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45–062 CC 1997

GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE AND RESULTS ACT:

STATUS AND PROSPECTS OF THE RESULTS ACT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, 

INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

GOVERNMENT REFORM 

AND OVERSIGHT 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 3, 1997

Serial No. 105–55

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT 

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman 

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York 

J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois 

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico 

CHRISTOPHER COX, California 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York 

STEPHEN HORN, California 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia 

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana 

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana 

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South 

Carolina 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

PETE SESSIONS, Texas 

MICHAEL PAPPAS, New Jersey 

VINCE SNOWBARGER, Kansas 

BOB BARR, Georgia 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

TOM LANTOS, California 

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia 

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York 

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York 

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania 

GARY A. CONDIT, California 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington, 

DC 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio 

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois 

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois 

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts 

JIM TURNER, Texas 

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine 

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee 

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont 

(Independent) 

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director 

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director 

JUDITH MCCOY, Chief Clerk 

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman 

PETE SESSIONS, Texas 

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia 

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida 

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South 

Carolina 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania 

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York 

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois 

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois 

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

J. RUSSELL GEORGE, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

MARK UNCAPHER, Counsel 

ANDREA MILLER, Clerk 

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member 

MARK STEPHENSON, Minority Professional Staff Member 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on June 3, 1997 ................................................................................. 1

Statement of: 

Koskinen, John, Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management 

and Budget .................................................................................................... 7

Stevens, L. Nye, Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues, 

General Government Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, accompanied by Chris Mihm, Acting Associate Director for Federal Management Issues ................................................................................................... 20

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: 

Davis, Hon. Danny K., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Illinois, prepared statement of ................................................................ 4

Koskinen, John, Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management 

and Budget, prepared statement of ............................................................. 12

Radanovich, Hon. George P., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 6

Stevens, L. Nye, Director, Federal Management and Workforce Issues, 

General Government Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 24

(1)

GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE AND RESULTS 

ACT: STATUS AND PROSPECTS OF THE RESULTS ACT 

TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1997 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, 

INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in room 

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Stephen Horn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Horn, Sessions, Davis of Virginia, and 

Davis of Illinois. 

Also present: Representative Radanovich. 

Staff present: Russell George, staff director/counsel; Jane Cobb, 

full committee professional staff member; Matt Ryan and John L. 

Hynes, professional staff members; Andrea Miller, clerk; and Mark 

Stephenson, minority professional staff member. 

Mr. HORN. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology will come to 

order. 

This is a third in the series of oversight hearings on the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, commonly known as 

the Results Act. Governments around the world are struggling to 

provide services more efficiently, effectively, and at a lower cost to 

their taxpayers. 

Over the past decade, Federal management reform efforts in the 

United States have stressed the need to measure results as viewed 

by the client, the American taxpayer. As we have learned in previous hearings, the Government Performance and Results Act has 

enormous potential to focus the energies of the Federal Government, making programs more efficient and effective and restoring 

confidence in Government. In essence, the act requires Federal 

agencies to ask and to repeatedly answer some very basic questions: What is the agency’s mission? What are its goals? And how 

will the agency achieve them? How can the agency’s performance 

be measured? How should that information be used to make improvements? 

The Results Act envisions a major overhaul of Federal activities 

and it therefore requires vigilant oversight. In order to establish 

one aspect of this oversight, the act directed the Office of Management and Budget and the General Accounting Office to assess and 

2

report on the ability of the agencies to implement Results Act requirements. 

The act specifies that the Office of Management and Budget, 

OMB, shall report on the benefits, cost and usefulness of the plans, 

and reports prepared by the pilot agencies. These pilots are essential to effective implementation of the act. From them we must experiment with and learn about three aspects of Federal management reform: performance goals, managerial accountability and 

flexibility, and performance budgeting. 

The law called for a minimum of 10 performance measurement 

pilot agencies. But instead of 10 or another relatively small manageable number, we have 72. This is troublesome. It looks very 

much as though the executive branch attention to this law is being 

spread too thin. The pilots were meant to provide concrete experiences with success and failure in the implementation of this act. 

I am afraid that in this case quantity has become the enemy of 

quality. 

OMB was also directed to identify significant difficulties experienced by pilot agencies in preparing plans and reports and to set 

forth any recommended changes to be made in the Results Act. 

OMB issued its report on May 19th. The General Accounting Office 

issued its comprehensive analysis of the pilot agencies yesterday. 

The Results Act provides a unique opportunity to view the Federal Government on a comprehensive basis. In this context, the executive branch should seek to identify and set the priorities for the 

services that must be provided, the activities that must be carried 

out, and the measurement of the results that are achieved. 

Congress considers the statutory requirements and timetable of 

the Results Act extremely important. The act was deliberately 

crafted to allow experimentation before mandating requirements. 

For example, the pilot stage allowed agencies to ask for relief from 

burdensome regulations in return for a promise of greater accountability. It is unclear if this stage has been implemented. 

Also of concern is the quality and reliability of the information 

provided to Congress in the performance reports. In order to succeed, performance reports must be based from information derived 

from accurate data and can be independently verified. The data 

must be comparable not only from year to year, but also between 

agencies performing similar functions. Such data must also be consistently accumulated and reported. If there are too many goals 

and objectives, the risk is that few of those goals and objectives will 

be obtained. If there are too many performance measures to be 

tracked, both the agencies and the congressional committees will 

sink under the weight of data and the Results Act will have failed. 

There is no shortage of failures in the dust bin of Federal management initiatives. From zero based budgeting to managing by objectives, these previous efforts have failed because there was little 

commitment to make them work. As chairman of this subcommittee, I am afraid we are heading down the same road with the Results Act. I am surprised and disappointed by OMB’s scattered report. No doubt it follows the letter of the law. It is less clear to me 

that what we are seeing so far follows the spirit of the law. 

It is worth recalling what we are about here. The leadership in 

Congress has made an extraordinary commitment to this effort. We 

3

are serious about changing the management culture of the Federal 

Government. The culture needs to be much more service oriented. 

The highest levels of the legislative and executive branches of the 

Federal Government need to work in partnership to identify and to 

solve the problems involved in implementing the Results Act. Only 

then will we be on the way to attaining the goals of the act and 

only then will the public believe the changes are finally taking 

place in the culture of the Federal Government. 

The Results Act presents a unique opportunity to change from a 

compliance-based system of accountability to a results-based system. If it works well, we will be able to ensure that the Federal 

Government’s stewardship over resources and its services to the 

American people are efficient and affordable. If we are to be successful, a sample of the customers of Federal programs, the taxpayers, will need to be consulted in the development and measurement of goals and objectives. 

This morning, we will hear from John Koskinen, who serves as 

Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and 

Budget and L. Nye Stevens, who is Director of Federal Management and Workforce Issues at the General Accounting Office. Each 

will report on his office’s review of pilot agency efforts to implement the principles of the Results Act. 

We welcome both of you, but I first want to yield to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Sessions, for any opening that he might 

have. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so 

much. I also would like to thank Mr. Koskinen, Mr. Stevens, and 

Mr. Mihm for being here this morning. And as you all know, I view 

the Results Act as being critical to the success of Government and 

I am dedicated to that success also of seeing it implemented properly. 

We are here today I hope to learn more about the progress agencies are making in consultation with Congress and other stakeholders in preparing their strategic programs. Both OMB and GAO 

have prepared reports on this status, and I know that my staff and 

many of the committee staff, under the dedicated leadership of the 

majority leader and also our Chairman Horn, are working hard to 

ensure those strategic plans are up to snuff. The responsibility for 

the success of the Results Act falls upon a lot of people. 

But I believe that today we are here because we have to call on 

those people who were at the apex of the executive branch to point 

us in the right direction, to give us information, and to evaluate 

the process, and the progress that we are making to come to this 

critical stage. I hope that today we will be able to ascertain where 

we are and how closely we are getting to that target, to hit the center of the target. And so I am delighted to have each one of you 

here today. 

Mr. Chairman, as always, I support and concur with the words 

that you have given. This is important and this is serious business. 

Thank you, sir. 

Mr. HORN. Well, I thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Hon. Danny K. Davis and Hon. 

George P. Radanovich follow:]

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Mr. HORN. The gentlemen before us know the usual routine. If 

you would rise, raise your right hands. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. HORN. We will just simply go down the agenda and in alphabetical order, John Koskinen, Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget, one of our most frequent witnesses before this committee. Welcome, John. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN KOSKINEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR 

MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m happy to be here. 

I still am looking—is this on? 

Mr. HORN. Is that microphone on? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Let me borrow your microphone. Oh, I see. 

Mr. SESSIONS. You are catching on very early. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. You can tell I’ve been here before. 

Mr. HORN. You do know they are part of the legislative branch. 

Their microphones work, but go ahead. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. We’ll talk to you about this in the budget process 

during infrastructure support. 

I’m pleased to appear before the committee this morning to discuss implementation of the Government Performance and Results 

Act of 1993 and to provide an assessment of our progress to date 

in meeting its major requirements. 

This committee was one of the leaders in the passage of the act, 

and we look forward to continuing to work with you and the entire 

Congress as implementation proceeds. 

As a Government, we face major challenges. This is a time of 

great fiscal constraint. Tight budget resources demand that every 

dollar is counted. During a period of much public skepticism about 

the Government’s ability to do things right, the Government must 

not only work better, but be shown as working better, if we are to 

regain public confidence. GPRA, if successfully implemented, will 

help this effort to improve public confidence in the efforts of its 

Government. 

To be successful, implementation will also have to be a bipartisan effort. Recently, the House majority leader and other Members of the congressional leadership have facilitated the consultation process GPRA requires between Congress and the agencies by 

coordinating meetings between agencies and the appropriate congressional staff to discuss the agencies’ strategic plans. We look forward to continuing this cooperative consultive process during the 

next few weeks. 

Let me now summarize the conclusions of our report on GPRA 

and discuss those aspects of the act and its implementation that 

are our most immediate focus. 

Looking at strategic plans, the act requires that Federal agencies 

submit a strategic plan to Congress and OMB not later than September 30, 1997. There is no more important element in performance-based management than strategic plans. These plans set the 

agency’s strategic course, its overall programmatic and policy goals, 

indicate how these goals will be achieved, and are the foundation 

and framework for implementing all other parts of GPRA. 

8

The act requires agencies, when preparing their strategic plan, 

to consult with Congress and solicit and consider the views and 

suggestions of stakeholders, customers, and other potentially interested or affected parties. OMB has issued strong guidance supporting congressional consultation. 

The administration is currently undertaking a strategic assessment of agency goals and commitments. A focus of that assessment 

is the agencies’ implementation of GPRA and the preparation of 

the strategic plans and the annual performance plans that are due 

in September. 

As a general matter, the agency plans reflect a serious effort and 

allow us to conclude that agencies should be able to produce useful 

and informative strategic plans by this fall. OMB’s reviews of agency efforts have also reviewed several challenges. 

Last summer, in our previous review, most agencies were only 

beginning to link the general goals and objectives of their plans 

with the annual performance goals they would be including in their 

annual performance plan. Further interagency coordination on programs or activities that are cross-cutting in nature is also necessary. The efforts of the Office of National Drug Control Policy 

provide a useful model for how such coordination across agencies 

with overlapping responsibilities might be carried out. 

Looking at the annual performance plans, pursuant to the statute, the first plans will be sent to OMB this September with the 

specific performance goals that the agency intends to achieve in the 

fiscal year. 

The agencies and OMB gained valuable experience in preparing 

annual performance plans through the pilot project phase of GPRA. 

OMB has initiated a review of the performance goals that agencies 

proposed to include in its annual performance plans for fiscal year 

1999. And of the joint collaboration with the agencies, OMB has 

prepared guidance on the preparation and submission of annual 

performance plans for fiscal year 1999. And we expect agencies to 

produce useful and informative annual performance plans for that 

year. 

The act requires that a governmentwide performance plan be annually prepared by OMB and be made part of the President’s budget. The governmentwide performance plan is based on the agency 

annual performance plans that are submitted at the same time. 

The first governmentwide plan will be sent to Congress in February 1998, and will cover fiscal year 1999. In this regard, we 

would welcome your views on those features that you believe would 

make the plan informative and useful to Congress. 

The agency’s program performance report is the annual concluding element of GPRA. The first program performance reports, 

for fiscal year 1999, are to be sent to the President and Congress 

by March 31, 2000. 

Some agencies are experimenting with different formats for performance reporting in the accountability report pilot program authorized by the Government Management and Reform Act that this 

committee played a pivotal role in achieving passage of. These variations include various information on the agency’s performance as 

well as other statutorily required information such as the agency’s 

9

audited financial statement and the Federal Managers’ Financial 

Integrity Act report. 

Turning for a minute to the pilot projects, GPRA required that 

at least 10 departments or agencies be designated as pilot projects 

for performance plans and program performance reports. Pilot 

projects were designated in all 14 cabinet departments and an 

equal number of independent agencies. The 28 designations included over 70 individual pilots in the departments and agencies 

and covered approximately a quarter of the entire Federal civilian 

work force. 

Historically, the expansion of the pilots from the minimum of 10 

required by the statute has been viewed as an important advance 

under the act. Therefore, I was disappointed to hear, Mr. Chairman, that you think the result of this has been that we have 

spread the process too thin. 

Our experience has shown us that, in fact, one of the reasons 

that as many people are actually using performance information in 

advance of the act—as is demonstrated by the GAO report—is because of the fact that more people were actually involved in the pilots than the act required. One of the major lessons to be learned 

from the pilots is to expand the number of people in the Government who are focused on the formulation of performance goals and 

measures, and the actual achievement of those measures. Therefore, we continue to think that, in terms of the overall implementation of the act, our ability to involve more Federal agencies or more 

Federal employees was a net gain. 

The most important conclusion reached on completion of the performance measurement pilot projects is that, without these pilots 

and the time given to agencies by the act across the Government 

to gain experience in performance-based management, there would 

be little prospect for a successful implementation of the act governmentwide. In addition, the scope and dimension of these pilots confirmed that virtually every activity done by government can be 

measured in some manner, although not perfectly. 

The pilot project process also indicates that the first years of fullscale implementation of GPRA will be the start of the dialog about 

performance and performance measures, not the end of it. Measures will be modified. Better and more appropriate goals will be defined. Performance data will increase in both volume and quality. 

Over time, the overall quality of agency plans and reports should 

improve significantly. 

The second set of pilot projects called for by the act are those for 

managerial accountability and flexibility. While agency nominations for these pilot projects were solicited and received, as the 

chairman noted, no pilot projects were designated. 

