United States General Accounting Office

GAO Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on Management, Information

and Technology

Committee on Government Reform and Oversight

House of Representatives

For Release on Delivery

Expected at

10:00 a.m. EST

Monday

March 10, 1997

MANAGING FOR RESULTS

Enhancing the Usefulness

of GPRA Consultations

Between the Executive

Branch and Congress

Statement of L. Nye Stevens, Director

Federal Management and Workforce Issues

General Government Division

GAO/T-GGD-97-56

Summary 

Managing for Results: Enhancing the

Usefulness of GPRA Consultations Between

the Executive Branch and Congress

Under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), each agency

is to develop a strategic plan to lay out its mission, long-term goals, and

strategies for achieving those goals. Agencies are required to submit their

plans to Congress by September 30, 1997, and the plans are to take into

consideration the views of Congress and other stakeholders. To ensure

that these views are considered, GPRA requires that as agencies develop

their strategic plans, they consult with Congress and solicit the views of

other stakeholders.

Although GPRA requires congressional consultations, it does not specify

what constitutes a consultation, at what point in the development process

of a strategic plan the consultations should take place, or which

committees should be involved in consultations. Both committee staff and

agency officials GAO interviewed recognize that the consultations on

strategic planning are important to developing an agency plan that

appropriately takes into account the views of Congress. However, as is to

be expected during the initial stages of a new effort, all participants are

struggling to define how the consultation process can work effectively.

Although the establishment of a set of best practices, or the attainment of

common understandings of what consultations will entail, can help ensure

that those consultations are as productive as possible, no single set of best

practices has yet emerged. Instead, GAO’s work on preliminary

consultations suggested some general approaches that may contribute to

the usefulness of future consultations. These approaches include creating

shared expectations, engaging the right people, addressing differing views

of what is to be discussed, and establishing a consultation process that is

iterative. A recent letter to the Director of the Office of Management and

Budget from the Speaker of the House, the House Majority Leader, the

Senate Majority Leader, and key committee chairmen from both the House

and the Senate on GPRA-required consultations should provide a good

foundation for successful consultations. Ultimately, the guidelines

included in the letter, the approaches GAO identified, and other practices

that may emerge as agency officials and committee staff continue to learn

to work together in developing strategic plans, can help create a set of

practices that promote successful consultations. Successful consultations,

in turn, can promote a basic understanding among the stakeholders of the

competing demands that confront most agencies and congressional staff,

the limited resources available to them, and how those demands and

resources require careful and continuous balancing.

Page 1 GAO/T-GGD-97-56 (410110)
Statement 

Managing for Results: Enhancing the

Usefulness of GPRA Consultations Between

the Executive Branch and Congress

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I am pleased to be here today to discuss ways of enhancing the usefulness

of consultations between executive branch agencies and Congress, as the

agencies develop their strategic plans. Under the Government

Performance and Results Act (GPRA), each agency is to develop a strategic

plan to lay out its mission, long-term goals, and strategies for achieving

those goals. Agencies are required to submit their plans to Congress by

September 30, 1997. The strategic plans are to take into consideration the

views of Congress and other stakeholders. To ensure that these views are

taken into account, GPRA requires agencies to consult with Congress and

solicit the views of other stakeholders as they develop their strategic

plans.

These consultations provide an important opportunity for Congress and

the executive branch to work together to ensure that agency missions are

focused, goals are specific and results-oriented, and strategies and funding

expectations are appropriate and reasonable. In previous testimony before

the full Committee on February 12, we identified examples of

management-related challenges stemming from unclear agency missions;

the lack of results-oriented performance goals; the absence of

well-conceived strategies to meet those goals; and the failure to gather and

use accurate, reliable, and timely program performance and cost

information to measure progress in achieving results.1

 We also described

how GPRA can assist Congress and the executive branch in addressing

these challenges and improving the management of federal agencies.

Congress and the administration have both demonstrated that they

recognize that successful consultations are key to the success of GPRA and

therefore to sustained improvements in federal management. For example,

Congress signaled its strong commitment to GPRA and the consultation

process through a February 25, 1997, letter to the Director of the Office of

Management and Budget (OMB) from the Speaker of the House, the House

Majority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader, and key committee chairmen

from both the House and the Senate. The letter underscored the

importance that the congressional majority places on the implementation

of GPRA, noted a willingness on the part of Congress to work cooperatively

with the administration, and established expectations for consultations.

