decision to publish these

portions of the President’s Budget as a stand-alone “Governmentwide

Performance Plan,” although not required by the act, was a useful method

to bring attention to this first-ever plan.

Structurally, the plan’s framework provides a foundation for addressing

the inherent challenges associated with encompassing an entity as large

and diverse as the federal government, as well as merging a new and

complex governmentwide process into the annual budget process. For

example, the decision to begin the plan by defining the overall federal

fiscal context was complementary to congressional intent that agency

performance planning be consistent with budget requests. OMB’s decision

to include interagency and agency-specific management objectives, along

with key agency performance goals and measures as required by the act,

was a practical approach to add essential context and depth to the plan.

Similarly, its decision to array agency performance goals and measures by

budget function allowed similar programs to be grouped together to begin

to present relationships among the goals. Finally, OMB made extensive use

of references to other sources and reports, including agency and special

purpose Internet sites, to limit the volume of the plan while providing links

to supplemental performance information.

As mentioned earlier, the Senate committee report identified two

additional expectations for the plan: a comprehensive picture of federal

performance supported by tax expenditures and discussions of waivers of

nonstatutory administrative requirements. The plan partially addressed the

first expectation. To its credit, OMB included program performance

information related not only to tax expenditures but also federal

regulations, an additional strategy used to accomplish federal purposes.

Although the plan did not include a schedule for periodic assessments of

tax expenditures, OMB described a series of pilot studies to explore the

methods and resource needs associated with evaluating the relationship

between tax expenditures and performance goals; the pilot studies will be

undertaken by the Department of the Treasury, in recognition of

Treasury’s role in the oversight and evaluation of tax policy and tax

expenditures.

Regarding the second expectation, OMB provided no discussion of the

extent and type of waivers of nonstatutory administrative requirements

requested by federal agencies. According to an OMB official, OMB received

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very few requests, which he described as “limited in scope”; none were

approved. Accordingly, no discussion of waivers was presented in the

plan. In some regards, this result mirrors experiences associated with the

pilot projects on managerial accountability and flexibility under the

Results Act; relatively few proposals to be designated as pilot projects

were submitted and none were accepted.17

Significant Challenges

Remain to Achieve a

Useful and

Informative

Governmentwide

Performance Plan

Developing a federal government performance plan rests on two pillars:

the soundness of underlying agency performance plans and the quality of

the integrating framework that places agency-level performance

expectations within a governmentwide perspective. Although some

progress has been made, we agree with OMB’s overall assessment: “more

work remains.”18 For example, our assessments of agency performance

plans indicate that substantial improvements are needed to ensure that

these building blocks of the governmentwide plan provide the needed

foundation. Similarly, focusing broadly on governmentwide outcomes

should be a central and distinguishing feature of the federal government

performance plan. To be most effective and supportive of the purposes of

the act, the governmentwide plan must be more than a compilation of

agency-level plans; integration, rather than repetition, must be its guiding

principle. Although the overall framework developed by OMB should

support a mission-based discussion of governmentwide performance,

more needs to be done to build on this foundation to achieve the

complete, consistent, and results-oriented presentation that OMB sought

and to support comprehensive consideration of common performance

expectations across federal agencies and strategies.

Addressing the Underlying

Quality of Agency

Performance Plans

To the extent it is based on agency performance plans, the overall quality

of the governmentwide plan depends on two underlying assumptions.

First, agency performance plans must be of sufficient quality, consistent

with the expectations of the Results Act. Simply stated, the

governmentwide plan will inevitably reflect the foundation of its building

blocks. Second, to enhance and clarify agency accountability for specific

goals, the governmentwide plan must accurately reflect selected agency

performance goals, and agency performance plans must incorporate any

goals included in the governmentwide plan. While meeting these

17See GPRA: Managerial Accountability and Flexibility Pilot Did Not Work as Intended

(GAO/GGD-97-36, April 10, 1997).

18“Governmentwide Performance Plan,” extracted from Budget of the United States Government,

Fiscal Year 1999, p. 2.

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assumptions was hindered by the obvious timing and coordination

challenges associated with this first annual performance planning cycle,

that was not the only problem. Our reviews of the agencies’ fiscal year

1999 performance plans and of the governmentwide plan indicate areas of

concern.

As we noted in our summary report on agency performance plans,19

agencies’ first annual performance plans showed potential for providing

decisionmakers with valuable perspective and useful information for

improving program performance. However, most of the plans we reviewed

contained major weaknesses that undermine their usefulness in that they

(1) did not consistently provide clear pictures of agencies’ intended

performance, (2) generally did not relate strategies and resources to

performance, and (3) provided limited confidence that performance data

will be sufficiently credible for decision-making. For example, many plans

did not contain goals and performance targets for mission-critical

management problems, such as steps to address the Year 2000 computing

crisis. In addition, most annual plans provided only superficial

descriptions of the procedures the agencies would use to verify and

validate performance data; specific verification and validation systems,

related efforts, and milestones for verification and validation generally

were not cited. These weaknesses in agency performance plans were

reflected, to varying degrees, in the governmentwide plan.