Two initiatives begun after passage of GPRA reduced the universe of waivers. The Work Force Restructuring Act effectively prevented OMB from approving any FTE ceiling waiver requests at 

the time when these pilot project nominations were solicited and 

reviewed. Such FTE waivers would have been an important component of many proposed pilots. 

At the same time, the administration was eliminating and simplifying many requirements affecting the operations of Federal 

agencies. The Federal Personnel Manual was eliminated by OPM, 

10

and thousands of pages and instructions and requirements disappeared. Procurement regulations were substantially streamlined. 

With far fewer requirements in place, waiver demand was lessened 

as well. In this context, we concluded that too few waivers would 

be authorized to designate any pilot project, and have that pilot 

serve as a credible test of the managerial accountability and flexibility provisions of GPRA. 

While no flexibility pilot projects were designated, waivers were 

given to a range of agencies and the collaboration among the four 

central management agencies, both in defining a process for reviewing and deciding on waivers and identifying possible waivers, 

forms a good foundation for governmentwide implementation of 

this aspect of the GPRA. 

GPRA also requires that not less than five departments or agencies be designated as performance budgeting pilots for fiscal years 

1998 and 1999. These pilots are to develop budgets that display the 

varying levels of performance resulting from different budgeted 

amounts. OMB has notified the chairmen of the Senate Committee 

on Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Government 

Reform and Oversight that we plan to defer the start of the performance budgeting pilot projects by 1 year. 

This deferral does not affect the content requirements for agency 

strategic plans and performance plans, nor the date for OMB’s report on the pilots to the Congress. It simply reflects our judgment 

that, as the agencies work this summer and this fall on providing 

what we feel need to be informative performance plans for fiscal 

year 1999, it does not serve the implementation of the act, or us, 

or the Congress to have several of them at the same time trying 

to develop performance budgeting pilots. Therefore, our strategy is 

to work with the agencies in the spring and designate at least five 

pilots which will start for fiscal year 2000. And, as noted, our report to Congress will be well within the statutory deadline. And we 

think we will end up with a better set of pilot projects without diverting the attention to the agencies at the time we’re talking now 

to these pilots. 

Congress also asked that OMB address a number of specific 

issues in our May report. Section six of the act required us to include in our May report any recommended changes in the various 

provisions of the act. The experience to date in implementing 

GPRA has not identified any provisions that require change. 

As noted earlier, we expect agencies to provide useful and informative, strategic, and annual performance plans within the time 

line specified by the act. Even as performance measures become 

more refined, however, we should always bear in mind that using 

performance measures in the budgeting process will never be an 

exact science. 

For example, an underperforming program may benefit from additional resources, not fewer. Comparing results across program 

lines will always require political judgments about the relative priorities, for example, of programs for highways and education. We 

should not lose sight of the fact that performance information will 

often be used to adjust the way programs are managed rather than 

to change the resources provided. 

11

Accurate, timely performance information is important in all of 

these situations, and this is why the administration is committed 

to the successful implementation of the act. 

This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman, and I will be 

pleased to answer any questions you may have after Mr. Stevens’ testimony. 

Mr. HORN. We thank you very much for that very succinct statement. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Koskinen follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Our next witness is L. Nye Stevens, Director, Federal 

Management and Workforce Issues, General Government Division, 

U.S. General Accounting Office. Mr. Mihm has been before us 

many times, but I wonder, Mr. Stevens, or Mr. Mihm, if you will 

identify yourself as to title and role in this particular project. 

Mr. STEVENS. Yes. Mr. Mihm is our Acting Associate Director for 

Federal Management Issues and has been the supervisor of a fairly 

large staff, most of which are sitting behind him, that has prepared 

the report on GPRA that was due this week. 

Mr. HORN. I wondered why we had such a crowd this morning. 

Management did not attract them; does it? Please proceed. 

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, I’ll try to be equally brief 

and summarize my points and submit the full statement for the 

record, if that’s all right with you. 

Mr. HORN. Absolutely. 

STATEMENT OF L. NYE STEVENS, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL MANAGEMENT AND WORKFORCE ISSUES, GENERAL GOVERNMENT DIVISION, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY CHRIS MIHM, ACTING ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR 

FOR FEDERAL MANAGEMENT ISSUES 

Mr. STEVENS. As required, we were to report to Congress this 

week on implementation of the Results Act and its prospects for 

governmentwide implementation for the future. We did release that 

report yesterday, and it provides an assessment of the progress and 

challenges that agencies face and are going to continue to face in 

implementing the act. 

Our work shows that, to this point, the experience with the provisions of the act has been mixed and, as a result, when it goes into 

full governmentwide effect this fall, we can expect to see highly uneven implementation in the executive agencies as a whole. 

The most positive finding of the report is that the experiences of 

some of the pilot agencies, and some nonpilot agencies, show that 

improvements are possible when an agency adopts a disciplined approach to three important management practices: First, setting results-oriented goals; second, measuring agency performance against 

those goals; and, third, using performance information to improve 

effectiveness. 

Our report identifies a number of organizations, such as the 

Coast Guard, the Veterans Health Administration, the Social Security Administration, that have made tangible and important performance improvements by adopting such an approach. And these 

are real improvements. These are improvements in safety, environmental conditions, and the Government’s responsiveness to its customers. 

Nevertheless, despite the existence of a number of positive examples, we have not been overwhelmed by great numbers of them. As 

a result, the prospects for effective implementation are fairly limited in many agencies when the law comes into effect on a governmentwide basis in less than 4 months. 

While the strategic and annual performance plans will be submitted, meeting the letter of the law that you referred to, Mr. 

Chairman, in your statement, our work suggests that these plans 

will not be of a consistently high quality or as useful to congresVerDate 0ct 02 2002 15:30 Oct 10, 2002 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 W:\DISC\45062 45062
21

sional and agency decisionmaking as they could be. Although some 

performance improvements are noteworthy, the reported examples 

of substantial performance improvements were relatively few, and 

many agencies did not appear to be well positioned to provide in 

1997 a results oriented answer to the fundamental Results Act 

question, which is, What are we accomplishing? 

For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s public housing management assessment program did not 

collect important information that is needed to manage and assess 

its results. It had information on the numbers of outstanding work 

orders at public housing authorities and uncollected rents there, 

but the system they used did not measure other factors, such as 

the quality of the housing itself that are essential for assessing the 

results that housing authorities are achieving as well as for comparing or determining which housing authorities are performing 

well and which ones are performing poorly. 

In our view, the situation at HUD appears to be typical. Our survey of Federal managers, which was a governmentwide survey we 

carried out for this report, showed that many agencies do not appear to be well positioned to answer the fundamental question of 

whether or not their programs have produced real results. 

And I’ll refer here, Mr. Chairman, to a couple of charts that are 

to my left. They’re also reprinted on page 6 and 8 of the prepared 

statement. 

The first chart shows only 32 percent of Federal managers said 

that they had the types of performance pressures that would demonstrate whether the programs were achieving their intended results. And even in similar numbers, about a third said they have 

measures that address customer satisfaction and service quality. 

Although percentages are low, significantly more managers did 

report the existence of results oriented and other performance 

measures to a great extent currently than they recollected the situation to be 3 years ago. So it’s a situation in which there’s more 

today than there was then but still not a lot by an absolute standard. 

Of course it’s not sufficient merely to measure performance. If 

the Results Act is to have a lasting impact in contrast to many of 

the management improvement initiatives that you mentioned, Mr. 

Chairman, in your opening statement such as PPBS and MBO and 

CBB, it’s important that performance information actually be used 

to make decisions and to improve the management of Federal programs. 

In our survey, we asked Federal managers about the extent to 

which results oriented performance information was actually used. 

And that’s reflected in the second chart, the one closest to you, Mr. 

Chairman. As that chart shows, it’s on page 8 of the statement, 

managers reported that the use of such information was very limited. It’s still a very infrequent occurrence. Only about a fifth of the 

managers and supervisors we contacted reported that results-oriented performance information was used to help save agency budget, and an even smaller proportion said it was used to make actual 

changes in legislation, program design, or in funding decisions. 

However, similar to the situation with performance measures, 

Federal managers did report some positive change in what they 

22

recollected the situation was 3 years ago. There has been some 

progress. 

Our work has shown that agencies are confronting five key challenges that have limited the effective implementation of the Results Act and its prospects for the future. These challenges, which 

are detailed in our report, really represent an unfinished agenda 

for the Results Act. 

The first challenge is that of establishing clear agency missions 

and strategic goals, especially in the very frequent case, where program efforts are overlapping and fragmented. One example of this 

is the Department of Education programs that provide loans and 

grants to students to help finance their higher education. We found 

that although the student loan and Pell grant programs provided 

the majority of Federal financial aid to students for post-secondary 

education, there are another 22 smaller programs that were targeted to specific segments of the population, such as prospective 

students from disadvantaged families. 

These 22 programs were collectively funded at the $1.1 billion 

level for fiscal year 1995. We concluded that the consolidation of 

some of these smaller grant programs, either with larger grants or 

with each other, would have no adverse impact on students’ access 

to post-secondary education. And the Federal Government over a 5-

year period could save about 10 percent in administrative costs, or 

about $550 million, not an inconsequential amount at all. 

The second major unmet challenge is that of limited or indirect 

influence that the Federal Government has in determining whether 

a result is actually achieved. And it complicates the difficult task 

of measuring the discrete Federal contribution to a specific result. 

Measuring the Federal contribution is particularly difficult in regulatory programs on which we’re going to be issuing a separate report very shortly in research and development programs and in 

those that are delivered through third parties such as financial institutions or State and local governments. 

For example, determining the impact of economic development of 

which, by the way, there are 342 in the catalog of domestic Federal 

assistance and has been a daunting task because of the numerous 

external forces including broad national economic trends and assistance that communities may receive from State and local government and the private sector that also contribute to economic development. Separating out the effects of Federal efforts in that area 

can be extremely difficult as we observed in our review last year 

of development programs because it first requires documentation 

that there’s been some improvement; second, linkage of the specific 

program elements to the actual economic changes; and third, a 

measurement of the growth stemming from other influences on the 

economy in order to isolate the impact that could be attributed to 

the economic development programs that we’re evaluating. 

The third major challenge to the effective implementation of the 

act is the lack of the results-oriented performance information in 

many agencies, as you pointed out in your own statement, Mr. 

Chairman, which hampers efforts to identify appropriate goals and 

confidently assess performance. 

23

Even when the data exists, we have consistently found that the 

quality of the data is often questionable due to several factors, including the need very often to rely on third parties to provide it. 

For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs told us that 

some of their results-oriented measures for the loan guarantee programs such as simple things as the average time it took to process 

loans, that these measures were new and that the base line data 

just weren’t available for them. Consequently, they did not have 

data on past performance to use in setting the 1998 targets, and 

they had to say this is going to be provided later. 

The fourth challenge centers on the need to instill within the 

agencies an organizational culture that focuses on results, and this 

I must say still remains a work in progress in the Federal Government. For example, when we ask Federal managers in our survey 

about the extent to which they and their supervisors had the authority they needed to help the agencies accomplish their strategic 

goals, they did not perceive that they had more such authority than 

they recalled having 3 years ago. We reported in April, as Mr. 

Koskinen mentioned, that the managerial accountability and flexibility project did not work as had been intended. 

And then finally, Mr. Chairman, there’s a fifth challenge to the 

effective implementation of the act and that’s the need to link 

agencies’ performance plans directly to the budget process. Reaching agreement between Congress and the executive branch on the 

changes that are needed in the program activity structure is quite 

likely and is going to be a time-consuming, very difficult process to 

do that and one that, in our view, is going to take more than one 

budget cycle to resolve. 

Just in closing, I would point out that the—solving these challenges is going to raise some significant policy issues for the administration and Congress to resolve, some of which are going to be 

very difficult. However, we believe that the success or failure of the 

Government Performance and Results Act should not be judged on 

whether contentious policy issues are fully resolved; rather, that 

judgment of its success or failure should turn on the extent to 

which the information produced through the required goal-setting 

and performance measurement practices—once these practices are 

successfully implemented—helps inform policy decisions and improve program management. That’s the ultimate objective. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ll respond to any questions you 

have. 

Mr. HORN. We thank you, Mr. Stevens. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stevens follows:]

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Mr. HORN. And now I now yield 10 minutes to Mr. Sessions, the 

gentleman from Texas, who spent a lot of time on this subject, so 

we are going to have you lead the questioning. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Koskinen, I would like to first start, if I could, with you and 

have you provide us, if you can, an evaluation of those plans that 

were submitted and talk with me specifically about who fell within 

the criteria that you think are good plans, ones that met your expectation, and then on the reverse side, some of those which you 

feel will require some additional work. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I think the short answer is they all require additional work. The statute didn’t contemplate—and we didn’t either—

that they would be done by now. Our goal, in fact, is to continue 

to work with the agencies, as we are this spring, and the assessments through the summer, to ensure that we get the best possible 

plans to you and the public in September. We’ve made it clear to 

the agencies that we support congressional consultation, and we expect that those plans will evolve to some substantial extent as a 

result of consultations not only with Congress, but other stakeholders and interested parties. 

Clearly, some agencies have broader background and experience 

and are farther ahead. An agency like Social Security, for instance, 

has in effect been producing strategic plans and performance measures for 6 or 7 years. And if you look at their annual accountability 

report, it also is a model of what we’re trying to drive toward. Because in one document—produced in a timely manner—they talk 

about their mission, what they’re trying to accomplish, the measures of customer service and delivery of the benefits, how they’ve 

done against those measures, and what their audited financial 

statements show. So they clearly are an agency that is doing very 

well. 

But I would stress that at this time we don’t think any agency 

is complete. And we have been pleased to have the active involvement, particularly in the House, of the majority leader’s teams 

working with the agencies and us to try to get the best plans we 

can. I think Mr. Stevens and GAO are correct. This is a massive 

undertaking and it’s going to take the best efforts of all of us to 

have us succeed. 

Mr. SESSIONS. OK. So you would probably describe this as maybe 

a scrubbing process. They get them to you, their first view, you try 

and scrub it, you go back and work with them. 

You talked about stakeholders. Is that GAO? Are they one of the 

stakeholders that you work with? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. No, actually the stakeholders, the agencies we’re 

working with are, in fact, the interested constituents and parties 

in—affected by their programs or interested in them. The stakeholder they all have, obviously, is the Congress. The statute provides for that. Our guidance requires that there be an active consultation by every agency with its oversight committees, authorizers, and appropriators. We have worked for the last 2 or 3 years 

with GAO in terms of jointly sharing information. But obviously we 

understand that GAO is a part of the legislative branch, not the 

executive branch. 