The administration also has shown its commitment to consulting with

Congress on agency strategic plans through a letter from the Director of

1

See Managing for Results: Using GPRA to Assist Congressional and Executive Branch Decisionmaking

(GAO/T-GGD-97-43, Feb. 12, 1997).

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the Executive Branch and Congress

OMB to executive agencies sent last November and earlier guidance to

agencies on the preparation of strategic plans.

This willingness on the part of Congress and the administration to work

together is a likely precondition to successful consultations. Nonetheless,

the consultations may still prove difficult because they entail a different

working relationship between agencies and Congress than has generally

prevailed in the past. In a forthcoming report, we will compare and

contrast key design elements and approaches of GPRA with those of past

federal initiatives that sought to link resources to results, such as the

Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) and Zero-Base Budgeting

(ZBB). One clear lesson that emerged from those prior initiatives is that

constructive communication across the branches of government is

difficult, but absolutely essential if management reform is to be sustained.

Discussions between agencies and Congress on strategic planning are

likely to underscore the competing and conflicting goals of many federal

programs, as well as the sometimes different expectations of the

legislative and executive branches.

Over the past few months, we have been asked to help brief a number of

congressional committees on GPRA and, in some cases, directly assist them

in their consultations with agencies. Building in part on that effort, and at

the request of the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, we have

been examining selected consultations on strategic plans that have taken

place thus far. As part of related work we were doing in January looking at

agencies’ progress in developing strategic plans, officials at the

headquarters level, from 11 of the 24 largest executive branch agencies,

said that they had been in contact with congressional committees—often

at the initiative of Congress—on their strategic plans. Headquarters-level

officials in the remaining 13 executive branch agencies said that although

they had not met with congressional staff, officials from some of their

components had met with authorizing committees and appropriating

subcommittees on matters related to strategic planning.

For our current review, we selected consultations to cover a range of

types of interactions (from single meetings to sustained contacts), types of

agencies (e.g., regulatory, direct service, and business-like), and type of

congressional committee (e.g., authorizing and appropriating). Based on

our selection criteria, we interviewed staff from five House committees

who participated in the selected consultations with agencies. These

interviews included staff from both authorizing committees and the

appropriations committee. We also interviewed officials from 9 of the 11

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the Executive Branch and Congress

executive agencies who participated in those consultations. All of the

selected consultations took place before the congressional letter was sent

in late February. Our work was aimed at identifying approaches that, in

the view of congressional staff and agency officials, have the potential to

enhance the usefulness of the consultations required by GPRA. As agreed

with the Chairman of the House Budget Committee and this

Subcommittee, I will discuss the results of that work today.

Number and Scope of

Consultations, Thus

Far, Provide a Limited

Basis for Identifying

Useful Practices

Congressional staff and agency officials expressed a widespread

appreciation for the essential role that consultations can play in the

development of a strategic plan that is useful to the agency and

appropriately takes into account the views of Congress. Although GPRA

requires congressional consultations, it does not specify what constitutes a

consultation, at what point in the development process of a strategic plan

the consultation or consultations should take place, or which committees

should be involved in consultations. Establishing a set of best practices or

reaching a common understanding of what consultations will entail can

help ensure that the consultations are as productive as possible. However,

congressional staff and agency officials said they believed that because of

their generally limited experience with such consultations, it will take time

for Congress and agencies to develop a base of common experiences from

which to build a set of specific best practices for future consultations.

Most committee staff and agency officials had positive comments about

the meetings that have been held thus far. However, both committee staff

and agency officials—committee staff in particular—stressed the very

limited nature of the meetings. The meetings varied significantly, ranging

from routine base-touching sessions with congressional staff as part of an

agency’s broad scan of internal and external stakeholders, to substantive

and candid dialogue on an agency’s mission, strategic goals, strategies to

achieve those goals, and outcome-related performance measures.

Most committee staff and some agency officials we spoke with

characterized the meetings that have taken place thus far as briefings,

preconsultations, or preliminary consultations. Thus, at this early point, no

single set of best practices for consultations has emerged from the

preliminary meetings. Instead, committee staff and agency officials

suggested some general approaches that center on the creation of shared

expectations between committee staff and agency officials that may

contribute to the usefulness of such consultations.