Because developing a complete and convincing picture of intended agency

performance is an important step in preparing a useful governmentwide

performance plan, ensuring the sustained high quality of the agency plans

is fundamental to the governmentwide performance planning process.

Given its key role with respect to the governmentwide plan, OMB has

recognized its responsibility for addressing these problems. The fiscal year

1999 plan appropriately identifies implementation of the Results Act as

one of the governmentwide priority management objectives. OMB includes

specific performance commitments to prepare “lessons learned” from its

review of the fiscal year 1999 plans and to revise guidance for and review

the fiscal year 2000 plans “to assure improvements and appropriate

changes are made.”

Beyond this more fundamental question, consistency between the agency

and governmentwide plans also needs to be addressed. Consistent

presentations enhance agency accountability by decreasing the potential

for confusion about the specific results to be achieved. Agency

19GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-228, September 8, 1998.

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performance goals included in the plan generally could be traced to

relevant agency plans. However, we did note inconsistencies that will need

to be addressed in future plans. For example, under the High Impact

Agencies initiative, the Department of Education performance plan

defined a time frame for its performance commitment regarding eligibility

determinations for student aid applications (i.e., October 2001) that was

different from that shown in the governmentwide plan (i.e., October 2000),

while a National Park Service performance commitment shown in the

governmentwide plan could not be found in the Department of the Interior

performance plan. As another example, the plan includes as a

performance commitment that the International Trade Administration will

review 15 more applications for free trade zones in 1999 than in 1998,

supporting a gross increase of 25,000 jobs. However, the Department of

Commerce plan does not describe this goal as either a “Secretarial

Initiative” or as a “key goal or objective” and sets the expected result at

20,000 jobs.

The Plan Did Not Always

Provide a Clear and

Complete Picture of

Governmentwide

Performance

Although the basic framework of this first plan generally allowed for a

cohesive presentation of governmentwide performance, the content of

separate sections did not always deliver a complete, consistent, or clear

discussion of fiscal year 1999 performance goals. OMB’s decision to

organize key agency performance goals in a mission-based framework

using budget functions was appropriate, as was its decision to consider all

of the strategies—tax expenditures and regulations, in addition to

spending and credit activities—to achieve federal performance goals. This

approach, which facilitates looking across organizations and approaches

to better communicate performance contributions, is an integral

characteristic of an effective governmentwide performance plan and an

essential step in identifying and resolving fragmentation and overlap

within federal agencies and strategies. However, these otherwise

appropriate and reasonable approaches were hindered by inadequate

development and presentation, as discussed in the following sections.

Future plans would be enhanced by more consistently presenting and

integrating expected agency-level performance and more clearly relating

and addressing the contribution of alternative federal strategies to

common performance goals. Certainly many of the issues discussed as

follows can be traced to the challenge of preparing this first-ever

governmentwide plan, but they remain significant matters that should be

addressed in future plans.

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Fiscal Performance Section III sets the fiscal performance context for the federal government

by projecting balanced budgets and defining certain key economic

assumptions. Much of this section is oriented toward discussions of past

accomplishments, with little elaboration of the external conditions and

factors, if any, that could affect future fiscal performance expectations.

There is also little discussion in this section of the longer-term fiscal

outlook that would provide both a broader context in which to understand

the implications of current policy and a valuable additional perspective to

be considered when making policy choices. GAO, the Congressional Budget

Office, and OMB have modeled the long-term budget and economic outlook,

and some discussion summarizing these results would help put

governmentwide performance goals in a long-term context.20 Related

discussions of both the sensitivity of budget estimates and long-term fiscal

forecasts to economic conditions are contained in the Analytical

Perspectives volume of the President’s budget submission but are not

incorporated or referenced in this section of the plan.

Management Performance Identifying and setting goals for mission-critical management problems or

other management-related issues that could significantly impede

achievement of program goals is an essential element of a

governmentwide performance plan. Appropriately, OMB separately

presented an array of management objectives and initiatives in section IV

of the plan that appear consistent with the basic purposes of the Results

Act, addressing, for example, issues dealing with citizen responsiveness,

service delivery, and program performance and management. Similarly,

OMB’s inclusion of the priorities of major interagency councils, such as the

President’s Management Council and the Chief Financial Officers Council,

was a useful way to recognize the critical role such groups play in

leveraging and directing agency involvement toward governmentwide

management goals. However, a clearer and more focused discussion of the

relationship between management objectives and performance

expectations would better integrate this section with the program

performance presentations and identify actions that need to be reflected in

underlying agency performance plans.

The objectives and initiatives included in section IV fall across two

different levels: governmentwide issues, including many we have

described as fundamental to future federal program performance, such as

Year 2000 conversion and Results Act implementation, and

program-specific and agency-specific issues, some of which, such as

20See Budget Issues: Long-Term Fiscal Outlook (GAO/T-AIMD/OCE-98-83, February 25, 1998) and

Congressional Budget Office, Long-Term Budgetary Pressures and Policy Options, May 1998.