45

Mr. SESSIONS. All right. What is your relationship with GAO in 

the scrubbing process, then? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. In terms of the scrubbing process, as you refer to 

it, I would refer to it as the review and dialog with the agencies, 

we have not been in communication with GAO on an agency-byagency basis. We have utilized the reports GAO has issued to help 

inform the process. 

As I think I testified about a year ago, GAO did a very good review of the pilot performance projects that talked about the lessons 

learned. We thought that was a good enough report and valuable 

enough that we actually distributed it to a large number of people 

in the executive branch because we thought the lessons GAO discovered were important for all of the agencies to undertake. But on 

an agency-by-agency basis, we’re not engaged in any communications with GAO. 

Mr. SESSIONS. OK. How about an engagement with your organization, then, inasmuch as you are the one receiving the plans and 

them working with you? I am trying to find out—you are here before us. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes. 

Mr. SESSIONS. I am trying to determine the honest attempt on 

both sides to get closer to what Congress is after. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Right. We started actually over 3 years ago but 

when I, the 3 years I’ve been here, we’ve actually been working on 

an almost continuous basis with the agencies. In the fall of 1994, 

in that budget process for the fiscal 1996 budget, we asked the 

agencies to provide as much performance information as they had 

to begin to take a look at what performance measures would look 

like. 

We did a review with them in the spring of 1995 of their core 

programs. We said, ‘‘If you looked at your basic programs, what 

would be the right performance measures for those?’’ In the summer of 1996, we did a full-scale review of the agencies’ strategic planning processes. And, as noted in my testimony, we 

discovered, of course, that they were facing some significant challenges. 

We’re in the process right now of concluding a spring assessment 

of a range of management initiatives, but the focal point is on 

GPRA as a general matter. Each of our program examining divisions has worked and is working with the agencies to, in fact, critique, provide guidance on and feedback on each specific agency 

plan. So that, as I say, this has been an over a 3-year undertaking, 

and we continue to believe that we’re going to have to work up 

until the end of August to make sure that we get you the best 

plans we can. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Right. OK. Well, with that in mind, and I do understand from your testimony that you have given here that there 

are a lot of changes that are in process. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Right. 

Mr. SESSIONS. That you are trying to take full advantage of 

those, but we did talk about the 3 years. Do you believe that, as 

your responsibility and your testimony that you are giving to us 

today, that you are going to be on target to present plans that I 

think not only meet the law but also the spirit of the law, in other 

46

words, not just written compliance but also an in-depth observation 

from each one of those agencies about their mission? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes. 

Mr. SESSIONS. You believe sitting there today that you are going 

to be on target and they will all be? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I think GAO is right. We might disagree where 

the bell shaped curve starts in terms of the spread. There are going 

to be some again that reflect years of experience with this that will 

be at one end of the bell shaped curve and will be outstanding 

plans. There are going to be some at the other end of the bell 

shaped curve, a small number, who will be agencies who are still 

struggling, that these will be acceptable plans, they will meet the 

spirit, but the agencies will be the first to tell you that they are, 

in fact, the front end of that experience, and they will continue to 

evolve. 

The bulk of the plans will be, I think, comfortably in the middle 

of that bell shaped distribution curve. They will be in-depth analyses of missions, of goals, of objectives, will indicate performance 

measures that will be used, and will, in fact, start us on down the 

road. 

But I might just note that our goal in this process is not a neat 

document. If all we accomplish in this process is very good strategic 

planning documents and that’s it, we will have failed. The goal in 

this process is in fact to have agencies and the Congress use the 

information generated about the results achieved by programs to 

make management decisions as well as budgetary decisions. And I 

would just say, it takes a lot of people to tango, but it takes at least 

two. And that is, it’s going to take the Congress as well as the 

agencies. 

Mr. Stevens noted, I think very appropriately, that one of the 

challenges they have identified is the ability to link performance 

plans to the budget process. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Now that’s a challenge not just to the agencies, 

that’s a challenge to the Congress because our present budgetary 

accounting system clearly does not track in many cases programby-program. There are a lot of line items and detailed and 

disaggregation of budgetary resources that in fact make it very confusing, if not impossible, to figure out what the costs are and resources are devoted to a particular program. 

So we have I think a lot of work to do jointly together if this act 

is actually going to achieve its goal, which is in fact to improve the 

performance of the Federal Government. 

Mr. SESSIONS. This all gets down to accountability, and I can assure you this Congress is going to look very carefully at the accountability factor, because in fact we have asked those agencies to 

describe those areas, that methodology, and what their plan of action is going to be. So very good. 

Mr. Mihm, if I might direct my question, the same one to you 

perhaps, and that is, from the evaluation that you have had as an 

independent arm for your analysis of the plans you have seen, or 

Mr. Stevens, whichever is most comfortable with responding. 

Mr. MIHM. We found, Mr. Sessions, on the whole, the agencies 

that have the most direct relationship between the product and 

47

service that they provide and the ultimate customer are those that 

have the easiest time doing GPRA, and, as a result, they’re the furthest along and the furthest down the bell shaped curve that Mr. 

Koskinen talked about. 

So, for example, Social Security Administration where it’s pretty 

easy—or relatively, I should be careful—are they getting the right 

check to the right individual on the right time? It’s easier than it 

would be for an intergovernmental program run by the Department 

of Education to figure out what’s our result, what’s the relationship 

that we do and our ultimate result. 

So it really turns on the success that the agency is having in 

both its strategic planning and its annual planning. Its performance measurement efforts really turn on the degree to which 

there’s a direct relationship between what it does and the ultimate 

user of its product or service. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Good. I have got about 1 minute remaining. Let 

me say this. I hope that both of you go back, Mr. Koskinen, that 

you give a pat on the back to those agencies that have gotten their 

plans in on time, and I hope you will let them know in writing that 

they were close, and those that were not close, that you have gone 

back to them and said it requires more work. But I hope that that 

is in writing to them, because, as we go through this appropriation 

process, not just this year, but next year, that will be an important 

trail marker for those agency heads to understand that we really 

were serious about what we are trying to do. And I think it helps 

your job out. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. That’s right. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HORN. I thank you and now recognize for 10 minutes Mr. 

Davis, the Member from Illinois. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, 

and with your permission I would like to submit a statement for 

the record. 

Mr. HORN. Without objection. Is that an opening statement? 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Yes. 

Mr. HORN. It will be put with the other opening statements at 

the beginning of the hearing. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Koskinen, we know that OMB plans to defer the start of the 

pilot projects on performance budgeting for a year. According to 

your report, a major reason for this delay is the lack of adequate 

cost accounting capability in many of the Federal agencies. 

My question is: What are the implications of poor cost accounting 

capabilities for the implementation of the GPRA generally? And 

then, does this problem, coupled with the absence of baseline data, 

mean that additional delays in performance budgeting pilots are 

likely? And finally, what do you plan to do to address these weaknesses? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. First, let me state that the absence of cost accounting data is a factor, but I think our major reason for delaying, 

as I noted earlier to the chairman, is that we did not want to distract the agencies at this timeframe while they are working on 

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ance plans for submission to us in September and the Congress in 

February, to at the same be starting up a new set of pilots. 

The cost accounting issue is an important one. We won’t solve 

that problem either in the next 12 months. What we are talking 

about in cost accounting is not that we don’t, in fact, keep track 

of where the funds are spent, but we are talking about costing out 

the cost of each activity or program. In other words, as we have 

talked to you today and as the act talks about, we want to know 

what the results are of our activities. But at the same time, once 

we know what performance we have gotten, we would like to know 

how much did it cost us to achieve that performance? And, again, 

our present budgetary structure disaggregates those costs. We have 

personnel, salary and expenses, a lot of other kind of overhead 

costs that are spread in various ways throughout the budgets, and 

it is important for us to be able to pull all of those costs together. 

The Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Board, FASAB, 

has provided a set of now complete accounting standards for the 

Government, and one of the last ones they issued was cost accounting. So we are moving in the right direction, but I think it will be 

some time before we get there. But ultimately, we need to have 

that information so that, as I say, we can complete the equation; 

not only knowing what we got for what we paid, but actually what 

did we pay to get that result. 

With regard to your question, then, about will the absence of 

baselines mean we will delay the performance budgeting? The answer to that is, no; that we will look at the performance budgeting 

pilots as a way of trying to figure out can we—how reasonable is 

it to ask the agencies to give us, in effect, sensitivity analyses not 

only of different resources, but the allocation of existing resources 

in different ways? 

I would note that the performance budgeting pilots are the only 

pilots that then do not automatically go to full scale implementation. The way the statute is designed, we do the pilots and then 

OMB will report to the Congress with our recommendations as to 

whether this is worth the effort. So this is really a pilot program 

in which we will all make judgments as to whether this adds anything significant to the dialog, which is worth the cost and the effort of doing it. 

With regard to baselines, let me just say, because that runs 

through some of the GAO comments and our own, clearly we need 

to have baselines for our activities so that we can see and know 

how to measure the improvement. But even as a fundamental 

question, it is hard to know what your goal ought to be if you don’t 

know where you are. 

But the absence of those baselines shouldn’t surprise anyone. If 

we have not been, as a general matter across the board, collecting 

performance information and talking about it, then we are not 

going to have a lot of those baselines. So what we have told the 

agencies is if you wait until you have perfect information and wonderful histories of several years, we will be at this for a long time. 

So the conclusion we have reached, and the CFO Council, which 

has worked with us, is that the algorithm we are using is start 

wherever you are. Whatever information you have now, whatever 

baseline information you have, whatever judgments you can make 

49

on the basis of your experience, use them; but don’t wait until some 

future day when we have either better cost accounting or better 

baselines. Start where you are and we will be building the baselines as we go. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I would assume that pilots resulted as a 

result of earlier strategic planning. Would that be accurate? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I am sorry? 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. That the pilots were developed as a result 

of earlier strategic planning. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. No, actually, the statute recognized that the most 

difficult part of implementing this act is going to be defining performance measures and collecting data and determining what is 

the right data and how hard is it to get? So even while agencies 

were thinking about and beginning to work toward the development of strategic plans, we went into specific agencies who volunteered to be pilots and that we selected as a pilot, and said wherever you are going with the strategic plan, what are useful performance measures? And, let’s do a set of pilots to see how easy it 

is to collect that information and what utility will it be once we 

have it. 

So to some extent, the performance pilots were ahead of the 

train, which would normally start with a strategic plan. 

Now, the ones that were most effective, and the GAO report 

showed that, were the ones that, in fact, grew out of a broader strategic plan and vision for the agencies. And some agencies had more 

experience at that just on their own than others. I think that was 

one of the lessons GAO drew from those pilots and we have agreed 

with that, and that is that the ultimate test of performance measures is can you link them to your basic goals and objectives? 

Obviously to do that, you have got to know what your goals and 

objectives are. As I noted in my testimony, in our review last summer of the strategic planning process, summer of 1996, we thought 

again, as GAO, that one of the great challenges will be to take performance information and make sure that it actually is performance-related to the achievement of the basic goals and objectives 

that are part of an agency’s strategic plan. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Is it likely that the budget process will 

need to be changed to incorporate the performance information 

generated by the GPRA? And if so, what is OMB’s position on this 

issue? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I think it is likely and, in fact, it is imperative. 

And our position is that we are anxious to work with the Congress 

and the Budget Committees to take a look at the implications of 

that. Ultimately, we call it connecting resources to results, that as 

we go through the budget process we should be continually analyzing budgetary accounts and decisions in terms of how they relate to the results that we are getting from the allocation and the 

application of those resources. So I think we are going to have to 

have a more transparent budget process. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Can you give us any specific instances of 

how the link would take place or shape up? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, HUD, for instance, has an interesting set 

of matrixes of their programs and the connection of the programs 

to the budgetary accounts. They have, I don’t remember quite the 

50

exact numbers, but for a particular program they might have as 

many as 60 budget accounts that related to that program. 

And conversely, they have some programs that themselves are 

spread across a range of other budget accounts. So that the issue 

is can we collect and connect the budget accounts to the programs? 

I just had a meeting recently with the State Department, which 

talked about a hard set of strategic discussions. But it has been 

wonderful. The State Department is really working its way through 

it. But as they noted, when they get through talking about their 

goals and objectives, they are still going to then have to deal with 

a budget process that has very specific line items in it that are not 

easily associated with their goals, objectives, and performance 

measures. 

So we talked with them about the need to engage in a dialog 

with their appropriators about how to most meaningfully connect 

the resources to the results. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I would think that their goals and objectives might sometimes be a little difficult to measure. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Mr. Stevens, the survey GAO conducted 

as part of your report indicates that it will take time for agencies 

to reorient their thinking toward the result-driven approach required by GPRA. Can you give us any idea of how much time it 

is reasonable to expect, realizing that things will vary among different agencies? 

Mr. STEVENS. If you are referring, Mr. Davis, specifically to the 

cultural aspects of the need to adapt to results-oriented management, I don’t think it will ever end. The governmental system is 

fundamentally one that has strong emphasis on process and securing the confidence of Government managers that their programs 

can be and should be managed by results I think will never be as 

fully implemented as it is in the private sector, for example. 

That isn’t to say that we aren’t making progress. When we ask 

people what the situation was 3 years ago, they say, well, it is better than it was then, so we are making progress, but I don’t think 

it will ever be done. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Are you saying that process is oftentimes 

as important as content or results? 

Mr. STEVENS. That has certainly been true of the bureaucracy up 

until now, yes, sir, and I think the Government Performance and 

Results Act is a direct attempt to change that culture. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. In your statement, you say that sustained 

congressional involvement is needed to ensure that missions are 

based in statute and to identify cases where statutory requirements 

need to be modified or clarified. Could you give some examples of 

these instances? 

Mr. STEVENS. In the Government Performance and Results Act 

itself or statutory requirements that would reflect the requirements 

on agencies? 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. That’s correct, yes. 

Mr. STEVENS. Well, I would say, for example, that the 342 economic development programs that exist in the Government, each 

one of those has a statutory foundation or basis that attempts to 

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date some, would certainly take congressional authorization in 

many cases. They are spread among different committees. They 

have different protectors and that could be a very complicated job. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. GAO has commented that pilot projects, 

which OMB is currently conducting to develop broad-based accountability reports which integrate financial program performance 

and management information, do you need legislation in order to 

do this in this particular area? 