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Managing for Results: Enhancing the

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the Executive Branch and Congress

Creating Shared

Expectations Was

Identified as an

Essential Starting

Point for Successful

Consultations

By working together to create shared expectations, consultation

participants can establish an understanding of what they want to discuss,

what they do not want to enter into the discussions, and what they expect

to achieve from their discussions. To avoid misunderstandings and

consequent disappointment, both committee staff and agency officials

identified a need to define “up front” what they expect to achieve from

consultations. For example, one committee staff member said that he

asked for and expected to receive background information in the initial

meeting with an agency about what the agency had done to achieve the

requirements of GPRA, and that his expectations were met. However, in

another case, two committee staff who asked for and expected a

discussion on an agency’s mission statement, its consistency with statute,

and its relationship to the agency’s strategic goals, among other things,

were disappointed. Instead, they received a 1-1/2 hour slide show on the

requirements of GPRA, even though they had told the agency beforehand

that they did not need such a presentation.

The congressional letter provided guidelines that are intended to make

consultations more productive. For example, the letter described

expectations for the contents of draft strategic plans and said that

agencies should provide relevant materials in advance of consultations.

The congressional letter also provided a list of the types of topics that the

congressional majority expects to be discussed during consultations. Our

work suggests that the guidelines in the congressional letter should go a

long way toward assisting committees and agencies in conducting their

consultations by helping to establish a shared understanding of the

congressional majority’s expectations. For example, two committee staff

members told us that they encouraged agencies to provide them with

relevant documents, including early drafts of strategic plans, before the

meetings. This enabled them to prepare questions and suggestions in

advance. It also helped them focus better on the presentations and

discussions taking place during the meetings by eliminating the need to

read and respond to the documents at the same time. Another committee

staff member stressed the importance of limiting the materials provided as

part of consultations to critical documents, because congressional staff

workloads severely constrain the time available to read additional

paperwork.

Although the congressional letter helps to establish generic expectations

that would be useful in helping to provide a good foundation for

successful consultations, both committee staff and agency officials we

interviewed stressed that consultations ultimately must be tailored to the

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Usefulness of GPRA Consultations Between

the Executive Branch and Congress

individual experiences and needs of congressional committees and

agencies. More specifically, congressional staff and agency officials noted

that the historical relationships between an agency and Congress, the

strategic issues confronting the agency, and the degree of policy

agreement or disagreement within Congress and between Congress and

the administration on those strategic issues will heavily influence the way

consultations are carried out.

They also noted that these political differences will affect the probability

of success of the consultations from either a the congressional or agency

perspective. For example, one committee staff member said that major

disagreements existed between the political parties as to the basic

direction of an agency under his committee’s jurisdiction. According to

this staff member, when subcommittee staff met with this agency’s

officials, the discussion quickly became quite confrontational, and the

session only served to reinforce tensions rather than resolve them. To

avoid repeating this situation, the staff member has sought to focus

subsequent meetings on elements of the agency’s strategic plan on which

the possibility for consensus exists, such as how best to manage programs,

and either leave issues arising from contentious policy differences for later

consideration or address them through correspondence with the agency.

The staff member contrasted the consultations with this agency with those

engaged in with another agency, also under the jurisdiction of his

committee, where broad agreement existed between the Members of the

committee and agency officials on the appropriate goals for the agency

and how those goals should be met. In this case, he said the consultation

process differed significantly in process and tone from the one in which

strong differences existed on basic policy issues.

Our discussions with congressional staff and agency officials indicated

that consultations also are more effective when they are tailored for the

interests and knowledge levels of participants. An approach that

committee staff and agency officials generally said helped them use time

productively in initial consultations consisted of gearing agency

presentations to the level of interest and understanding of the committee

staff. One staff member stressed the importance of providing information

on improvements that have occurred in programs where strategic planning

has been used successfully. Two staff members said that when they had

their initial meetings with the agencies, they were just beginning to

understand what GPRA required and what the agencies were doing to fulfill

its requirements. Consequently, they favored having basic overview

briefings at those initial meetings. Other staff felt that they were already

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the Executive Branch and Congress

well acquainted with GPRA; they therefore said that such briefings would be

a waste of time. In addition, these latter staff members said that agencies

should encourage follow-up questions after each meeting and feedback on

what went well and what did not go well during the meeting.