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Department of Defense infrastructure and Federal Aviation Administration

reforms, we have previously identified as high risk due to their

vulnerability to waste, fraud, or mismanagement.21 For many management

performance objectives, the plan includes challenging goals, such as

obtaining timely and unqualified audit opinions in 1999 for most agency

financial statements, and often identifies these performance goals and

commitments separately by references to Internet sites.

To improve the clarity and usefulness of the plan, section IV could provide

a more integrated and focused discussion of the strategies associated with

the priority management objectives. For example, in several cases,

apparent relationships among the components of section IV are not

recognized and discussed, leaving the reader without a clear

understanding of the significance and extent of interconnections among

the many issues discussed. For example, the apparent association among

the “debt collection” interagency objective, the debt collection objectives

of the Department of the Treasury Financial Management Service, and the

debt collection component of the “error reduction” management support

initiative is not explicitly developed. Similarly, this section appropriately

describes the role played by interagency working groups, such as the Chief

Financial Officers Council (CFOC) and Chief Information Officers Council,

in identifying and implementing ways to better manage federal resources,

but does not offer much discussion of their responsibilities and

contributions toward specific section IV objectives. For example, the

crucial leveraging role of the CFOC in implementing the Results Act, one of

the plan’s interagency priority management objectives, is not discussed.

Rather than referencing all of the priorities and initiatives of these

interagency groups, the plan would be enhanced by selective use and

better integration of specific initiatives that are key to achieving

governmentwide performance goals.

Moreover, addressing a variety of presentation problems would improve

the overall quality and value of section IV. The following are examples

where the plan could have provided a more complete and results-based

picture of expected performance.

• The discussion of the High Impact Agency initiative is an example of an

otherwise effective approach that was compromised by an incomplete

presentation. This initiative is intended to improve service and citizen

confidence in government by focusing on the performance of federal

21Appendix I summarizes the relationship between the plan’s priority management objectives and our

high-risk federal program areas.

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agencies that interact most with individuals and businesses—in effect, it

addresses one of the most basic purposes of the Results Act. The plan

briefly describes a few of the over 200 performance commitments being

made by 32 agencies and then refers the reader to an Internet site for those

performance commitments. Given the large number of commitments to be

established by so many federal agencies, highlighting a few while

referencing an Internet site for each agencies’ performance commitments

could have been an informative and reasonable approach to incorporate

this highly visible and relevant initiative into the plan. However, the

effectiveness of such an approach depends on prompt posting of agencies’

commitments. Performance commitments for almost two-thirds of the

agencies had not yet been posted on the referenced Internet site about 2

weeks after the plan’s issuance; in fact, more than 2 months later, about

one-third of the agencies were still not included on the site.

• OMB chose to use the plan to meet a critical requirement under the

Clinger-Cohen Act, namely a “. . . report on the net program performance

benefits achieved as a result of major capital investments . . . and how the

benefits relate to the accomplishments of the goals of the executive

agencies.” However, the presentation in the plan requires substantial

improvement to meet congressional expectations. For example, there is no

discussion regarding either the criteria used to select the 35 information

technology projects included in the report or the specific governmentwide

goals or agency priorities that are supported by the projects. Performance

benefit descriptions included in the list often describe what the system

will do or provide (e.g., “lowers costs,” “improves accuracy,” or “simplifies

and streamlines”) rather than the “net program performance benefits” that

will be achieved. Finally, given the size of major technology projects,

which often require many years and the completion of many separate

components, the report would be most informative if it distinguished

between achieved and expected performance and between expended and

estimated budgetary needs.

Clearer discussion of the program performance implications of

governmentwide management objectives will help achieve a better

integration between governmentwide and agency performance plans. As

noted in our overall assessment of fiscal year 1999 agency performance

plans, most agencies did not consistently incorporate strategies to address

mission-critical management problems, including, for example, the Year

2000 computer conversion issue, which is the first interagency

management objective included in the governmentwide plan. Improving

the discussion of the performance consequences of these priority

management objectives is an essential step to assist agencies in developing

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relevant goals and strategies for inclusion in agency plans and to clarify

agency accountability for specific results.

Program Performance As expected under the Results Act, the majority of the plan is directed

toward compiling and summarizing key performance goals and measures

from agency performance plans. OMB chose to summarize this information

and associated strategies (spending, credit activity, tax expenditures, and

regulation) in terms of budget functions “to group similar programs

together and begin to present the relationship between their goals.”22 For

the most part, section VI provides a foundation to begin to discuss

governmentwide performance issues. For example, each chapter generally

begins with a brief description of the federal role in the function; many,

but not all, chapters begin with broad governmentwide goals for the

function; and all include performance goals and measures from agency

plans.

To some extent, the plan was constrained by the absence of crucial

performance information from underlying agency plans. For example, the

Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) recognized that it needed

cooperative arrangements with state and local governments before

developing performance baselines and targets for major programs, such as

Medicaid. Similarly, the Drug Enforcement Agency emphasized that some

performance indicators were in a developmental stage and that historical

data upon which to base a credible performance goal were not available.

