United States General Accounting Office

GAO General Government Division

March 1995 Federal Management

Issue Area Plan

Fiscal Years 1995-96

GAO/IAP-95-9

Foreword

The Federal Management issue area is one of the General Accounting

Office’s 35 issue areas. Relying heavily on consultation with congressional

committees, agency officials, and other experts, GAO develops strategic

plans to ensure that its limited resources are directed toward the most

important concerns of the Congress. The Federal Management issue area

reviews a broad range of cross-cutting federal management and statistical

policy issues that include the Government Performance and Results Act;

the National Performance Review; regulatory reform; privatization and

other public-private mix alternatives; and the examination of the quality,

reliability, and usefulness of leading social and economic statistical data

series.

GAO serves as a source of timely, accurate information and unbiased

analysis for decisionmakers in the Congress and executive agencies. For

each issue area, GAO’s strategic plan describes the significance of the

issues, our objectives, and the focus of our work. Our work results in such

products as reports, briefings, and testimonies.

GAO’s work on federal management issues is focused on the following

principal issues:

•the integration of management requirements, improvement strategies,

and tools into a consistent management framework;

•use of strategic planning and outcome-oriented performance

measurements to continually improve agencies’ effectiveness;

•the management reform initiatives that are being or can be implemented;

•the mix of program implementation strategies, including expanding the

use of the private sector and its delivery methods, that can be used to

improve effectiveness and efficiency;

• federal statistical programs as a source of accurate, adequate, and timely

measures of social and economic activity and government performance;

and

• the federal government’s role as a provider of useful and readily

accessible data at reasonable cost.

In the pages that follow, we describe our key planned work on these

pivotal issues.

Page 1 GAO/IAP-95-9
Foreword

Because events may significantly affect even the best of plans, our

planning process allows for updating the plan and responding quickly to

emerging issues. If you have any questions or suggestions about this plan,

please call either me or Charles I. Patton, Associate Director, on

(202) 512-8676.

William M. Hunt

Director

Federal Management Issues

Page 2 GAO/IAP-95-9
Contents

Foreword 1

Table I: Key Issues 4

Table II: Planned

Major Work

8

Table III: GAO

Contacts

9

Page 3 GAO/IAP-95-9
Table I: Key Issues

Issue Significance

Integrated management framework:

How can current management requirements, improvement

strategies, and tools be integrated into a management framework to

accomplish agencies’ goals in a results-oriented environment? 

In the next several years, a wide array of government reinvention

and reform initiatives will be undertaken by both the legislative

and executive branches. Many of these initiatives will affect the

management of agencies and programs. These efforts will follow

recent reforms, including the Chief Financial Officers Act, the

Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), and

the first phase of the National Performance Review (NPR) as well

as earlier reforms, such as the Federal Managers Financial

Integrity Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act. The success of

these new initiatives will rest in part on how well they can be

integrated into a management framework to leverage current and

earlier improvement initiatives as well as ongoing management

processes. The administration also is planning to introduce its

own set of initiatives that need to be considered in any

management framework.

Managing for results: How can agencies use strategic planning

and outcome-oriented performance measurements to continually

improve effectiveness and responsiveness within given resource

levels?

The landmark GPRA seeks to fundamentally change the

orientation of federal management and accountability away from a

preoccupation with inputs and rigid adherence to prescribed

processes to a greater focus on outcomes and results.

Outcome-oriented strategic planning and performance

measurement and reporting are the core elements of GPRA. Many

of the current management initiatives in the Congress and the

administration (e.g., Senator Roth’s Blueprint for Reform, efforts to

shift responsibility for many federal programs to states and local

governments, NPR, and the administration’s streamlining efforts)

require agreement on the desired outcomes of federal programs

and the existence of systematic methods and measures to assess

their progress.

Management reform initiatives:

What management reform initiatives are being or can be

implemented to improve government operations and effectiveness?

A number of plans have been proposed or are under way to

reform the way federal programs are managed and implemented,

including NPR, OMB 2000, and congressional initiatives to

restructure government and reduce the burden of federal

regulations. Taken together, these efforts have the potential to

significantly improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and

responsiveness of government. 