Our discussions with committee staff and agency officials suggest that as

committees and agencies work together to create shared expectations,

some general approaches may contribute to the usefulness of the

consultations. These approaches include the need for engaging the right

people, addressing differing views of what is to be discussed, and

establishing a consultation process that is iterative.

Engaging the Right People Including people who are knowledgeable about the topic at hand is

obviously important to any meeting. Almost everyone we talked with, both

committee staff and agency officials, stressed the importance of having

agency officials who can answer specific program-related questions attend

the consultations, as well as officials with authority to revise the agency’s

strategic plans. Otherwise, as both committee staff and agency officials

said, consultations run the risk of becoming purely a staff-driven exercise

that lacks a real link to agency management decisions.

According to committee staff, agency officials with varying responsibilities

need to be involved in consultations. For example, two committee staff

members observed that, initially, agency consultations with congressional

staff should include, at a minimum, officials with direct program

responsibility in agencies, as well as individuals from agency staff offices

with general planning responsibilities. According to the committee staff

members, the direct involvement of program-level agency officials is

important in order to demonstrate that decisions made as part of the

strategic planning process are serving as a basis for daily operations

within the agency. These staff members noted that a measure of GPRA’s

success is the identification of program officials who are able to (1) clearly

show how their program goals are directly linked to agency strategic goals

and (2) demonstrate how they are using GPRA to manage their operations.

According to the committee staff members, the involvement of program

officials also is more likely to ensure that consultations are informative for

both Congress and the agency.

Staff from two committees underscored the importance of including in the

consultations congressional staff who have knowledge of GPRA, strategic

planning, and the ways Congress can use GPRA to aid its decisionmaking.

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the Executive Branch and Congress

They also noted that staff who could discuss the intricacies of agency

programs and who had strong public policy and finance backgrounds also

should be brought in to the consultations to analyze the plans and the

supporting documentation that agencies provided.

As the consultations proceed, according to committee staff, the

involvement of Members of Congress and senior management within

agencies is important because Members and senior managers are

ultimately responsible for making decisions about agency strategic

directions and the level of program funding. In addition, staff said the

involvement of senior management demonstrates their personal

commitment and, in cases where that commitment may not be present, is

helpful to building that commitment. For example, one committee staff

member said that the higher the level of agency management involved in

consultations, the better the quality of the agency testimonies at oversight

hearings and the greater the importance given to GPRA and the strategic

planning process within the agencies.

A staff member from another committee said that true consultation cannot

take place without engaging Members of Congress. He said that committee

staff should be involved in the initial briefings but that, as discussions

progressed, Members needed to be directly involved. Member involvement

could be obtained in a number of ways in addition to active participation

in consultation sessions. For example, Members could send letters to

agencies posing questions on strategic plans and formally documenting

their views on key issues.

Another staff member said that hearings are important because not only

do they result in Member involvement, but they also require the

participation of senior agency management. In that regard, a number of

House committees are considering holding hearings this spring, after at

least some consultations have taken place, in order to provide oversight

on agency GPRA efforts and as a way of creating a public record of

agreements reached during consultations.

Congressional staff and agency officials generally agreed that

consultations should be bipartisan and bicameral to ensure buy-in from all

cognizant parties. In addition, both committee staff and agency officials

agreed that, to the extent feasible, consultations should be held jointly

with appropriate authorizing, budget, and appropriating committees.

Committee staff recognized that due to the at times overlapping

jurisdictions of congressional committees, obtaining the involvement of all

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Usefulness of GPRA Consultations Between

the Executive Branch and Congress

interested congressional committees in a coordinated approach to

consultations can be challenging. The often overlapping or fragmented

nature of federal program efforts—a problem that has been extensively

documented in our work—underscores the importance of a coordinated

consultation process.2

 In that regard, the effort now under way in the

House to form teams of congressional staff from different committees to

have a direct role in the consultation process should prove helpful.

From our discussions with committee staff and agency officials, it was not

apparent that there was consistency in the meetings that have been held

thus far. Some agencies have met with their authorizing committees;

others with their appropriators. Of the five House committees whose staff

we interviewed, four committees included minority staff in their meetings.

And although some House committee staff attempted to include Senate

staff and staff from other House committees, their attempts thus far have

met with only limited success.