The fiscal year 1999 plan necessarily includes very limited information for

these activities, except to generally note, for example, that HCFA “will work

with the States to develop and test Medicaid performance goals,” or that

“Federal and non-Federal entities will work together to reduce the

availability and abuse of illegal drugs.”23

It is also apparent that OMB used its discretion in preparing the

governmentwide plan to address some other inadequacies of agency

performance plans. OMB compensated for some weaknesses identified

during our assessments of agency plans by broadly summarizing agency

plans or by incorporating information from sources other than the annual

plan, as in the following examples.

• In our assessment of the Department of Defense plan, we noted that it was

difficult to determine the department’s strategies, objectives, and

measures because information critical to understanding performance was

22Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1999, p. 143.

23Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1999, pp. 214, 243.

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contained throughout the Secretary of Defense’s fiscal year 1999 annual

report to the President and the Congress, which included the annual

performance plan, and numerous other documents. The governmentwide

plan succinctly summarized key performance goals for each of the

department’s six strategic objectives, providing a much more coherent and

concise discussion of expected fiscal year 1999 performance.

• The Social Security chapter of section VI not only includes a table showing

the number of beneficiaries served, an output measure that is included in

the agency plan, but also a discussion of the effect of Social Security on

reducing poverty among the elderly, an outcome that was not discussed in

the fiscal year 1999 agency performance plan.

• The General Services Administration plan often lacked context for its

performance measures, which the governmentwide plan addressed by

including comparative and baseline information. For example, although

the agency plan states that local telephone service monthly line charges

for fiscal year 1999 will be held to the same level as in 1997 and 1998, the

governmentwide plan describes this as a 28 percent reduction from 1994

rates. Similarly, although the agency plan focuses on the increasing cost

per mile of the automobile fleet, the governmentwide plan notes that

automobiles will be leased to agencies at rates that average 20 percent

below commercial rates.

Although section VI includes numerous agency performance goals that

include specific target levels of performance (e.g., “the program will serve

150,000 special needs youth and frail elderly”), some do not (e.g., “step up

efforts to disrupt and dismantle illegal activities”), reflecting some of the

problems in the underlying agency plans. However, even in cases where

specific performance targets are described in the plan, the overall value

and usefulness of this performance information could be improved by

including baseline and trend data. For example, prior year performance

results can provide a framework for assessing the realism of annual

performance targets and for disclosing a more complete picture of

performance over an extended period. Such data can assist readers by

placing performance goals and measures in context24 and is particularly

relevant in that a separate governmentwide performance report is not

required under the Results Act.

The section VI program performance presentations also would be

enhanced if there was a clearer and more direct discussion of

governmentwide goals and objectives in addition to key agency

24See The Government Performance and Results Act: 1997 Governmentwide Implementation Will Be

Uneven (GAO/GGD-97-109, June 2, 1997) and GPRA Performance Reports (GAO/GGD-96-66R,

February 14, 1996).

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performance goals. In some cases, the plan does highlight major

crosscutting efforts within the function-based chapters. For example, the

National Homeownership Initiative, a major administration initiative

involving several agencies and both spending and credit programs, is

discussed in the Commerce and Housing Credit chapter.25 Similarly, the

Natural Resources and Environment chapter includes an extended

discussion of the many agencies involved in federal land management,

presented in the context of three governmentwide federal land

management goals: protecting human health and safeguarding the natural

environment; restoring and maintaining the health of federally managed

lands, waters, and renewable resources; and providing recreational

opportunities for the public to enjoy natural and cultural resources.

However, unlike the management performance discussion in section IV,

which directly referenced the priorities and initiatives of a variety of

interagency councils, section VI only marginally reflects the crucial

crosscutting role in promoting and establishing governmentwide

performance goals played by such entities as the Office of National Drug

Control Policy, the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee, and the

Office of Science and Technology Policy. Recognizing and incorporating

these statutory policy coordinating entities would bring visibility to their

efforts and the governmentwide results they are intended to introduce and

encourage, while helping to focus agency accountability for results.

In addition, the overall value and usefulness of the program performance

discussions in section VI would be enhanced by improving the organizing

framework. OMB’s decision to use budget function classifications to meet

the need for an integrated, mission-based framework was reasonable;

classifying by budget functions is a well-known and long-standing method

to categorize the purpose of government without regard to organizational

arrangements. However, this structure does not in all cases portray

mutually exclusive mission-based groupings of federal activities, thus

leading to incomplete performance discussions.26 For example, the

discussion of governmentwide performance expectations in the Health

chapter in section VI was constrained by a classification structure in

which other federal health programs that are targeted to specific

beneficiaries (e.g., Medicare and veterans health activities) are assigned to

different functions (i.e., chapters). There were cases in which OMB

recognized the limitations imposed by budget functions on its discussions

25This initiative defines a national goal of 67.5 percent homeownership by 2000, from a current baseline

of 66 percent. The plan describes specific activities and performance goals for three agencies that will

contribute to this crosscutting initiative.