Mr. MIHM. Mr. Davis, those are currently being piloted under a 

separate piece of legislation called the Government Management 

Reform Act—I am sorry for all of these acronyms—GMRA, which 

expanded the requirements to the Chief Financial Officers Act for 

audited financial statements for all agencies. OMB is working with 

the agencies to pilot those consolidated accountability reports that 

you mentioned. 

There were a half dozen or so that were piloted the first year, 

more in the second year, and now I understand there is going to 

be plans for a dozen or more in the third year to pilot the integration of bringing together for the first time the information that you 

as congressional users really need in one format. So you would get 

audited financial information, program performance information 

and other vital management information for the agencies together 

rather than coming up in a semiannual basis or on different calendar times. So it will be far more useful to you. So it is already 

under a statutory basis, the piloting of those. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And that information is evolving? 

Mr. MIHM. It is evolving, yes, sir. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

That completes my questioning. 

Mr. HORN. I thank the gentleman. I now yield 10 minutes to the 

gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Davis. 

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I 

think both witnesses testified about really how well they believed 

the Social Security Administration is at developing strategic plans, 

but at this point I don’t think—Congress has not received their 

draft plan and we haven’t been consulted on this. In fact, I’ve got 

a list of agencies here, agencies that haven’t submitted their plans, 

prospects uncertain, but agencies—Social Security is at the lowest, 

that they haven’t submitted their plans and they indicate that the 

consultations aren’t going to be forthcoming for some time; a risk 

of noncompliance. And I have Social Security under that list the 

staff has assembled. 

Any reaction to that? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes. As I say, we are working very closely with 

particularly the House leaders in the consultation process, and I 

have advised Social Security that they are in the ironic position of 

having done probably as much or more work in strategic planning 

and performance measures than any agency and yet now show up 

on the bottom of this list. 

Their problem is they are in the middle of a change, obviously, 

in political leadership. They want to ensure that when they come 

with the consultation that they won’t be consulting about a plan 

that will be changed. But they understand the problem and have 

52

committed that this month they will begin that consultation process. 

As I discussed with the majority leader’s staff actually yesterday, 

I think that of all the agencies they are least likely to be a problem 

because of their history and the quality of their information. But 

I have stressed to them that consultation is a real part of this process, that they need to be here talking with you about their plans. 

They need to be getting input from you. 

They have already over time gotten that from their appropriators 

where they provide this performance information every year, but I 

have noted to them that there is a broader constituency here and 

they need to get themselves off of the bottom of the list. 

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. There is probably more interest in Congress today than was anticipated when this bill passed in terms of 

how things are going, and agencies, everybody seems to be having 

trouble adjusting. Even OMB was a little bit late with its draft 

statutory report, and I know you have had a lot of other things to 

do over there in the past. Is that also an issue of just priorities 

with a limited staff at this point? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Right. I have been very concerned that we not be 

the shoemaker’s children and that we be out getting plans from everybody else and not have one. We obviously have had a few things 

on our mind with the budget agreement and other negotiations, but 

we do have a draft. We did start the consultation process. We do 

present an interesting challenge, as a number of agencies, because 

we don’t create widgets. We don’t produce necessarily products. We 

are a staff agency providing policy advice analysis and other information both to the President and to the agencies in the Congress. 

So figuring out what is measurable in terms of our activities is a 

challenge. 

Our plan addresses that, and we are looking forward to more discussion with not only the Congress, but other interested parties, 

because we are open to additional suggestions about how you can 

actually quantify most effectively the performance measures other 

than the fact of policy operation. 

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. One of the interesting things is the expectations everybody has coming from this act. I mean, some of 

these expectations may be reinterpreted now over what might have 

been intended when the act passes and time changes and people 

read it and look at it in the context of where we are today with 

balanced budget agreements and the like. I wasn’t even here when 

the law passed but looking at it, I am interested in what the mission statements are going to show in terms of what agencies are 

doing now and what their mission statements actually call for. 

It seems to me, to some extent, this can be where the rubber can 

hit the road with some of these agencies that may have to revamp 

their mission statements or change the way they are doing things. 

And I did not hear a lot of testimony on that from either of you. 

I wonder if you have any observations on that. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. As we have said to the agencies over this long 3-

year consultation process, particularly last summer when issues 

began to surface, you don’t find new issues in the strategic planning process. What you find is it is a way of pulling together all 

of the issues, so that your point is well taken. In the consultation 

53

process, in the development of these plans and ultimately in the review of them, the plans will be a focal point for discussing some 

fundamental policy issues that need to be resolved. 

The favorite example everybody has has been the Forest Service 

that on the one hand is trying to protect the forest and on the other 

hand log them, and what are the differences in those competing 

policy issues? 

Regulatory agencies obviously have a range of issues that have 

been the subject of discussion and debate. Strategic plans won’t reveal new problems. What they are going to do is, in fact, engage 

people in a focused discussion about what are the missions and 

goals and objectives and more—equally importantly, what are we 

getting as a result of the activities? What have been the results? 

My only kibitz a little with GAO’s point about the impact issue 

is that it is correct, that ultimately when there is a result out there 

or an outcome as we call it, the hardest question will be to figure 

out what role did we play in achieving that? But I think that’s a 

secondary issue. It is a great challenge, but if we could just get people focusing on the actual outcomes, the results of what happened 

and then worry about what role we had in it, we would be way 

ahead of the present debate, which is primarily focused on inputs. 

If you look at the dialog and debate over the last 2 or 3 years, 

contentious as it has been, it has been primarily focused on inputs: 

How much resources? How many people should we devote to what 

issues? And what I think the magic of this act, and the potential 

it has for all of us, is that it will move the dialog kind of along that 

spectrum and have us start saying not only what were the inputs 

and what are the appropriate inputs, but what were the results? 

And then I think if we can ever get to the point where we are all 

arguing about what role our programs played in the actual results, 

what impact we had, we will have made great progress. 

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Let me ask if GAO has any comment on 

the mission statements and how these are going to gel as we start 

addressing them and how agencies may have gone way beyond 

their mission statements in some cases. 

Mr. STEVENS. Well, the very process of thinking about what an 

agency’s mission is is new to some of them, and certainly the process of discussing that with their congressional overseers is very 

new and somewhat worrisome to them. 

The Environmental Protection Agency is a good example. They 

have about a dozen statutory mandates, but they don’t have any 

overarching legislative mission statement or determination of what 

their real mission is. They are responsible for clean air, clean water 

and solid waste and so forth, but no overarching determination of 

what their environmental responsibilities are. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, I think, is one that 

has shown a good approach to this in the recent past, in which they 

examined whether they were really there to provide assistance 

after a disaster takes place, or whether they couldn’t do more for 

the ultimate objective of mitigating the damage of disasters by taking actions in advance and working more closely with State and 

local governments to mitigate the effects of disasters before they 

take place than having what they interpreted their mission to be 

54

up until then of coming in afterwards and providing money for a 

clean-up. 

So there have been a number of cases in which this has been a 

very therapeutic process. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Let me just comment. FEMA is a very interesting 

example of what the Congressman is driving at. When James Lee 

Witt started, he noted that one of the major missions FEMA had 

was, in fact, preparing for a nuclear attack and the results of it. 

And as he noted, the cold war seemed to have ended in the meantime and the wall was down and they had 320 people working on, 

in fact, response to nuclear attack. So that was a legitimate mission. 

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. How do we measure that one today? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. It is like the guy with the elephants in Indiana. 

We haven’t had one for a while so it must have been OK. 

The mission was a legitimate one 5 years, 10 years, 15 years ago, 

but as the world changed it was appropriate for FEMA to take a 

hard look at what is our basic mission and redeploy those resources. So I think that the point you make is a good one, and it 

is not static. We may have an agreement about missions today that 

is appropriate in the present circumstances and over the next 

iteration of the next strategic plan. Life may change, and we may 

all decide that the focus in the deployment of resources in an area 

ought to be adjusted accordingly. 

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Mr. Koskinen, business organizations are 

doing this every day. They are examining their mission statements 

every day, every quarter as the bottom line comes in, and Government sometimes does it, oftentimes doesn’t because for a host of 

reasons. It is just a good policy and rhythm to get into once we get 

started. 

I know it is starting off perhaps more controversial because of 

the cultural shock in some of these agencies that haven’t had the 

kind of oversight from Congress that this demands and the kind of 

comparisons that they are forced to make, that they have never 

been accustomed to making. But this really, I think, shows great 

promise over the long-term if we can get this off and running and 

started. It is a little uneven right now. 

But I would just say for having worked with you and Mr. 

Kelman and others over at OMB it has really been very foresighted 

in a lot of ways, and if you can help us get through this and coordinate with GAO, I think we can leave a legacy here that will stand 

for future administrations and relationships that Congress, different parties and on different sides of the table, are moving 

through. But I think this has a lot of promise. 

Let me ask you this: In this town I see an entire cottage industry 

of specialized management consultants springing up as governmentwide implementation gets closer and closer. To what extent 

are agencies having to turn to outside resources or consultants to 

help them identify meaningful performance goals and measures, 

and develop their strategic plans or otherwise work to comply with 

the Results Act? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I don’t know if there is an easy way to get at 

that. The statute makes it clear that the mission of an agency is 

not to be designed by consultants, so they are prohibited from 

55

using outsiders to tell them what their missions are. Those have 

to be generated internally. 

Clearly, a number of them have made effective use of outside advisors about the strategic planning process. They have gone on the 

private sector experiences and they are using that. But again, one 

of our concerns, as I have testified in the past, has been to make 

sure that the agencies don’t create what I call ‘‘GPRA bureaucracies.’’ That is, we have somebody off on the side producing whatever we and you want them to produce in the form of paper, but 

it doesn’t relate to the day-in and day-out management and operation of the agency. 

So one of our tests of the agency in a strategic planning process 

is: Who is involved in the process? Who is actually leading it? What 

are the uses of outside people? How involved are the senior leadership of the agency in the development of the plan? And our goal 

is to ensure, as I say, that these become working documents; that, 

in fact, agencies manage against these; even if we don’t allocate another dollar in resources one way or the other, that they actually 

manage against the information they get about how the programs 

are operating and the effectiveness of them. 

Mr. DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you very much. I think my time 

is about up. 

Mr. HORN. Thank you. 

We have with us this morning Mr. Radanovich of California, a 

member of the Budget Committee and without objection, I am glad 

to yield you 5 to 10 minutes. 

Mr. RADAVONICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am just basically 

here to listen. I appreciate being able to be sat on the dais and 

would just like to listen to the testimony. Thank you very much. 

Mr. HORN. That’s humility beyond the call of any Member of this 

House. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Could you come to a few more of my hearings? 

Mr. HORN. OK. Let me ask a few questions and then we will go 

in for the second round of questions. 

These are directed at all of you, so you can all mix it up on this. 

As we all know, the Department of Defense, the Internal Revenue 

Service, will not be able to give Congress a balance sheet that has 

been mandated by law for a number of years, when it comes due 

this fall. Both have had severe fiscal management problems. And 

I guess my curiosity is this: With those two agencies being sort of 

basket cases at the civilian level, and defense with 49 separate accounting systems, IRS with a complete lack of management for 

years, why were not various other pilots put in those agencies to 

see if we can’t learn something? Because these are the two of the 

three or four largest agencies in the Federal Government, and I believe the only one that was a pilot was Defense Logistics. But I just 

wonder what the thinking of OMB was and I wonder what the reaction of GAO is? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Mr. Chairman, as you know, you and I go round 

and round about this. First, I would like to disagree that the two 

agencies in question are a basket case, and I would certainly disagree that there has been a complete lack of management at the 

IRS for a long time. IRS clearly has systems problems in tax systems modernization, but it is a leader in a number of ways in interVerDate 0ct 02 2002 15:30 Oct 10, 2002 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 W:\DISC\45062 45062
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nal management. So I think it doesn’t treat them well or fairly to 

say that they have had an absence of management. I would not say 

that they have not had an absence of problems, particularly in the 

information technology area, but I don’t think we further the dialog 

that way. 

Let me now then say also that in the list of pilots, there were 

five other pilots at the Department of Defense, although Defense 

Logistics was one of the most successful, and the entire IRS volunteered to be a pilot program agency to take a look at what were 

appropriate measures, how they could measure them. And it 

showed, as I say, 3 years ago, 4 years ago when these pilots were 

designated, their interest. We didn’t require them to do it. They 

volunteered and said they wanted to be a pilot, they wanted to see 

if they could begin to develop a better performance matrix, which, 

again, as I say is not quite consistent with an agency with no interest in these areas or a lack of management. 

Mr. HORN. What have we learned from what the IRS pilot at this 

point? What have you learned? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. What we have learned from the IRS—again, as 

Mr. Mihm said, it is a lot like GAO. They in some ways are closer 

to a private sector analogue because they have measurable outputs 

and they are focused on things like customer service. How long 

does it take you to get in contact with someone? How long does the 

response come? 

There are difficulties in fact, their abilities to improve their customer service have fed back into their development of systems. 

What we have been focusing with them on, and GAO has for some 

time and the Congress has, is that the fundamental problem with 

their systems approach was to try to solve all the problems that 

they knew that were out there all at once in what we call the ‘‘big 

bang theory.’’ And the private experience, as well as the Government experience, is anybody who tries to solve a problem in the IT 

area with a 5 to 8 year big bang, usually ends up with a big failure. 

But they have been increasingly focused on what are the appropriate and most important priorities in dealing with the public in 

terms of customer service? How can they get a handle on compliance statistics? One of the issues we have with them is, how do you 

collect information to determine what the compliance rate is? Do 

you have to, in fact, go through these systemic analyses of individual taxpayers from beginning to end? 

So I think that we did learn a lot there. They are focused on, in 

effect, how they can use performance information to better serve 

the public. But I would be happy to hear GAO’s views as well. 

Mr. STEVENS. Well, IRS, their major problem, Mr. Chairman, as 

I think you have hinted at, is they really don’t know what the tax 

gap is and therefore what their goal should be for closing it and 

what annual progress they should be making toward it. I would 

agree with Mr. Koskinen in that they do have major customer service objectives. They phrase those in their strategic plan. I think one 

of the things we think is worth investigating there is the extent to 

which this gets down to the front line tax examiners and agents. 

And if IRS has a goal, as I think they have, of improving customer 

service to a world class level, if the front line examiner still finds 

57

that he is being—he or she is being judged on how many taxes get 

brought in, there is a disconnect there. 