Committee staff and agency officials often favored agencies’ obtaining the

views of other stakeholders in developing draft strategic plans before

congressional consultations took place. One committee staff member said

that stakeholders could provide information that could help an agency

show a link between the achievement of its programs’ strategic goals and

the resources required to achieve them. An agency official said that

stakeholders have helped to identify the major strategic issues facing his

agency. For example, he said that stakeholders helped to identify

perceived strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges that would

be involved in making strategic changes and achieving his agency’s goals.

In addition, he said that stakeholders also helped identify future strategic

issues and ways to address those issues through strategic planning.

Addressing Differing Views

of What Is to Be Discussed

Committee staff and agency officials often presented differing views on

what they believed the level of detail discussed during consultations

should be. Congressional staff, on the whole, wanted a deeper

examination of the details of agency strategic plans. Specifically, some

staff wanted to know how programs support an agency’s achievement of

its strategic goals and how the achievement of the agency’s goals would be

determined. In contrast, other congressional staff noted that because some

agencies lack baseline and trend data needed to establish performance

goals, it is not possible to discuss program performance measures.

2

See, for example, Managing for Results: Achieving GPRA’s Objectives Requires Strong Congressional

Role (GAO/T-GGD-96-79, Mar. 6, 1996).

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the Executive Branch and Congress

Therefore, the staff noted the consultations needed to focus on the

process of agencies’ strategic planning efforts, such as planning schedules

and time frames and building capacity.

Some agency officials, however, said that it was their general impression

that the consultations were to concern only their strategic plans, not

issues related to specific programs. As a result, these agency officials said

they wanted the discussions kept at a higher level—for example, on

agency mission and strategic goals. These officials said that they did not

believe that the consultation was a forum for discussing program

performance goals, measures, and costs. Other agency officials, however,

observed that agencies should be prepared to provide information on

programmatic issues as well as missions and goals.

Most committee staff agreed with this latter view, saying that agencies

need to be prepared to engage in discussions that go beyond mission and

goals to the program level and the rationale for specific performance

measures. For example, two committee staff members said that for

agencies to provide a list of goals—whether program performance goals or

strategic goals—without data to show why those goals were chosen and

how progress toward achieving the goals would be measured, was

meaningless. One of the two staff members said agency officials need to

ensure that their officials understand the importance of having data to

support their strategic planning efforts and of supplying those supporting

data to Congress as part of their consultations. The other staff member

explained that one reason Members and committee staff needed such

information was to enable them to intelligently assist agencies in selecting

appropriate performance measures.

Establishing a

Consultation Process That

Is Iterative

All of the committee staff and agency officials we spoke with

acknowledged that they had just begun an iterative process that will take

time to complete. In addition, both committee staff and agency officials

recognized that GPRA-required consultations were new and would require a

learning period. As a result, all staff and officials agreed that they should

meet as many times as both sides feel is necessary. This point is echoed in

the congressional letter to the Director of OMB, which emphasizes that

agency officials and committee staff may need to continually work on

updated versions of the strategic plans.

One committee staff member and one agency official said that it was

unreasonable to think that this year’s consultations would be all-inclusive

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Usefulness of GPRA Consultations Between

the Executive Branch and Congress

and totally productive. A committee staff member added that agencies

need to have a constant dialogue with congressional staff. Finally, an

agency official said that all consultation participants must accept that to

be useful, the strategic plan must be viewed as a dynamic document,

subject to change and open to criticism by all participants.

In summary, Mr. Chairman, both committee staff and agency officials we

spoke with recognized that the consultations on strategic planning are

important to developing an agency plan that appropriately takes into

account the views of Congress. However, as is to be expected during the

initial stages of a new effort, all participants are struggling to define how

the consultation process can work effectively. As I mentioned, the letter

from Congress to OMB should be particularly helpful in this regard. In our

discussions with committee staff and agency officials, they noted some

general approaches, including engaging the right people, addressing

differing views of what is to be discussed, and establishing a consultation

process that is iterative, that may contribute to the usefulness of

consultations. Ultimately, these approaches, along with other practices

that may emerge as agency officials and committee staff continue to learn

to work together in developing strategic plans, can help create a basic

understanding among the stakeholders of the competing demands that

confront most agencies and congressional staff, the limited resources

available to them, and how those demands and resources require careful

and continuous balancing. We look forward to continuing to work with

you and other committees on GPRA.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased

to respond to any questions that you or Members of the Subcommittee

may have.

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