26See Budget Function Classifications: Origins, Trends, and Implications for Current Uses

(GAO/AIMD-98-67, February 27, 1998).

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of fiscal year 1999 performance expectations. For example, the plan

includes a footnote in the Natural Resources and Environment chapter to

emphasize that the chapter does not include all federal activities

associated with these missions. In another example, a major federal

activity—assisted housing programs of the Department of Housing and

Urban Development—was not discussed in the chapter in which it is

typically associated in budget function presentations (i.e., the Income

Security function), but was included in the Commerce and Housing Credit

chapter, presumably to better relate it to other housing programs.

Moreover, descriptions of program performance in several chapters were

presented in a sequential, agency-by-agency format that missed

opportunities to address well-known areas of fragmentation and overlap.

Organization-based presentations are appropriate to emphasize agency

accountability but tend to “stovepipe” performance discussions and

inadequately describe crosscutting governmentwide performance goals

and both common and complementary performance measures. For

example, the General Science, Space, and Technology chapter sequentially

discusses performance goals for three agencies (National Aeronautics and

Space Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Science

Foundation) but does not address the apparent overlap stemming from

over 500 research laboratories operated by 17 federal agencies. Similarly,

the Community and Regional Development chapter organizes performance

discussions in terms of eight involved agencies, but does not address the

inefficiency, confusion, and potential duplication arising from a patchwork

of about 100 rural development programs operated by over a dozen federal

agencies.27 This weakness in the governmentwide performance plan

mirrors comparable problems in the agency performance plans, which

also did not sufficiently describe crosscutting programs and needed

coordinating efforts. Collectively, fiscal year 1999 performance planning

could more directly address areas of fragmentation and overlap and thus

better ensure that federal resources are well targeted and that

accountability is clearly defined.

Similarly, section VI also did not fully integrate discussions of the effects

of various federal strategies to achieve governmentwide performance

goals. Often, discussions of federal approaches and strategies missed

opportunities to describe and compare expected performance goals, the

relative contribution of each approach toward governmentwide goals, and

the potential for developing common or complementary performance

27For a general discussion of these issues, see Managing for Results: Using the Results Act to Address

Mission Fragmentation and Program Overlap (GAO/AIMD-97-146, August 29, 1997) and Federal

Management (GAO/OCG-98-1R, January 9, 1998).

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measures. The Transportation chapter offers one illustration. A variety of

federal approaches—grants, regulations, inspections, and direct federal

service provision—are briefly discussed in the context of common

performance goals, such as “reduce transportation-related deaths and

injuries.” However, there is no discussion of expected performance for

these separate strategies and no discussion of the relative contribution of

each approach to achieving the governmentwide goal.

For the most part, discussions of tax expenditures within section VI

tended to focus on what the tax expenditure is or does (e.g., “Interest from

certain U.S. Savings Bonds is tax-free if the bonds go solely to pay for

education.”) rather than its contribution toward governmentwide or

specific program performance goals. For example, in section VI, the

estimated value of tax expenditures associated with each budget function

is summarized in the “federal resources” table that begins each chapter,

and a general discussion of performance measurement issues presented by

tax expenditures is included in a supplementary section of the separately

published plan. However, a more extensive and informative listing of

specific tax expenditures by function, which is included in chapter 5 of the

Analytical Perspectives volume of the Budget, is not referenced, and

specific discussions of the contribution of major tax expenditures toward

federal performance goals is often lacking. For example, estimated

spending and tax expenditures are shown as roughly comparable shares of

total federal resources (about $60 billion) in fiscal year 1999 in the

Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services chapter, but the

effect on federal performance goals of the new child credit tax

expenditure in that year is not discussed. Similarly, the contribution of tax

policies toward achieving specific federal health goals, such as

distributional equity or access to quality care, is not discussed in the

Health chapter, although such tax expenditures are expected to amount to

almost $86 billion in fiscal year 1999, with the exclusion for

employer-provided benefits accounting for most of this.28

Although not required by the Results Act or congressional intent, OMB

included in section VI discussions of federal regulation, an alternative and

important policy strategy for the federal government. The nature and

general effects of regulation are discussed within the program

performance chapters, typically as a separate segments of the chapters,

and performance goals and measures are sometimes provided. For

example, the Energy chapter includes descriptions of the programs of the

28For a broader discussion of this topic, see Tax Policy: Tax Expenditures Deserve More Scrutiny

(GAO/GGD/AIMD-94-122, June 3, 1994).

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Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory

Commission in a results-based framework, discussing the impact of

regulation on achieving goals relating to, for example, public health and

safety and the maintenance of fair and efficient interstate energy markets.

In addition, the separately published Governmentwide Performance Plan

included a supplementary section that provided a general discussion of the

nature, costs, and benefits of regulation but does not include explicit

performance goals; this supplementary section does include some

regulatory issues that are not included within the program performance

narratives. For example, a group of 41 economically significant regulations

studied by OMB are briefly discussed, with a reference to an Internet site

for a more complete discussion. Neither the “monetized benefits”

discussed in this section, nor the broader implications on program

performance goals are explicitly identified and discussed in the program

performance sections.