Page 4 GAO/IAP-95-9
Table I: Key Issues

Objectives Focus of work

—Describe key management laws and requirements and their

linkage points and identify opportunities to align and streamline

requirements that enhance management capacity while ensuring

accountability.

— Describe how requirements are communicated to and function

at the agency and program operating levels.

— Identify and describe effective strategies and tools that can

support and integrate management improvement efforts.

— Determine how federal agencies manage and integrate recent

and ongoing changes.

• Identify major requirements contained in laws and regulations

that govern federal managers and their rationale, underlying

assumptions, and applicability to current conditions.

• Assess key requirements to determine gaps and overlaps

between various laws and regulations and to identify the impact

on agency operations and opportunities to better integrate and

align requirements.

• Describe the linkage among the major management processes

created through law and case studies that describe and analyze

the various strategies and tools used in linking requirements and

systems to achieve program results.

• Identify and assess practices that provide agency managers

greater capacity to manage and integrate recent and ongoing

changes in their agencies.

— Identify major challenges and opportunities in institutionalizing

strategic planning and performance measurement. 

— Provide tools and methodologies for implementing and

improving strategic planning and performance measurements. 

— Help agencies to implement GPRA by transferring knowledge,

helping them to build skills, and providing lessons learned from

related public and private efforts. 

— Expand the understanding of GPRA-related concepts and

principles across GAO and facilitate their use in GAO assignments

and in other federal audit organizations.

• Assess agencies’ efforts to implement and institutionalize GPRA

concepts.

• Identify the critical steps necessary for the Congress and

agencies to implement outcome-oriented strategic planning and

performance measurement systems.

• Facilitate work on strategic planning and performance

measurement by program issue areas across GAO.

• Support OPM’s GPRA training efforts, as required by GPRA.

• Provide agencies with tools to assess their progress in

implementing GPRA.

— Describe agencies’ initiatives to reinvent their work processes

and lessons learned from those initiatives.

— Describe OMB’s efforts to integrate management into its budget

process and to improve its relations with other federal agencies.

— Identify opportunities for the Congress and agencies to improve

federal regulatory management.

• Monitor reinvention lab issues, processes, and

accomplishments, describing certain labs in detail.

• Describe OMB 2000 goals and implementation strategies within

OMB and selected agencies.

• Develop case studies of businesses’ regulatory burdens,

problematic regulations, and possible solutions.

• Assess the second phase of NPR.

Page 5 GAO/IAP-95-9
Table I: Key Issues

Issue Significance

Implementation strategies: What mix of program implementation

strategies, including expanding the use of the private sector and its

delivery methods, can be used to improve effectiveness and

efficiency? 

As congressional and executive branch leaders seek to make

fundamental reforms in the role of government and the way it

delivers programs, these leaders must have current information

on the options available and the degree of success others have

had in implementing these options.

Federal statistics: Do federal statistical programs provide

accurate, adequate, and timely measures of social and economic

activity and government performance?

Decisionmakers in both the public and private sectors need to

rely on federal statistics to understand current economic and

social conditions and to estimate the likely effects of their

decisions. The accuracy and timeliness of these statistics are

frequently questioned, most notably in the recent debate over the

reliability of the Consumer Price Index for adjusting federal taxes

and expenditures for inflation. Successful GPRA implementation,

furthermore, will increase the demand for federal statistics to

improve their capability to measure the outcomes of federal

programs. Inaccurate or incomplete data inherently limit the ability

of decisionmakers to plan, evaluate, and improve programs.

These needs must be balanced against the costs of statistical

programs, particularly the paperwork burden.

Information policy: How can the federal government improve its

role as a provider of useful and readily accessible data at

reasonable cost?

Government-generated information is the lifeblood of the federal

government and is essential to agency missions as well as to an

informed public debate. The government’s ability to provide the

public with useful, accurate, and timely information in a

cost-effective manner has been the subject of considerable

debate, especially with the emergence of various electronic

technologies. Conflicting proposals have been made on how best

to reform the methods the government uses to meet its basic

responsibility for informing the nation about its activities.