So one of GPRA’s real challenges is to spread that kind of consciousness throughout the organization and not just prepare a plan 

that says this is our goal, but have the working people unaware of 

it. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. And I might put a pitch in now for the ClingerCohen Act as it relates to this. One of the issues we have been trying to get the agencies to understand, and it is a fundamental principle of that act which this committee, again, was a strong supporter of, is that as you look at any acquisition, any procurement, 

the fundamental question you ought to be asking is, how will this 

help me in the achievement of my mission, of my goals and objectives? That it is not just a question of, well, this would be nice to 

have or it will make things run faster. What it really causes you 

to ask, we hope, is OK if I buy this system, if I make this improvement, if I make this acquisition, what does that have to do with 

the achievement of my goals and mission? How will that improve 

my agency performance? 

Too often we have looked at IT systems in terms of a major challenge of did they come in on time and at cost, which are important 

process performance measures. But we have ignored saying, but 

what did we get for it in the long run in terms of improved performance? And getting back to the IRS, one of the things that I 

think they are going to be able to do a much better job of, we have 

disaggregated their IT acquisitions, is tying the actual development 

of an individual IT system to an improved performance under one 

of their goals and one of their measures rather than simply in 

terms of processing. 

Mr. HORN. Since you brought up the IT system at IRS, which has gone to the $4 billion mark and apparently been a failure from all 

we read in the newspapers, what sort of management oversight 

does OMB provide here when that type of situation can occur? I might add, it was also $4 billion with the Federal Aviation Administration. Apparently, they can’t find out anything until they 

hit the $4 billion mark, and I worry about that. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. And you have to. As we have explained, one of 

the reasons, we actually, with then Senator Cohen, worked very 

hard to develop the legislation that passed, because we were concerned as well as you as to what were the lessons we could learn. 

GAO had done a marvelous study of the private sector. They had 

isolated 10 of the best private sector companies in using IT. They 

could also. My own experience is there are a lot of companies in 

the private sector that have large scale failures in IT in their history and background as well. 

But what the GAO found, what our analysis of the agencies 

found, that there are a fundamental set of principles that agencies 

needed to understand. The first was that they needed to take a 

look at IT questions not as technical issues, but as management 

issues. They had to understand that the right and most important 

questions about an IT system were managerial, not about bits and 

bites. And therefore, we said they had to take a look at, when they 

were automating a process, why do we do the work at all? Couldn’t 

we just stop doing this work rather than automating it? The quesVerDate 0ct 02 2002 15:30 Oct 10, 2002 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 W:\DISC\45062 45062
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tion we wanted them to ask is, is there somebody else who does 

this better than we do, either in the private sector or some other 

agency, so we don’t have to do it? 

The third thing was, before they even got to this, was, are we 

doing the work in the most efficient way of process? Have we 

changed the way we do the work so we can both buy off the shelf, 

if it is possible, but also get the best benefit from it? 

The next thing we learned, and the most fundamentally important thing was, you had to buy in modules. The best private sector 

companies designed systems that produced deliverables in 12 to 18 

months. If it couldn’t be a freestanding, operating result at the end 

of 12 to 18 months, they didn’t go forward. 

The FAA, the tax systems modernization, a number of other 

large Federal systems, as I say, were at the other end of the spectrum. Their judgment was, we will design a system and in over 6 

to 8 years, we will solve all of our problems. We will push the button at the end of the 8 years and, magically, we will have a new 

system. Nobody in the private sector has been able to make that 

work either. 

Mr. HORN. But we learned that from the FAA and we knew it 

in 1993 and 1994. I was then on the Aviation Subcommittee of 

what was Transportation and Public Works Committee. If we have 

learned that in Congress and we could walk in and know something was screwy the minute we put our heads through the door 

when we went out to see the operation, there was no management. 

It seems to me the institutional memory of the President, namely 

OMB, and its management section in particular, should have said, 

hey, GAO has written on this. FAA has been a failure. We knew 

why. Why did we let IRS get out of control to do exactly what FAA 

did? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, IRS was up and running at that time. In 

fact, in 1994 we did sit down with—we started this process in the 

fall of 1994 reviewing what were the statutory framework—what 

was the statutory framework and the requirements that caused us 

to, in fact, keep reinventing the wheel? Ultimately, what we did 

was blow up the Brooks Act with IMTRA. It was not only an administrative process that was driving us. We had a statutory system that was a great system in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but didn’t 

reflect, again, the changes in time which contemplated that we 

could put all the expertise in one area, GSA; have all systems approved by GSA, or through delegated procurement authority, and 

then the budget process would operate as a secondary issue. 

What the act says now is each agency is individually responsible 

and the head of the agency is responsible for its systems. There is 

only one level of approval, and it is in the budget process. And we 

now have what we call the ‘‘Raines Rules’’ we have distributed far 

and wide saying we are going to judge your systems by whether 

they meet these eight criteria. And as the Director has said recently, we are on the hunt for a large system out there and we are 

going to try to kill them all, to the extent that we can. 

Mr. HORN. I can appreciate that, but I just still don’t understand 

it, where the institutional memory is that we should have learned 

from these experiences? 

59

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, I am not sure, as you say, that there was 

much institutional agreement about what this was about before 

1993 or 1994. As I say, if you went to the private sector, I could 

show you, today, systems that don’t work. 

The last study I saw, in the last year or two, showed that over 

half of all private sector systems come in over budget and underperforming. And that’s in the private sector. 

Mr. HORN. Well, if it is only half, right now can we make that 

statement that we are at the halfway mark; that only half of ours 

are going bad just like the private sector? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Oh, I think we have a large number of systems 

and a large amount of money that’s being well spent now. And we 

are, in fact, unwinding and coming to grips with the remaining two 

or three major targets of opportunity, I would call them. 

Mr. HORN. I think with Congress mandating chief information officers, that’s a help. We have got somebody that knows something 

about technology presumably reporting to the two principal operating officers of the Cabinet department. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes, although, again, that comes out of the act. 

And I would stress one thing because I don’t want to go the wrong 

way with that, and that is the CIO is important not because they 

understand technology, but the CIO is important and we are selecting them because they understand the process by which technology 

decisions ought to be made. 

Mr. HORN. Well, I think we assume that. 

We are going to have a hearing next week on total quality management in the executive branch, various types of programs. What 

role did total quality management play, if any, in the pilots that 

were developed to look and move us toward results-oriented Government? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, total quality management is a useful concept. It is, in fact, one of those issues a little like management by 

exceptions, or zero-based budgeting. It, in effect, is an attempt to 

try to pull together a concept of saying we need to get front line 

workers understanding and dealing with headquarters about the 

fact that we ought to be doing—everything we ought to do ought 

to have quality, it all ought to relate to the mission and the operation of what we are trying to achieve. There are various permutations on it. 

The Japanese quality circles that Deming trained the Japanese 

on in the forties or fifties is a kind of a total quality management 

issue. In effect, as I say, GPRA is focused on that. It is saying, we 

ought to be involved with basic issues about the operation of an 

agency. We ought to be looking at what it is trying to accomplish. 

We ought to know what its effectiveness is. And ultimately, if we 

do that, we will, in fact, end up with total quality performance if 

you want. 

There is nothing magic in the words. As we noted, we are, in 

fact, in the pilots and across the board, looking at things like customer service. We are looking at things like empowering front line 

workers. There is a lot of these concepts out there. The ultimate 

goal is to—in fact, as GAO was saying earlier, to make sure that 

all of these concepts get out of the concept stage and get into the 

60

operational stage and not just at headquarters, not just among all 

of us in Washington. 

The real question is: Do we have improved customer service? Do 

we have improved performance out in the front lines, in the fields 

where people come into contact with Federal agencies? 

Mr. HORN. When we looked at the Oregon situation, which is 

probably the best example in the United States of an effective results-oriented government, they had met with their constituency 

and their citizens. To what degree do all of these pilots relate to 

a constituency that was not simply the bureaucratic constituency, 

important as that is? 

In other words, was there constituent work? A lot of these agencies have advisory committees. That might be one, to involve them 

although often they are captives of the agency or in similar fields 

as opposed to the average citizen. Did we do any average citizen 

relating in these pilots? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes. The pilots that focused on customer service 

and their service delivery to the citizens, a number of them, in fact, 

have surveyed—either surveyed their citizens before that—a number of them do surveys as a regular matter—in terms of customer 

satisfaction. We now have over 2,000 customer service standards 

across the agencies that we have put in place in the last 3 or 4 

years. 

I can’t take you through the 70 pilots and say which of them—— Mr. HORN. Those were used, you are saying, in some of the pilots? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Right, and some of the pilots were focused on—— Mr. HORN. You might want to file it for the record. I don’t want 

to belabor this. I am just curious to the degree to which real people 

were contacted as part of this results goal setting. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Good. 

Mr. HORN. So let’s just file it at this point in the record. 

Mr. MIHM. Mr. Horn, may I add something on that? 

Mr. HORN. Yes. 

Mr. MIHM. In our reviews, I would say it was very uneven. In 

some cases agencies, as Mr. Koskinen mentioned, had customer 

service standards or, as a result of the National Performance Review, had a pretty aggressive effort underway to survey the results 

of their customers. In other cases, though, it has been somewhat 

disappointing. The agencies seem to be under the impression that 

the requirement in the Results Act that they solicit the views of 

other interested parties can be satisfied just by a notice in the Federal Register, ‘‘Hey, by the way, we are issuing a strategic plan, if 

you have any comments, get back to us in 30 days,’’ type of approach. 

We have been working with the House teams that have been 

formed or through the House teams trying to encourage the agencies that the Results Act is about a different form of interaction between not only agencies and Congress, but agencies and the American people, and that type of approach to soliciting views isn’t going 

to be successful. 

The second thing that we have found where it has been quite inconsistent is actually embedding routinely customer views and 

stakeholder views into the daily operations of agencies. So even 

61

those that have been fairly good, and there are quite a few that 

have been fairly good in going out and asking customers about 

what do you want. However, there still needs, in many cases, to be 

the next step to actually embed those views into the daily operations. 

Finally, the third thing that has to happen that we haven’t seen 

happen in many cases, if at all, which would get them very close 

to what’s being done over in the United Kingdom, is actually assign 

consequences to the failure to meet a customer service standard. In 

the United Kingdom, if the mail doesn’t get there on time you get 

a subsidy on first class mail. If the train doesn’t run on time, you 

get part of the rebate of your train ticket. 

We don’t do that routinely in the United States and say if we 

don’t meet a customer service standard, a published standard, 

something is going to happen that we are trying to make the citizen whole. So there is plenty of room that agencies can move on 

to improve on their focus on customers. 

Mr. HORN. Well, I appreciate that response. You are absolutely 

correct. 

I now am delighted to yield to the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 

Davis, for 10 minutes. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Stevens, OMB was required by statute to make recommendations on changes to the GPRA and I would like to hear what the 

GAO would have to say about that. So based upon your monitoring, 

are there any areas that you think we ought to be considering some 

change in? 

Mr. STEVENS. No, Mr. Davis, we don’t. I don’t think we disagree 

with OMB here. The act still has a long way—it is a work in 

progress and has a long way to go until it is fully implemented. We 

didn’t come across any killing defects in the law, either in concept 

or implementation. And in our view, we should continue implementing what we have rather than think about changes at this 

point. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. One of the goals of the GPRA is to help 

Federal agencies address fragmentation and overlap in their programs. Could you comment on how well you think this is taking 

place? 

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. Mihm can probably say more than I can on it, 

but I would note that there is certainly a congressional role in this, 

too. An individual agency has a very difficult time, I think, comparing itself to other agencies. There is a role for OMB in doing 

this, because they cross many functions. I think there is a role for 

Congress, also, in making these comparisons. 

Not much has been done yet. The last strategic plans that I have 

seen do spell out what an agency does. They don’t spell out that 

other agencies do very much the same thing and what the coordinated relationships between them are. 

Would you like to add on that? 

Mr. MIHM. Just to add on that, as you know, Mr. Davis, our work 

has shown in program area after program area, there is overlap 

and duplication. We have talked already about the problems in economic development programs. Mr. Stevens, in his prepared statement, talked about education programs, employment training proVerDate 0ct 02 2002 15:30 Oct 10, 2002 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00065 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 W:\DISC\45062 45062
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grams. There appears to be at the Federal level, which is replete 

with it, overlap and duplication. 

What the Results Act allows Congress to do, if you put a consistent focus on it and require it from the agencies, is to over time 

compare goals across agencies to see if we have the consistency in 

goals and thereby attempt to identify some of this overlap. 

Mr. Koskinen mentioned in his statement about the Office of National Drug Control Policy. That shows an example of an organization of a statutory basis for trying to pull together overlap. It has 

been there a number of years and has made in recent years some 

substantial progress, issued the President’s drug control strategic 

plan and is now working on performance measures, which shows 

how long and how difficult this can be to identify and address this 

overlap even when you have a statutory mechanism in place. And 

for many of these program areas we don’t have that statutory 

mechanism in place, so it is really going to require the Congress—

and the House teams that have been formed on the consultations 

are focusing on this an awful lot—to really go after the agencies 

and ask about who they are coordinating with in other agencies, 

how they are ensuring that their goals are consistent with the 

goals of other agencies. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Do you think that some of this overlap, 

though, is in reality necessary and essential? I mean, can we refine 

the activity in such a way that we take out—I mean, can an agency 

actually fulfill its mission without getting into some of the activity 

in which another agency would in all probability be involved? 

Mr. STEVENS. I think the Results Act provides the process for 

making decisions like that. Right now, we are assuming that is the 

case because nobody is really examining these cross-agency relationships. I am not saying a case can’t be made. It is just—that in 

very few cases it has been. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Let me chime in, if I might, on that. If you take 

the ONDCP, I think it is a great example of the point you are getting to. I think of what the experience ONDCP establishes is that 

you have got as many as 50 agencies involved in some form of drug 

policy, either education or eradication enforcement. And the argument isn’t as a result of that that, well, what we ought to do is put 

all of those in one place. It wouldn’t take what the Defense Department is doing and HHS is doing and the Treasury is doing and necessarily say they ought to be in one place. 

What you would say is that they ought to be coordinating, they 

ought to be collaborating, they ought to be, in fact, working together toward a common set of goals. But I think you are absolutely right, their effectiveness is, in fact, because they are tied to 

programs in HHS, in Education, in the Defense Department, and 

those are integrated. 

So in some ways, I think Mr. Stevens is right. One of the things 

the statute will do is begin to cause us to, in fact, more effectively 

look at the way agencies are cooperating and working together toward a common set of goals, while recognizing that those goals are 

best achieved where the programs are. Not in all cases. There are 

some cases where we ought to be consolidating. 

63

Secretary Reich tried, as everybody recalls, to in fact consolidate 

a lot of training programs to in fact create a more efficient training 

program, and then we ran into a lot of congressional difficulties. 