Conclusions The fiscal year 1999 Governmentwide Performance Plan marked the

culmination of the first full cycle of performance planning under the

Results Act. This first plan represents a milestone and, as OMB suggests,

should be seen as the first step in an evolving results-based planning and

budgeting process. Although the plan will necessarily reflect

administration policies and priorities, the challenge will be to identify and

implement those changes that will make the plan more useful and

informative to the broader public policy community with respect to the

basic purposes of the act: to improve citizen confidence, service delivery,

and program performance and management, while enhancing

congressional oversight and deliberation.

The Governmentwide Performance Plan can be a powerful tool to pursue

these goals. A central and distinguishing contribution of the

governmentwide plan is its potential to provide a cohesive perspective on

the performance of a wide array of federal activities. Similar to the

President’s budget submission, it can be a document that builds on

agency-level submissions but whose overall value exceeds the sum of its

parts. As it evolves, the process of developing the plan could prompt a

more integrated and focused discussion between the Congress and the

administration about priorities and how agencies interact in implementing

those priorities. For example, it might (1) present traditional

program-specific and agency-specific budget decisions in a new context

that promotes more fundamental comparisons and assessments of

expected performance, (2) provide a place where fragmented and

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overlapping federal programs and strategies are pulled together in an

integrated proposal that reflects mission-based goals, and (3) enhance the

visibility of expected federal performance, thus providing incentives to

agencies to achieve performance goals and increasing accountability to

citizens.

Several steps would help ensure that the plan achieves its full potential

and becomes more useful within both congressional and executive branch

decision-making processes. The usefulness of the governmentwide

performance plan rests on the quality and comprehensiveness of the

methods used to describe and integrate governmentwide goals and

outcomes. Our assessment of the fiscal year 1999 plan indicated four key

opportunities for improvement.

• First, the quality of the plan’s organizing framework is key to achieving a

more integrated and broader discussion about governmentwide missions

and performance. While the use of budget function classifications offers a

reasonable and logical structure to cut across organizational boundaries

and federal strategies, this classification system does not always provide

mutually exclusive descriptions of governmentwide missions.29 A more

cohesive picture of federal missions would be presented if discussions

were broadened beyond the functional lines where necessary to capture

the full range of government players and activities and aimed at advancing

broad federal goals.

• Second, within this broad mission-based framework, the approach used to

present information within a given mission area also contributes to the

effectiveness of the plan. Presenting information in an agency-by-agency

or strategy-by-strategy manner is useful to indicate the range of actors and

approaches within a given mission area, but a more integrated discussion

organized in terms of broad federal goals and objectives would better

reflect the relative contributions of various agencies and strategies to the

mission area and provide opportunities to compare and assess

interactions.

• Third, future governmentwide plans would be more informative and useful

if baseline and trend information were presented consistently with annual

performance goals.

• Fourth, crucial performance concerns included in the governmentwide

performance plan—including not only priority management objectives that

will broadly affect program performance but also crosscutting program

performance goals—should be reflected in relevant agency performance

plans. This is an essential step to better integrate governmentwide

29GAO/AIMD-98-67, February 27, 1998.

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performance planning with agency performance planning and to clarify

agency accountability for specific results.

In many respects, achieving these improvements to the governmentwide

plan rests upon changes in the underlying agency performance plans. As

OMB has acknowledged, and as discussed in our reports on the agency

plans, considerable effort must be made to improve these building blocks

of the governmentwide plan. In our overall assessment of the fiscal year

1999 agency performance plans, we encouraged OMB to consider five key

opportunities for improvement as it commences its intended review of

agency performance: (1) articulating a better results orientation,

(2) strengthening coordination of crosscutting programs, (3) describing

better how strategies will be used to achieve goals, (4) showing the

performance consequences of budget decisions, and (5) building capacity

within agencies to gather and use performance information.30 Clearly,

addressing these issues in agency performance plans will contribute

significantly to enhancing the governmentwide plan in the four areas

previously discussed. For example, the ability to present cohesively the

relative contributions of all relevant programs and agencies to broad

mission goals in the governmentwide plan will largely depend on how well

each of those entities has articulated its results and strategies. Similarly,

the presentation of baseline and trend data in the governmentwide plan

rests on the availability of such data in agency plans.

Beyond these specific improvements to agency and governmentwide

performance plans, many other fundamental changes will be needed to

fully achieve the benefits of the Results Act. For example, developing

common goals and complementary performance measures across agencies

and programs that are directed at similar missions will require not only

better plans and planning processes but also extraordinary coordination

within the executive branch and sustained attention within the Congress.31

Ensuring that goals and measures focus on true results—that is, real gains

in performance, responsiveness, and quality—will be a serious challenge

for many agencies.32 And even developing results-based measures for

some federal strategies—notably tax expenditures and regulations—will

require improvements in areas that are marked by complexity and

30GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-228, September 8, 1998.