Page 6 GAO/IAP-95-9
Table I: Key Issues

Objectives Focus of work

— Assist the Congress by assessing alternative approaches to

carry out governmental and quasigovernmental functions. 

— Develop criteria for identifying alternatives to public sector roles. 

— Describe lessons learned from other jurisdictions in expanding

market mechanisms to make them more effective.

— Assist the Congress in assessing the District of Columbia’s fiscal

crisis and the options available for resolving it.

• Describe uses and accountability of government corporations.

• Survey other governments’ use of the private sector.

• Identify alternative guidelines for public sector roles.

• Analyze U.S. cities’ experiences in resolving fiscal crises to

improve the District of Columbia’s management and operations.

• Assist the Congress in drafting legislation for a D.C. oversight

board.

• Provide the D.C. oversight board with needed information on

other oversight boards and related issues.

— Identify improvements that the Bureau of Labor Statistics should

make in order to enhance the analytical soundness, popular

understanding, and acceptance of the Consumer Price Index as a

measure of inflation. 

— Assist federal statistical agencies in improving the accuracy,

completeness, and cost-effectiveness of international transaction

statistics so that those statistics can be more useful to government

policymakers and business users.

— Assist the Congress in determining whether the current

dispersion of statistical production among 70 agencies best serves

the nation’s need for accurate, timely, and usable statistical data in

the most cost-effective manner.

• Assess the quality of federal statistics that underlie federal

program decisions and evaluations.

• Analyze and assess measurement issues in the Consumer Price

Index.

• Recommend improvements in reporting data on international

transactions that are to increase their reliability in a cost-effective

manner.

• Analyze potential benefits and costs of greater consolidation or

privatization of federal statistical programs for the Congress.

— Improve the coverage, accuracy, timeliness, and

cost-effectiveness of sociodemographic data used to formulate

public policy.

— Identify measures that the Bureau of the Census can take to

improve the effectiveness and reduce the cost of the 2000 Census.

— Assist in developing a framework for publishing and

electronically disseminating government information.

• Improve the accuracy and reduce the cost of the decennial

census and other sociodemographic surveys.

• Suggest ways the federal government can obtain printing

services in order to increase efficiency and economy.

• Review federal guidance for providing government information

electronically.

Page 7 GAO/IAP-95-9
Table II: Planned Major Work

Issue Planned major job starts

Integrated management framework — Develop a comprehensive inventory of the major legislative requirements for federal

managers.

— Identify and describe management strategies and tools for integrating statutory

requirements.

— Assess how agencies’ use management tools to manage changes

being introduced.

Managing for results — Provide agencies with tools to assess their progress in meeting GPRA requirements.

— Continue assessing efforts to implement GPRA.

— Evaluate agencies’ implementation of GPRA as required by law.

Management improvement initiatives —Monitor and assess the status of the administration’s “NPR II” initiative.

— Identify ways to refocus federal regulatory management from an emphasis on

procedural compliance to an emphasis on outcomes.

—Assess the Office of Management and Budget’s oversight and coordination of federal

regulatory policies.

Implementation strategies —Conduct a survey of public-private mix options.

—Identify criteria and oversight capability for establishing government corporations.

Federal statistics —Identify ways for improving the Consumer Price Index.

—Identify and assess ways for improving the accuracy and usefulness of international

transaction statistics.

—Identify opportunities for improving coordination of data gathering and streamlining the

organization of federal statistical production.

Information policy — Identify opportunities to improve the accuracy and reduce

the cost of the decennial census and other sociodemographic surveys.

— Suggest ways the federal government can obtain printing services in order to

increase efficiency and economy.

— Review federal guidance for providing government information.

— Develop a framework for publishing government information electronically.

— Review federal agencies’ electronic data dissemination policies and practices.

Page 8 GAO/IAP-95-9
Table III: GAO Contacts

Director William M. Hunt (202) 512-8676

Associate Director Charles I. Patton (202) 512-3532

Assistant Directors James A. Burow

Frances P. Clark

Curtis W. Copeland

James McDermott

J. Christopher Mihm

John K. Needham

Page 9 GAO/IAP-95-9
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