But I think those issues are the ones that will be very important 

for us. I have told the agencies, as we go forward, one of the major 

challenges will be in this area. That is, to make sure that we are 

effectively coordinating, communicating, and working together 

across agency lines where it is appropriate for programs to be 

lodged where they are, but it is important for them to be working 

in concert with other agencies who are engaged in the same activities. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And finally, Mr. Chairman, and either 

one or all, as we continue to refine our systems, really analyze 

what we are doing, look at it as well as we possibly can, really understand the capacity that we have to produce in certain instances, 

do we have any outside targets in terms of what increased efficiencies and effectiveness we might think is out there? I am saying 

like an athlete might say, if I train 20 more hours a week, if I 

shoot another 100 jump shots, maybe I will increase my effectiveness by four more points a game, or whatever. 

Mr. STEVENS. In results-oriented management, Mr. Davis, I believe there are some countries that are certainly way ahead of the 

United States and that provide an exemplary benchmark of experience that has worked over a long period of time, in which major 

changes have been made and which it has become, I believe, even 

a political benefit. Those include Great Britain, Australia, New 

Zealand, Canada to some extent, Sweden to some extent. Within 

particular program measures, which I think is also incorporated 

within your question, yes, there are outside standards that can be 

used. 

A very good example of this is the Social Security Administration. We singled them out for favorable comment because of their 

experience in improving their 800 number for answering the telephone requests for information they get. And, in fact, they have improved it so much that they have been recognized along—in the 

same scale as some very good mail order operations like L.L. Bean 

for having done extremely well in terms of responsiveness and customer satisfaction to them. 

So, yes, and I think using that outside measure has been therapeutic to them and also instructive as to what an agency can do 

if the motivations and rewards are there. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. As a general matter, I think that our goal is, in 

fact, to be the best in class, to benchmark against who can do 

this—who does this the best around and we should do as well? 

As the Vice President has said on numerous occasions, if we are 

really good at this, ‘‘good enough for government work’’ will be a 

standard of the highest performance, not a way of dismissing a 

standard. And that is where we really ought to be going—across 

the board. I think this statute is a great vehicle and catalyst for 

us to get there. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much. I have no further 

questions, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HORN. I thank the gentleman. I now yield 10 minutes to the 

gentleman from Texas, Mr. Sessions. 

64

Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Mr. Koskinen, have you had an opportunity to see this? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, my glasses are off so I don’t know what 

that is. 

Mr. SESSIONS. It is that same book just to the left. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. It is this. Yes. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Have you had an opportunity to see that at all? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I have scanned it. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Well, I must confess, you are ahead of me. I have 

been trying to go through this. 

Without opening it up, I would like to just ask you a question. 

We are sitting here talking about the application of GPRA and all 

of these things and the plans, and we are hopefully going to have 

them go down to the lowest level of manager and worker within the 

Government to where they feel like that not only do they comply 

with the mission statement, but that what they are doing is of 

great benefit. And we have, I think, generally said that we think 

this will help improve not only the performance, but the measurements and the effectiveness of an agency. 

How well do you think or to what extent do you think that the 

Federal managers would respond if they said that this work that 

they are doing has had an impact on their agency up to now? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Before I came to the Government, I spent 20 

years managing large-scale failures in the private sector, where 

you would have thought people would have been—and they were— in great shock, large enterprises like the Penn Central or Mutual 

Benefit Life Insurance had failed. Our experience in those most difficult circumstances were that when people felt that they were part 

of the solution, not part of the problem, where they understood 

your point, that what—how what they were doing related to the ultimate mission and success of the enterprise, they responded with 

great enthusiasm and worked a lot harder and longer than you 

could have asked them or made them work. 

My experience in the 3 years I have been in the Government is 

that Federal employees are at least as motivated as those in the 

private sector. People came to the Government because they were 

committed and dedicated to the mission and roles of their agencies. 

And that if we can accomplish just the paradigm that you describe, 

I think we will find a tremendous increase in the level of enthusiasm and morale, as well as productivity and effectiveness of our 

work force. 

But it is a great challenge because we have to, in fact, beyond 

everything else we are doing, change our concept of management. 

We have to catch up with the private sector. We have to understand that top down hierarchical control no longer works, whether 

it ever did in the past. 

As I have said in the past, General Motors went from 13,000 people at headquarters to 1,300 not just to reduce costs, but as a way 

of, in fact, eliminating unnecessary layers between the people actually doing the work and the people running the companies. 

We need to reach out more to our employees, not just to energize 

them, but ultimately to recognize that they really know what is 

going on in our organizations. They know what the obstacles are. 

They know what unnecessary rules and regulations there are that 

65

interfere with their ability to perform with their job. So they have 

the information we need if we are going to continue to adjust and 

improve our performance. 

I think your question is exactly right. They represent a great resource for us, and I think that they would respond enthusiastically 

and effectively. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Do you perceive that up to now that this has been 

an exercise by headquarters in each of these agencies or that it has 

gone down within—permeated the agency to where some of those 

regional managers have gotten involved in this process? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Like the answer to all of these general questions, 

I have decided all of life is a bell-shaped curve. You have some 

agencies that have reached out and actually brought in regional 

managers, tried to bring in front-line employees. We have encouraged that. 

There are clearly no other agencies, very large agencies, where 

they have, in fact, done it more than headquarters. As I noted, my 

concern is that we not in this process create the expertise in a 

small few people who are the GPRA experts; that we need to have 

these be operating documents. So we continue to push the agencies 

to understand that, ultimately, they can manage effectively only if 

they have support at the top, but if they involve people on the front 

lines at the same time. 

We won’t succeed without leadership from the top of the agencies, but we will not be successful if we do not involve and energize 

people at the very bottom of the agencies at the same time. That 

is basically the kind of Zen conundrum that challenges people trying to make management change, and we need to work both ends. 

I think at this stage it is the minority of agencies that have done 

that, but we are continuing to encourage them, and I hope over 

time more of them will do that. 

Mr. MIHM. Mr. Sessions, we have some data that can speak directly to that. 

Mr. SESSIONS. Absolutely, and I am going to get to that. 

Mr. MIHM. OK. I am sorry. 

Mr. SESSIONS. I will get to that in just a minute. 

I want to pat you on the back. I think what you said is not only 

exactly correct about people wanting to have and be a part of the 

process and have a process and make their jobs better. But several 

months ago I was down in Dallas visiting an FAA installation, and 

if you are in Washington for even small periods of time, you have 

heard about the FAA and their management structure and some of 

the decisions that they make and perhaps they are one of the most, 

I will be careful here without picking on any of the management, 

perhaps their decisionmaking process and the things that they buy 

are not leading edge. 

That is trying to be very polite, Mr. Chairman. But when you go 

down to Dallas, TX, and you talk with a front-line manager, they 

are completely—the two I talked with were unaware that there 

was even a problem; that someone even made an accusation that 

their agency was not in complete compliance and that they weren’t 

leading edge. In other words, it was kind of like they didn’t even 

know about the disagreement. 

66

And I, as I look on page 87, I would like to draw your attention 

to—and you answered what would be on page 88, I believe. But 

page 87, is the distribution of Federal managers expressing an 

opinion on the extent to which implementing GPRA to date had improved their agencies’ programs. And that is why I asked are these 

lower level, where the rubber meets the road, are those people involved in GPRA to where they feel like they are being asked and 

being heard from? Because if you look, it says—it looks like to me 

that about 1 percent, very great extent, and 9 percent, a great extent. So that is about 10 percent. 

And then if you flip the page, you will find that it goes up, that 

they want to be involved and feel like if they were part of the process, it then goes to some 36 percent from 10 percent. And so my— I don’t know whether I take this to a conclusion, but I would like 

for you to hear me say I wonder how well it is being sold throughout all the way down to that bottom line person. 

Let me end with this: About a year ago, and I am not taking advantage of anybody who is from Chicago, Mr. Davis, at all, or from 

Illinois in any of this, there was a huge flood that came in the wintertime in Chicago. In fact, it was not a surprise to the people who 

had known about the problem. They simply did not want to spend 

$10,000 to fix the flood—the problem before the flood came and it cost over $1 billion. 

This is the kind of thing that we could tell the stories over and 

over about how lower level management people being in touch with 

whatever their job is and that should reflect not just from an agency’s perspective of what they are about, but all the way down to 

their performance appraisal. 

So I hope that—not to take advantage of you or anyone else, but 

I hope that we see that this flips over with what they see the current standard can be and how it can impact them. Thank you. 

Mr. HORN. I thank the gentleman. 

Let me just pursue a number of questions here, and then I’ll turn 

to Mr. Davis again. 

Was the Cabinet ever briefed on the results-oriented government 

effort? Did you have a chance or the Director of OMB have a 

chance to brief the Cabinet on it? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes. Actually, in either January or February the 

director spent some time in the Cabinet briefing describing the 

act—we had a number of new Cabinet members at that time—their 

responsibilities; the fact that, as we told them, there were a couple 

of things that they ought to be aware of. One is, these were agency 

plans that they were responsible for and that, at a minimum, they 

ought not to be embarrassed in the fall and have a plan out that 

they didn’t understand or didn’t know; and, even worse, they ought 

not to have a plan out there that they disagreed with that ultimately the people were going to expect that the Cabinet Secretaries 

understood and had been involved with the strategic plans that 

had been produced. 

We’ve spent a lot of time at the President’s Management Council, 

which I chair, which is the deputy secretaries of the agencies and 

the chief operating officers, over the last 3 years, talking about the 

challenges and opportunities in turning their organizations into 

performance-based organizations. 

67

Mr. HORN. On your early returns, as you look at the various pilots, do most of the problems that exist on not having perhaps as 

results-oriented a government as we would all like to have; to what 

extent is that related to the current personnel policies of the Federal Government? 

What I’m getting to is one category that comes to mind, and I 

don’t know if there is any pilot that relates to it. It seems to me 

when people are given responsibility for millions, tens of millions, 

hundreds of millions, and billions of dollars in some agencies on 

procurement, that we ought to make sure those people are happy, 

they see a progression, and they get constant training on improved 

methods. What I’m thinking of is sort of a special class within the 

civil service that would reward procurement officers for this type 

of responsibility. I just wonder what you’re getting out of the pilots 

that you’ve had a chance to go through that says we better do better by a lot of our public servants and procurement than we are 

doing? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, I think you’re exactly right. It applies 

across the board, obviously. 

Again, one of the great presentations we had at the President’s 

Management Council about a year, year and a half ago, was from 

the interagency training leaders who said that their biggest challenge was making sure the people asked the strategic question: 

What were we training people for? Their concern was that people 

kept being sent to training, it was their training, but without an 

understanding of, again, how did that relate to improving their 

agency performance. 

But part of our problem with the personnel system isn’t that we 

haven’t held people accountable or isn’t that we haven’t, in fact, 

looked at their performance. The problem has been performance focused on process. We have been a compliance-oriented system, for 

understandable reasons. Every time there has been a problem or 

failure, or something popped out up in procurement or other areas, 

we had a new rule that we would say, this is the way to do it, so 

that we have been a very process-oriented personnel system and 

have not necessarily been a results-oriented, other than the result 

of, don’t violate any of these rules. 

So that we need to do exactly what you’re talking about, and procurement, we’ve worked with it. Steve Kelman and the head of the 

Office of Procurement Policy are working on it. We look to look at 

training. We need to look at positive reinforcement in terms of performance appraisals and compensation, in terms of achieving the 

goals and objectives of the procurement system. But those goals 

and objectives also have to be more than complying with the rules. 

Everybody ought to comply with the rules. But the goals and objectives of the procurement system ought to be furthering the performance and effectiveness of the agency. 

Mr. HORN. In the pilots, the three approaches you had, you 

stressed performance, planning, and reporting in some pilots, managerial accountability and flexibility, and then performance budgeting. 

Now, the second pilot on managerial accountability and flexibility, I gather, really never got off the ground. And I guess what 

I would ask is, of both GAO and OMB, if we could go back to 1993, 

68

what sort of pilots and in what sequence would they occur to be 

most helpful in providing the experience and the lessons agencies 

would need to have had earlier in order to get more consistent success with the results-oriented government approach? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I’m not sure, if we’ve done anything differently, 

we would get farther along than we are. I think we made good 

progress. 

I think had we known or the authors known when drafting the 

statute with regard to flexibility all that was going to happen in 

terms of procurement reform, personnel reform, and regulatory reform, we might have spent a little less time focusing on flexibility 

from administrative rules and we might have actually developed 

flexibility pilots that would have provided flexibility from statutory 

limitations, which I think was the biggest need the agencies felt 

they wanted to experiment with; that we had no authority under 

the statute to grant. So I think it might have been very helpful to 

have that pilot. 

As I noted in the past, our performance-based organization concepts, in effect, are flexibility pilots with flexibility from statutory 

requirements and limitations. I think we might also have early on 

had a few pilots, although we had experience, in the area of strategic planning. We produced case studies. There are 22 of them 

now on the Internet that we produced with the American Political 

Science Association of—from agencies on strategic planning, performance planning, and performance measurement. We produced 

those case studies to give people object lessons on what actually did 

work or didn’t work. 

We encouraged the agencies to include in those studies the problems they had, the failures they had, where they went wrong. And 

a couple of the best case studies had been about strategic planning, 

where the agencies talked about blind alleys they went down, the 

difficulty of pulling plans to go together. And I think, in my own 

view, we might have had a strategic planning pilot at the front end 

where we might have had a few more case studies to demonstrate 

the difficulty of this as we move forward. 

But I would be interested in the GAO response. 

Mr. MIHM. Well, one thing on the strategic planning, just to remind you, Mr. Chairman, under the performance plans, agencies 

were to have had a strategic plan in place for at least 1 of the 3 

years that they were doing the performance plans; that would be 

either fiscal year 1994, 1995, or fiscal year 1996. So there was at 

least some effort there within—by the authors of the Results Act 

to have a strategic planning component, although that strategic 

plan didn’t have to be GPRA compliant, meaning they didn’t have 

to consult with the Congress. 

In terms of the managerial flexibilities, I think one of the—even 

though none of the pilots were chosen ultimately by OMB, we 

learned some very valuable lessons there, and that is, when we 

went to—when OMB went to the agencies asking them for waivers, 

what they came back with was a lot of statutory waivers or requests, as Mr. Koskinen mentioned. They also came back fundamentally with answers that agencies were finding that the—fundamentally, the constraints that confront agencies are of the agencies’ own creation, it’s not something that’s based in regulation. It’s 

69

not ultimately something that’s often based in statute, although, as 

I mentioned, they did have some problems with those. But agencies 

have imposed requirements upon themselves. 