31GAO/GGD-97-109, June 2, 1997; GAO/GGD-97-180, September 16, 1997; and GAO/AIMD-97-146,

August 29, 1997.

32See Program Evaluation: Agencies Challenged by New Demand for Information on Program Results

(GAO/GGD-98-53, April 24, 1998) and Managing for Results: Analytic Challenges in Measuring

Performance (GAO/HEHS/GGD-97-138, May 30, 1997).

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ambiguity and that have often proven resistant to such measurement.33

These and many other changes will not occur quickly, but the Results Act

provides the overall context within which these challenges can be

systematically addressed.

Recommendations While still an evolving concept and document, the governmentwide

performance plan represents a uniquely valuable tool to help the Congress

and the executive branch address critical federal performance and

management issues. Therefore, to continue the development of this

distinctive and important resource, we recommend that the Director of

OMB take the following actions.

To achieve a more cohesive picture of governmentwide performance and

provide an effective construct for considering related missions and goals

and addressing program overlap concerns, we recommend that OMB

augment the presentations by budget functions in the governmentwide

plan where necessary to achieve a more complete view of performance in

mission areas.

To comprehensively portray and analyze the performance of the federal

government, we recommend that OMB develop approaches to better

integrate all federal strategies and tools—including tax expenditures and

regulations—with key agency performance goals associated with federal

spending in the governmentwide plan presentations. In the near term, this

should include, minimally, a more integrated discussion of the role of

spending, tax expenditures, and regulation within mission areas and

strategic objectives. In the longer term, OMB should work with cognizant

agencies to begin to develop objective, measurable, and quantifiable goals

for all federal strategies and tools to better disclose the relative

contribution of each toward overall federal performance goals.

To better depict the context for and progress associated with performance

goals defined in the governmentwide plan, we recommend that OMB

include baseline and trend information, where credible data are available

or include information on efforts to develop such data.

Finally, to ensure priority attention and promote accountability in

addressing governmentwide performance concerns—both priority

management objectives and crosscutting performance goals included in

33Managing for Results: Regulatory Agencies Identified Significant Barriers to Focusing on Results

(GAO/GGD-97-83, June 24, 1997).

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the governmentwide plan—we recommend that OMB ensure that agencies

incorporate appropriate goals and strategies in their annual performance

plans and describe their relevance to achieve objectives described in the

governmentwide performance plan.

Agency Comments

and Our Evaluation

On August 19, 1998, we received OMB’s written comments. On August 20,

1998, we received additional technical comments from a senior OMB

official; we have incorporated these comments where appropriate. OMB’s

letter of August 19, 1998, includes comments on both this report and our

companion report on agency annual performance plans. Our evaluation of

OMB comments on our assessment of the governmentwide performance

plan is provided below; OMB’s comments on our assessment of agency

performance plans are discussed in our companion report.34

In his August 19, 1998 letter, OMB’s Acting Deputy Director for Management

emphasized that the fiscal year 1999 governmentwide performance plan

exceeded statutory requirements but also agreed that our report provided

constructive suggestions to improve future plans. Agreeing that “weak

agency plans translate into weak sections of a governmentwide plan,” OMB

committed to improve fiscal year 2000 agency performance plans, which

they believe will in turn enhance future governmentwide plans as well.

OMB stated that our draft report appeared “to misjudge the nature of the

governmentwide plan.” In OMB’s view, the governmentwide plan should

focus “almost entirely on performance goals,” but our discussion of

underlying agency performance plan weaknesses included issues “that are

largely unrelated to performance goals.” We did not mean to suggest that

the governmentwide plan should contain detailed discussions of strategies

to improve agency plans or address all of the elements that are essential

components of agency plans. Rather, we observed that the

governmentwide plan will continue to be limited as long as its building

blocks contained in agency plans were limited. In our companion report

on the annual performance plans, we have recommended that OMB pursue

an explicit agenda for improving the quality and utility of agency

performance plans.

OMB expressed concern with our recommendation to augment where

necessary budget function presentations to achieve a more complete view

of federal performance. OMB stated that this “would generate a hybrid plan

which would carve up the functional presentations.” This is not what we

34GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-228, September 8, 1998.

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have in mind. We agree that the budget function structure provides an

appropriate organizational base. However, as we indicate in this and a

previous report,35 current budget functions do not in all cases portray

mutually exclusive mission-based groupings of federal activities; for

example, the Health function does not include large and important federal

health programs targeted to specific beneficiaries (e.g., Medicare and

veterans). There are several ways in which a more integrated discussion of

federal performance goals could be presented, including greater use of

cross-referencing among current budget function classifications. Contrary

to OMB’s concern, we believe that this would avoid the scattering of

otherwise related performance goals that occurred in this year’s plan as a

consequence of presentations based solely on budget functions.

Finally, OMB was concerned that our comparison of OMB’s Priority

Management Objectives to our High-Risk Program Areas could be

interpreted to suggest that “some high risk areas are not being monitored

by OMB or addressed by the agencies.” This was not out intent. The table in

appendix I was developed solely to show the extent of similarity between

the two lists.