Mr. Sessions was asking earlier about the extent to which this 

has penetrated down to field locations. Some of the most interesting requests for waivers came in from field locations to their 

headquarters units. 

It was interesting being in those meetings where the headquarters units had to admit, well, gee, OMB wasn’t doing that to 

you, we in headquarters are doing that to you. There was some agitation, to put it nicely, and, as a result of that, we’ve reported on 

one of those over at the Corps of Engineers that they made some 

substantial changes in the procurement area that were requirements that were imposed upon field locations because of requirements from headquarters. 

And it’s not real clear to us that we would need to have—in retrospect, that we should have changed the sequence of the pilot 

phase, because I think we learned some pretty good lessons all 

along. 

Mr. HORN. I’m sort of amused and completely agree with your 

comment, having been in State government for a long time, exactly 

the same problem, where agencies were blaming the control agencies in Sacramento, the equivalent of OMB in California being the 

Department of Finance, which is the Governor’s management arm 

and budget arm. And the problem was within their own agency, 

and these things just crept up, and the people who were around 

that started 30 years ago aren’t around anymore, and the newcomers take it as gospel out of the capitol. So I’m glad to see those 

things are rushing to the surface and we’re dealing with them. 

You mentioned in your testimony on GAO five key challenges to 

successfully implementing the act. And there are many challenges 

to instilling a results oriented mind-set, let’s face it. However, I 

would like to know what are the factors you think are the key to 

better goal setting, better measurement, better information, and 

the use of that information to make real improvements? When you 

look through all these different filings, does something stand out 

there that, if we could do nothing else, we ought to do that? 

And I’m sort of using an analogy when I’ve got an academic Senate to agree to the student evaluation of the faculty. You could ask 

50 questions; you could ask 10 questions. It really boils down if you 

just asked one question. 

Mr. STEVENS. Yes. 

Mr. HORN. The data return would be exactly the same. 

Mr. STEVENS. My response to that, Mr. Chairman, would be 

something that is, in large part, under congressional control. That 

is, what will determine the success or failure of the Results Act is 

the extent to which the volumes of information that the act will require agencies to produce and the extent to which that information 

is actually used in decisions that matter to the agency—budget decisions, oversight decisions, and legislative decisions. 

The surest way to ensure that the act does not succeed will be 

for this information to be produced, to be available at some cost, 

great cost in some cases, and to find that the people making the 

real decisions affecting the agency, many of whom are right here, 

70

ignore it. Assuring that this really becomes the basis for decisionmaking is, to me, the sine qua non for success of the act. 

Mr. HORN. I now yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois, 

Mr. Davis. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Koskinen, the chairman touched upon the Defense Department in an earlier sequence, and we know that it represents almost 

half of the discretionary spending. DOD has stated that its Quadrennial Defense Review, the QDR, will be used to satisfy the requirements of GPRA’s strategic plan. And even though the QDR 

does not seem to contain all of the elements required of the GPRA 

strategic plan, do we know if DOD will submit a GPRA-compliant 

strategic plan by this deadline of September 30th? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. It’s our expectation that they will. The QDR just 

came out in the last couple weeks. We are reviewing that with the 

Department in the face of this question, which we have as well, 

which is, does the QDR meet the requirements of the act? 

The Department’s view, appropriately, is the QDR is based on a 

statement of the mission of where we’re going with our armed 

forces, what the challenges are over the next several years, a set 

of goals and objectives, performance measures, and strategies. So 

that a substantial volume of the information that one would expect 

one would have from an agency in terms of its strategic plan for 

the next several years is contained in that. 

The real question over that we’re all looking at is, does it portray 

that in a way that provides measures against which a performance, 

annual performance plan, can be held accountable? Does it describe 

some of the issues that the act requires to be described in a way 

that are appropriate? 

I think the bottom line is that, to the extent that additional information is needed, it should be easily provided, I think, because 

the QDR does provide the most difficult parts of the strategic plan, 

which is the statement mission, the goals, the objectives of the Department and the external forces that the Department faces over 

the next several years. But the bottom line is that we are focused 

within the Department that ensuring that in September they 

produce an acceptable strategic plan. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And they have not indicated that there 

might be any unusual difficulty or circumstances or that—— Mr. KOSKINEN. No. Actually, the Department at large has done 

over the years probably as good a job as by far most of the agencies 

in terms of looking at longer-term strategic and planning objectives. When they have a 4- to 5-year budget horizon, those aren’t 

just spreadsheets, they actually have meaning and policy behind 

them. So that there is a fairly good history of development of performance measures, and in a budgetary sense as well as in a programmatic sense. So I think that to the extent that decisions need 

to be made to the QDR to provide a full-fledged strategic plan, that 

should not be the problem. 

Mr. MIHM. Mr. Davis, the challenge all agencies are facing, but 

particularly pointed at DOD, is being able to draw a linkage between the broad strategic goals or statements that may be in the 

QDR or will be in a strategic plan and the daily operations that 

are taking place throughout the Department. This is something Mr. 

71

Koskinen mentioned was a crosscutting issue that OMB had with 

most agencies’ strategic planning efforts. It’s going particularly a 

challenge within DOD. 

We’ve done some work recently and wrote to the Secretary of Defense on this, identifying problems and linking logistic strategic 

plans to the overall logistic plan for the Department, information 

technology at various component levels to information technology 

strategy for the whole Department, and, in fact, when we went and 

spoke with the key GPRA officials in various defense components, 

this was one of their real concerns. It wasn’t real clear to them 

what the Results Act would mean to them down at a component 

level or within the military service or defense agencies. 

Again, getting back to Mr. Sessions’ point of making sure that 

the strategic decisions that are being made at a departmental level 

and in consultation with the Congress really mean something in 

terms of the wheels turning back within an organization is something that DOD and other organizations will be challenged by. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. OK. The GPRA requires agencies also to 

consult with their stakeholders as the strategic plan is being developed. Who does DOD consider to be its stakeholders, and how are 

they going about consulting with them? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. That’s a good question. They obviously have a 

major consultation process that inevitably will occur around the 

QDR with the Congress as they go forward. Many of the agencies 

are consulting with each other. As we discussed earlier, they in effect provide services to or receive services from or work, hopefully 

collaboratively, with agencies in a range of areas. So we’ve been encouraging agencies to in fact share their plans as appropriately 

across the lines. And I think the Defense obviously provides a 

range of services in other areas as it goes forward. 

The more difficult question to analyze, and I don’t have the answer off the top of my head, is who outside the Government are 

stakeholders for the defense strategic plan, who should they be discussing their plan with. And that really in a lot of ways rises to 

the level of international policy and treaty and the relationships we 

have with security organizations and treaty operations around the 

world. And I’m not sure anybody has really dealt with yet whether, 

and to what extent, those are stakeholders that should be consulted. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. So in all probability I guess we could say 

that they’re still being defined. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I think that’s a very felicitous way to phrase it. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. That as we keep looking, I mean we keep 

finding and we keep finding out, I would assume. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. My final question, Mr. Chairman: GPRA 

attempts to force the Government to focus on results and may require significant congressional oversight if it’s to be effective. Do 

we think that implementation of the GPRA process in Congress 

may strengthen the case of those who advocate a 2-year budget 

cycle, focusing 1 year on appropriations and oversight on the next? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. And your question is, would that be helpful? 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. [Indicating in the affirmative.] 

72

Mr. KOSKINEN. I think it’s always hard to know for sure what 

will happen when you make process changes. But I think to the extent that our recent experience anyway over the last several years 

is that most of the time has been spent on inputs or the budget 

process, how many—where are the resources going to be allocated, 

as I say, in the last 3 or 4 years it’s sort of been an endless process 

which has left less time for oversight. 

I think to that extent we would have, I think, perhaps the opportunity in the budget process to focus on results and in the off year, 

as it were, to spend time looking at internal structural and organizational issues. 

We’ve provided to those supporting the biannual budget the necessary technical adjustments to GPRA to make it consistent with 

that, and, as a general matter, we’ve supported the biannual budget process for the reasons you suggest, which is, we think we would 

end up with a more constructive dialog about a wider range of 

issues. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Is there an increase in multiyear budgeting, I mean across the board, I don’t mean the Government but 

outside government? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I think most organizations that I’m familiar with 

still budget on an annual basis. The best organizations run against 

a longer-term plan, business plan, strategic plan that has generally 

no longer than a 5-year horizon where people understand the real 

effective timeframe is probably 3 years, and done well. And we’ve 

been through a number of organizations that have never done it before; done well. 

The way people view it is, the budget is the first year of the next 

plan, and the plan becomes a rolling plan that gets redone every 

3 or 4 years in total, but you continue to measure against those objectives as you go forward, which means that each year you do not 

de novo start with the budget process again. 

To some extent, the congressional budget process seems to have 

elements on occasion as if we didn’t know anything from last year 

and we’re going to start this year with the same arguments and 

same debates. 

So one of the hopes would be out of GPRA and strategic planning 

in the 5-year budget agreement to get to balance in 2002—is that 

we would have more of an idea and a shared expectation as to 

where we’re going to be, and we can measure ourselves and debate 

within those frameworks rather than sort of starting de novo each 

year and saying, ‘‘OK, this is a new year, a new budget, let’s start 

all over again.’’ Most companies don’t do it that way. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much. 

I have no other questions, Mr. Chairman. I’ve always wondered 

what would happen if we were to collect our money first and then 

spend it as opposed to spending it and then collecting it. 

Mr. HORN. You mean we might keep some? 

Let me ask both of you this question. We’ve talked about the 

agencies, and the ones that have adequate data bases where they 

can use some of that data in the performance sense of the word. 

And we’ve talked about accounting systems. I mentioned the 49 different ones in the Pentagon. We didn’t get into the hundreds of difVerDate 0ct 02 2002 15:30 Oct 10, 2002 Jkt 010199 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 W:\DISC\45062 45062
73

ferent computer systems that can’t relate to each other and need 

some linkage to do that. 

And I guess that I’ve learned this is usually the agency Inspector 

General is sort of an invaluable source to find out if there’s adequacy to an agency’s data base and its various systems. And I 

guess I would ask both the executive and the GAO, in your opinion, 

is that a proper role for Inspectors General to play? And to what 

degree have we involved the Inspectors General in this process? Is 

it strictly a matter of agency judgment, or are we getting the benefit of their somewhat objective view as they look at the agency and 

its weaknesses and its strengths? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. One of the large number of speaker agency 

groups I chair is the two groups—or are the two groups that composed of the—or comprised of the Inspectors General from across 

the Government. And over the last 2, 21⁄2 years, we have spent a 

significant amount of time discussing GPRA and the appropriate 

role of the Inspectors General to it. And their consensus is that 

they do have an important role to play defined really as you describe it. They view that their role has focused on the integrity of 

the data collection process, whether systems are appropriate for delivering it. 

They are careful to note that they do not have the resources and 

don’t think it’s appropriate to even consider having them. That 

they will be—are not going to be auditing every piece of performance information since there will be a substantial amount of volume, but, on the other hand, they think it is appropriate for them 

to provide the agencies and the Congress and us, their view in 

terms of the adequacy of the data collection process, the integrity 

of the data as it’s provided over time. 

They also have decided and noted that they do not think it is 

their role to define for the agency performance measures. They 

think that’s an appropriate political judgment for the Congress and 

the agencies to, in fact, discuss in terms of mission goals and objectives. Those are set legislatively as they go forward. But as a result, I expect that across the Government, the Inspectors General 

are prepared to play a role in ensuring that the performance information itself is valid, has been collected in an appropriate way, and 

in fact is being accurately presented. 

Mr. HORN. Would GAO like to——

Mr. STEVENS. I think that corresponds with our view of the Inspector General’s approach to the Results Act, too. 

Mr. HORN. It’s been mentioned several times by many members 

that were into the bit of consultation at this point between some 

of the agencies and some of the appropriate congressional committees. Is it your reading that we will be able to do this in a timely 

manner, according to the act? Or are we going to have dropoffs off 

the wagon as consultation goes on? What’s it look like? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. No, I think we’re making good progress. I think, 

in 80 percent of the cases, there’s meaningful and constructive dialog going on. I think we will be able to identify, with the Hill, the 

agency or two that may be having difficulty and work jointly to ensure that the consultation process has meaning. 

As I’ve noted in several cases in the past, we at OMB feel very 

strongly that the consultation process is an important part of the 

74

act, and we are anxious to make sure that it gets done on an agency-by-agency basis. And I am confident that, with our joint efforts, 

everyone will participate in that process. 

Mr. HORN. In other words, you’re saying with the majority leader 

having a major role, at least in-house consultation, there shouldn’t 

be a problem in getting the executive agency in touch with the appropriate committees? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. That’s correct. 

Mr. HORN. And you on your side will certainly be sure that the 

executive agency is prepared to consult and has most of their ducks 

in a row before they come up here? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes. 

Mr. HORN. OK. So we don’t have to worry about that one. 

I guess what I’d ask is a very broad question. We go through 

these phases of management reform in the private sector, we go 

through them in graduate schools of public administration and 

business, and we go through them in Government. And I guess I’d 

ask you, John, what do you expect from a strategic plan? What’s 

strategic about it, in your judgment? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, again, just to sort of repeat where I’ve been 

earlier, I think a strategic plan, and probably the important thing 

about a strategic plan is a process by which you get it, that if you 

can involve the agency leadership, if you can involve frontline 

workers, if you can involve the Congress, and ultimately if you can 

involve the public over time in a discussion about the roles, goals, 

and missions of an agency and its objectives. How is it going to 

hold itself accountable, what are its goals, what is its performance, 

that you will create, in effect, a management document. 

And I think Mr. Stevens is exactly right. We need this report and 

the active involvement in the Congress to justify the time and effort the agencies are putting into this in terms of the dialog. Although I have been pushing to the agencies that the information 

they’re collecting is important, if it’s done correctly and if it’s in the 

context of goals and missions and objectives, and that they ought 

to be doing that even if nobody on the outside asked about it, because it’s important for them to be able to manage more effectively. 

As I said at the start of my testimony, our resources are clearly 

going to be constrained over the next several years. Therefore, the 

only way we’re going to expand the effectiveness of programs and 

of Government is, in fact, to be more productive in the way we do 

our work. The only way to do that is to get information back on 

a regular basis about what impact we’re having, how effective are 

the programs, what can we do to increase that effectiveness, and, 

at least half the time, what we can do to increase the effectiveness 

is not spend more money? 