We are sending copies of this report to the Minority Leader of the House;

to the Ranking Minority Members of the Senate Committee on the Budget,

the Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Senate Committee on

Governmental Affairs, the House Committee on the Budget, the House

Committee on Appropriations, and the House Committee on Government

Reform and Oversight; to other appropriate congressional committees; and

to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. We will makes

copies available to others upon request.

35GAO/AIMD-98-67, February 27, 1998.

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The major contributors to this report are listed in appendix III. If you or

your staffs have any questions, please call Paul L. Posner on (202) 512-9573

or L. Nye Stevens on (202) 512-8676.

Paul L. Posner

Director, Budget Issues

L. Nye Stevens

Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues

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Congressional Requesters

The Honorable Richard K. Armey

Majority Leader

House of Representatives

The Honorable Dan Burton

Chairman, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight

House of Representatives

The Honorable John R. Kasich

Chairman, Committee on the Budget

House of Representatives

The Honorable Bob Livingston

Chairman, Committee on Appropriations

House of Representatives

The Honorable Pete V. Domenici

Chairman, Committee on the Budget

United States Senate

The Honorable Ted Stevens

Chairman, Committee on Appropriations

United States Senate

The Honorable Fred Thompson

Chairman, Committee on Governmental Affairs

United States Senate

The Honorable Larry E. Craig

United States Senate

Page 29 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
Contents

Letter 1

Appendix I 

Priority Management

Objectives From the

Governmentwide

Performance Plan and

Related GAO

High-Risk Program

Areas

32

Appendix II 

Comments From the

Office of Management

and Budget

34

Appendix III 

Major Contributors to

This Report

37

Abbreviations

CFOC Chief Financial Officers Council

HCFA Health Care Financing Administration

OMB Office of Management and Budget

RMO resource management office

Page 30 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
Page 31 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
Appendix I 

Priority Management Objectives From the

Governmentwide Performance Plan and

Related GAO High-Risk Program Areas

Priority management objectives Related high-risk program areas

Year 2000 Year 2000 problem

Government Performance and Results Act - - -

Financial management IRS financial management 

Customs Service financial management

Information technology Information security

Selected information technology systems

(interagency systems dealing with tax and

wage reporting and international trade data)

- - -

Acquisition reform Defense contract management 

Defense weapon systems acquisition 

National Aeronautics and Space

Administration contract management

Loan portfolio management - - -

Debt collection Farm loan programs

International credit programs - - -

Statistical programs - - -

Regulation - - -

Defense financial management reforms Defense financial management

Defense infrastructure outsourcing and

privatization

Defense infrastructure

Education student aid programs Student financial aid programs

Energy acquisition reforms Energy contract management

Housing and Urban Development

management reforms

Department of Housing and Urban

Development

Interior/Bureau of Indian Affairs tribal trust

fund and lands reforms

- - -

Transportation/Federal Aviation

Administration human, financial, and

information resources management reforms

Air traffic control modernization

Treasury/Financial Management Service

management reforms

- - -

Treasury/Internal Revenue Service

information technology reforms

Tax systems modernization

IRS receivables 

IRS filing fraud detection

Veterans Affairs infrastructure consolidations - - -

Social Security Administration claims

processing reforms

Supplemental Security Income claims

processing

- - - Defense Corporate Information

Management initiative

- - - Defense inventory management

- - - Justice and Treasury asset forfeiture

programs

- - - Medicare overpayments

(continued)

Page 32 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
Appendix I 

Priority Management Objectives From the

Governmentwide Performance Plan and

Related GAO High-Risk Program Areas

Priority management objectives Related high-risk program areas

- - - National Weather Service modernization

- - - Superfund program management

- - - 2000 decennial census

Page 33 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
Appendix II 

Comments From the Office of Management

and Budget

Page 34 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
Appendix II 

Comments From the Office of Management

and Budget

Page 35 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
Appendix II 

Comments From the Office of Management

and Budget

Page 36 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
Appendix III 

Major Contributors to This Report

Accounting and

Information

Management Division,

Washington, D.C.

Michael J. Curro, Assistant Director

Elizabeth A. McClarin, Senior Evaluator

Robert D. Yetvin, Senior Evaluator

General Government

Division, Washington,

D.C.

Alan M. Stapleton, Assistant Director

Victoria Miller O’Dea, Senior Evaluator

Acknowledgements In addition to those named above, the following individuals made

important contributions to this report: From the Accounting and

Information Management Division, Susan J. Irving, Associate Director;

Laura E. Castro, Senior Evaluator; John W. Mingus, Jr., Senior Evaluator;

and David L. McClure, Assistant Director. From the General Government

Division, J. Christopher Mihm, Associate Director, and Joseph S. Wholey,

Senior Advisor for Evaluation Methodology.

(935260) Page 37 GAO/AIMD/GGD-98-159 The Governmentwide Performance Plan
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