What we can do to increase the effectiveness is to change the 

way we manage, but we won’t know that and we won’t know the 

implications of that if we’re not collecting performance information 

in the context of an overall strategic plan. 

Mr. HORN. Does GAO have a comment? 

Mr. STEVENS. I would respond, Mr. Chairman, that there was a 

hearing not long ago in which Mr. Armey, the majority leader, sat 

in this very chair, I believe, and provided what I believe was an 

answer to that question. He tied it to the opinion of the American 

75

people and pointed to the low confidence of Government and the 

perception that many people have, that they are not getting very 

much for the tax dollars they’re sending to Washington. 

And I think the discipline of the Results Act will provide the 

knowledge of what that money is going for. It still may not be satisfactory information. It may lead to changes, but it’s knowledge 

that we really just now do not have: What are we getting for that 

tax dollar? 

Mr. HORN. Well, it’s an interesting comment, because many 

Members of both parties and all ideologies do a survey often of 

their constituency. It isn’t a legitimate random sample or anything, 

it’s just, you send out the newsletter and there’s a coupon attached 

to where you are to make certain judgments, and we tote them up, 

and see what it does. 

It so happens I’ve also done legitimate random samples, and it’s 

my universe that responds is exactly in accord with the legitimate 

random sample. And here’s what they sort of feel, and other Members have confirmed this in their constituency: You ask them at 

what level is governmental money wasted, the Federal, the State, 

or the local? And it’s amazing around the country that 50 percent 

of the Government’s money is wasted at the Federal level; maybe 

35, 30 percent is wasted at the State level; and maybe 15 percent 

or so or 10 percent is wasted at the local level. 

Now one obvious observation on that subject is, when they’re 

close to the Government at home and they can go down to city hall 

and harangue the mayor and the council members or they can 

wake the councilmen up or the councilwoman up at 2 a.m., and 

say, hey, the garbage truck hasn’t come yet, it’s a little hard to find 

Members of the Congress, it’s a little hard to find the Cabinet officers, and at the local level you can find them. 

So I would think that when visible Government is there to listen, 

that we get a better reaction out of it. I don’t know, you’ve looked 

at a lot of surveys, I’m sure, in the administration. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, I think that’s right. And it’s not inconsistent with Mr. Stevens’ point, which I support, which I would say 

would be a corollary to those numbers, which is that the closer you 

are to the delivery of the service and the Government providing it, 

the more you understand and oftentimes support that service. The 

farther away you are from the organization, the harder it is to bear 

in mind what it is that the organization is trying to achieve. 

So that, as Mr. Stevens said—and I was here with Mr. Armey—

I think it is correct that one of the things we’ve gotten away from 

over the time is continually reminding and explaining to the American public where we do what we do, what are we trying to accomplish with each of these specific programs and activities, which is 

part of that explanation, so people will understand why we’re 

spending this money. Because part of the assumption of waste that 

we’ve seen in those surveys is waste not because we’re ineffective, 

but it’s waste because it’s a program that they don’t particularly 

support or understand why it is that it runs. 

To the extent we can better articulate what our mission is and 

our goals and objectives, that will help. But the corollary is that 

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able for achieving a result, I think we will increase significantly 

the confidence in people that we’re not wasting the money. 

The experience in Britain and other countries has been that 

rather than having people object to the inability of the Government 

to achieve its performance standard, there’s been a tremendous 

outpouring of support for organizations that care enough to even 

point to a goal and are actually striving to meet it. I think what 

we need to do, and what this act will allow us to do in a lot of 

areas, is to explain to people not only what we’re trying to accomplish, but to tell them that we actually have goals for what the results are and that we’re actually going to every year try to get better at it. If we can convince people that we’re legitimately and honestly trying to do that, I think the level of confidence in the Government and the level of support for it will increase. 

Mr. HORN. Could you describe the type of group you have on 

your staff that is imbued with results-oriented government, that is 

knowledgeable about the British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, and Oregon experiments. Where’s the institutional memory in 

the executive branch that can go out and help a Cabinet officer understand how this works so he or she gets imbued with the spirit? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, I spent 3 years, with the support of two different directors and the strong support of two different directors, 

in effect, trying to turn the entire organization of OMB into that 

organization. 

I think that the one thing to remember, as we all know, is the 

Government is a very large enterprise. When you have almost 2 

million employees, we need to have that expertise in more than a 

handful of people. 

We have over 500 people at OMB. We have a significant amount 

of our time spent looking at resource questions. And I think we’ve 

been very successful over the last 3 years training and engaging 

those people in a dialog about why a fundamental part of the resource question is, what do we get for those resources, so that the 

institutional memory, if we’re successful, and we’re working on it, 

will be that the entire organization will be results oriented. The entire organization will be in communication with the agencies about 

these matters. 

I’ve talked about the reviews we’ve done in 1995 and 1996 and 

this year. Those reviews aren’t being done by a handful of my people who aren’t very knowledgeable; those reviews are being done by 

the agency, OMB. The dialog going on with the Cabinet Secretaries, budget officers, and managers are dialogs with their normal 

program examiners. We’ve done a lot of training and a lot of dialog 

to get our end of the group up to speed. But I think that’s the only 

way it starts, and even that won’t be sufficient. 

The real goal, obviously, is to get people in the agencies who understand this and themselves to, even if we quit talking to them 

about it, which we don’t plan to do, but that’s the only way it’s 

going to work. It won’t work, as you and I have discussed in the 

past, if I had 10 more really great GPRA people. That’s not the way 

it’s going to work. The way it’s going to work is if we at OMB and 

in the executive branch, and as, Mr. Stevens said ultimately, you 

in the Congress in your decisions continually resonating back asking questions about: What are the results? How much did it cost 

77

to get those results? What do we need to do differently to improve 

those results? Only then will we actually see the successful implementation of this act. 

Mr. HORN. Where do you find the budget examiners fitting in 

this process? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Where do I find——

Mr. HORN. Are the budget examiners going to still go about reviewing the budget as they always have? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I know actually——

Mr. HORN. OMB, frankly, hasn’t been thinking much about management or results or performance or anything else, just, how much 

do you need? And we only have so much to give you. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Right. We actually call them program examiners 

now. And one of the reasons we’ve changed that name, and 

changed the structure of the organization through OMB 2000, is to 

ensure that the budget dialog and process is not just about inputs, 

that it is, in fact, about structure and organization and outcomes. 

Many of the program examiners or budget examiners in the past 

asked those questions. We’re very focused on education programs 

and other programs, what were the results of what we got for the 

money, and what we’re trying to do now is institutionalize that, not 

only within OMB but within the agencies, so that they understand 

that resources are not a question just about inputs, they are a 

question about outcomes. 

Mr. HORN. When will we get a budget submitted by the President that looks at the outcomes on the budget page as well as the 

budget numbers past, present, and proposed? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Well, the great joy of the statute is, it requires 

us to produce a governmentwide performance plan with the next 

budget, and we plan on doing that. 

Mr. HORN. So in February of next year we’ll see it for the next 

fiscal year? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Yes, and in fact as we’ve discussed this internally, I have an agency-wide implementation group for GPRA 

drawn from all the program examining divisions, increasingly done 

well. The budget ought to be, in effect, a performance-based document, and to a large extent it already is. There is a lot of performance information in the budget. 

But again, the focus on the Hill and in the dialog has probably 

been on the input side. So we don’t think it’s a major change for 

us to turn the budget document into a results-oriented document. 

And we plan to do that. 

Mr. HORN. Does GAO have a comment on this discussion? 

Mr. STEVENS. Not yet, Mr. Chairman. We will. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. Forewarned is forearmed. 

Mr. HORN. You want to see who survives; is that it? 

I’m curious about the consultation so far, in your judgment and 

also GAO’s judgment. As you’ve said, if we’re simply going to have 

this dialog go on up here, and it isn’t translated into how we make 

decisions and you make decisions, and there isn’t agreement, let’s 

say, on the performance standard and what they ought to look like 

if we’re going to take them seriously up here and not just fluff, and 

we can count that so we gave you that—and I guess that’s where 

78

I’m curious, what’s your feel for the consultation thus far as you 

hear about it? 

Mr. KOSKINEN. I think we have room for improvement—on both 

sides. We have some agencies—a small number—that need to be 

responsive promptly to the interest in having strategic plans. 

From the congressional side, we’ve had very good and strong support from the majority leader’s office, the Speaker, and from this 

committee. But we need in some areas, for specific areas, we need 

more involvement from appropriators and authorizers. 

The House in this area of consultation generally is the head of 

the Senate. Some specific Senate subcommittees or committees 

have engaged in very important consultations, but a lot of them 

have not yet. There are indications that more are starting. But 

again, I think that we need to broaden the base of consultation 

from the congressional side at the same time as we’re encouraging 

the agencies to hold up their end of the bargain. 

Mr. HORN. Does GAO want to add anything to this? 

Mr. MIHM. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Koskinen spoke quite a while 

ago about, we all agree there’s a bell curve, we just argue a little 

bit over the slope, or disagree a little bit over the slope. I think this 

might be one of the areas where we take a little bit different perspective on the slope of the curve. That is, based primarily on the 

discussions of congressional staff that have been leading the consultation effort and the 25 or so teams that have been formed here 

on the House side, our sense is, the consultations aren’t going nearly as well as they could have. 

And there’s a couple of things to keep in mind here. First is that 

the number of agencies that have not produced strategic plans is 

still, in our view, a little bit high. We’re still dealing with half a 

dozen or so agencies that haven’t been able to produce a strategic 

plan. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency, although 

it’s produced parts of it, says it won’t be able to get the Hill a complete plan until July, which doesn’t leave an awful lot of time for 

consultations. 

The thing to keep in mind is that the strategic planning requirement and the consultation requirement does not sneak up on agencies. GPRA was passed in July 1993. They’ve known for 31⁄2 years 

that this requirement was going to be coming on board and, clearly, 

probably wouldn’t have made an awful lot of sense to get up there, 

you know, 2 weeks after the act was passed. But it’s a little bit of 

concern that there’s such a rush to complete here within the final 

weeks before Congress goes out on the August recess in order to 

get these consultations completed. 

The other thing that’s a bit of concern for us, and Mr. Stevens 

touched on this in the testimony that he had before your subcommittee back in March, when we talked about how there is a— based on the views that—of agency staff and congressional staff 

that we were finding some very different perspectives and what the 

consultation process ought to entail. 

The congressional staff and Congress generally was looking for a 

much deeper, much more innervative, much more give-and-take 

process in consultations. We’re not seeing yet an awful lot of that 

understanding penetrating within the agencies. There seems to be 

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ings, then, well, we’ve checked that off, let’s go to the next box on 

the mark. 

By no means is this universal. Some of the agencies—and we’re 

hearing that they’re having some real good consultations both from 

the agency’s perspective and the Hill perspective, but there’s just 

too much still, I think, in that category of where there’s going to 

be a rush to complete, and we’re not going to get the full effect that 

we could have gotten from the consultation process. 

Mr. HORN. I remember that old adage that the only difference between an A student and an F student is that the F student forgot 

it before the exam. And I expect that some are going back and saying, well, we’ve done that, and, as you say, check it off; we don’t 

have to see those people for another 6 months or another year. And 

that isn’t the way it should be. There ought to be an open door and 

not, ‘‘I gotcha.’’ But, hey, you’ve got problems, we’ve got problems. The Constitution makes sure we have those problems to some degree. And the 

question is, how do we get this system to work more effectively for 

the average system? And that’s what our aim is. 

Now, in closing, I would like to ask, is there anything either side 

would like to say here that we haven’t asked you or you felt you 

didn’t get a chance to make that point? This is your chance to 

make the point. 

Mr. KOSKINEN. No. I would just say again that we genuinely appreciate the interest this committee generally and this subcommittee have had on this subject over time. I think it’s an important matter. 

As Mr. Stevens noted, no matter what we tell the agencies, we, 

by ourselves, aren’t going to be able to move the ball forward as 

far as we need to. We need your continued involvement. We need 

the broadest involvement from the Congress that we can in a bipartisan way, and I think thus far we’re comforted by the bipartisan nature of the dialog. 

But I think this is a joint venture we’re engaged in, and I would 

just close with the same point I’ve made several times, and that 

is that we need to drive to as much perfection as we can get in September, but it’s a little like your A student/F student notation, we 

shouldn’t all bet on October 1st and figure, oh, we’ll go on to the 

next issue. This is part of a dialog that needs to be held on a regular basis over a long period of time. 

Mr. HORN. Yes. I suspect you’ve got a lot of people in Government who were around with Jimmy Carter and his budgeting proposal, and some even with McNamara and PPBS and those budgeting proposals, they’re saying this too shall pass. But this, too, 

isn’t going to pass; it’s written into law. There’s certainly a commitment in both parties—in both Houses that this shall be the law, 

and it isn’t because it’s some punitive thing, it’s because it makes 

sense, and the New Zealanders and the Oregonians have already 

proved that it works. So we’ll see what Canada does in its elections, and we’ll see what Britain is now going to do. Maybe even 

the French are going to get on board. 

Does GAO have any closing comments? 

Mr. STEVENS. Just that we stand ready, Mr. Chairman, to assist 

not only this committee, which has had a long and very productive 

80

history and concern about the Results Act, but also the authorizing 

and appropriations committees that are now beginning to take notice of it. Our interest, concern, and involvement is not limited to 

the Federal management issues group here, but throughout GAO. 

In all of our issue areas are people concerned about what executive 

agencies are producing and are ready to help Congress evaluate 

that. 

Mr. HORN. Well, you’ve done an excellent job in your report, as 

you always do, and we thank you and your staff for preparing that. 

It’s been immensely helpful. 

Let me just—and I might say to the gentleman who is deputy director for management, your Duke education has survived you 

through another congressional hearing. I congratulate you. 

I want to thank the following people that helped prepare this 

hearing, starting with Russell George, against the wall there, staff 

director and counsel for the Government Management Information, 

and Technology Subcommittee; Jane Cobb we’re delighted to have 

with us, the professional staff member of the full committee and 

specialist on management issues; Matt Ryan, professional staff 

member on our subcommittee; John Hynes, professional staff member on our subcommittee; and Andrea Miller, our clerk that makes 

sure these hearings work. 

And then on the Democratic side Mark Stephenson, professional 

staff member; Jean Gosa, the clerk for the minority, our two committee reporters of debates, Vicky Stallsworth and Mindi Colchico. 

And we have three interns working on this hearing: Melissa Holder, Grant Newman, and Michael Presicci. So we thank the interns. 

This is the time Congress gets free labor in violation of all the 

laws. 

So thank you all, and the meeting is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12 noon, the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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