MANAGING FOR 

RESULTS

Leading Practices 

Should Guide the 

Continued 

Development of 

Performance.gov

Report to Congressional Addressees

June 2013

GAO-13-517

United States Government Accountability Office
United States Government Accountability Office

Highlights of GAO-13-517, a report to 

congressional addressees 

June 2013 

MANAGING FOR RESULTS

Leading Practices Should Guide the Continued 

Development of Performance.gov

Why GAO Did This Study

Congress took steps to improve federal 

performance reporting through 

GPRAMA by requiring that OMB 

provide performance information via a 

publicly-available central website, 

Performance.gov. GAO is mandated to 

review GPRAMA’s implementation at 

several junctures; this report is part of 

a series doing so. The report examines 

the extent to which Performance.gov 

incorporates leading practices for the 

development of federal websites. To 

address this objective, GAO compared 

the design of Performance.gov to 

GSA’s Top 10 Best Practices for 

federal websites on HowTo.gov; 

reviewed performance reporting 

literature and OMB guidance; collected 

information from 13 national, state, and 

local performance reporting website

practitioners; and interviewed federal 

and nonfederal groups most likely to 

use the information on the website

because of their management, 

oversight, advocacy, or academic 

interests. These groups included 

officials from five selected agencies, 

staff from 13 U.S. Senate and House 

of Representatives congressional 

committees, and representatives from 

10 transparency organizations and 

academic institutions.

What GAO Recommends

GAO recommends that OMB should 

work with GSA and the PIC to (1) 

clarify specific ways that intended 

audiences could use Performance.gov

and specify changes to support these 

uses; (2) systematically collect 

information on the needs of intended 

audiences; and (3) collect 

recommended performance metrics

and, as appropriate, create goals for 

those metrics. OMB staff agreed with 

these recommendations.

What GAO Found

The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA) requires Performance.gov to 

provide program and performance information accessible to the public and 

members and committees of Congress. GAO used leading practices from 

HowTo.gov, a key source of guidance for federal website development and 

management, to assess the website and found that although Performance.gov 

incorporates some leading practices, opportunities exist to further incorporate 

them through continued development. For example, consistent with leading 

practices, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), working with the 

General Services Administration (GSA) and the Performance Improvement 

Council (PIC), provided information about the purposes and audiences for the 

website, but they have made limited efforts to clarify how audiences can use the 

information provided. If the specific uses of Performance.gov are not clarified, 

while taking into consideration what the law requires, it could lead to varying 

ideas and expectations for how Performance.gov should be developed. 

Leading practices also recommend that developers engage potential users 

through focus groups and other outreach and regularly conduct usability tests to 

gather insight into areas such as navigation and the organization of website 

content. Efforts to collect input and feedback from potential audiences of 

Performance.gov, however, have been limited to the collection of suggestions 

through the website’s “Feedback” page and briefings for selected audiences. 

Similarly, OMB has not yet conducted any usability tests of the website, although 

staff said that usability testing is being planned for September 2013. Without this 

information, the needs of the audiences and how they are using or want to use 

the website cannot guide further improvements.

In addition, leading practices recommend that agencies collect, analyze, and 

report on a baseline set of performance, customer satisfaction, and other metrics. 

Of the 24 recommended metrics, 15 are currently tracked for Performance.gov. 

Leading practices also recommend setting goals for metrics and making sure 

these align with the website’s objectives to help prioritize and guide design 

changes. These goals can be identified based on prevailing practices or the 

desire to improve a particular metric over time. Except for the area of customer 

satisfaction, OMB has not established performance metric goals, which may 

make it more difficult to analyze the effectiveness of the website. 

OMB staff stated that, thus far, the specific legal requirements of GPRAMA have 

been the primary framework used to guide efforts to develop Performance.gov. 

They said they have been focused on compliance with these requirements by 

providing information on agency and cross-agency priority goals and by 

establishing a phased development plan for integrating additional information 

from agency strategic plans, performance plans, and performance reports. OMB 

and GSA staff members said, however, that the leading practices provided by 

HowTo.gov will help guide the development of Performance.gov. They also noted 

that as the phased development of Performance.gov unfolds, they expect to use 

broader outreach to a wider audience, including members of the public, to make 

Performance.gov more “public-facing” and “citizen-centric.” View GAO-13-517. For more information, 

contact J. Christopher Mihm at (202) 512-6806 

or mihmj@gao.gov. 
Page i GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Letter 1 

Background 5

Conclusions 34

Recommendations for Executive Action 35

Agency Comments 35

Appendix I Objective, Scope, and Methodology 36

Appendix II GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 41

Tables

Table 1: State, Local, and Canadian Performance Reporting 

Websites Reviewed 5

Table 2: Top 10 Best Practices for Government Websites from 

HowTo.gov 12

Table 3: Performance Metrics Recommended by HowTo.gov that 

Are Tracked for Performance.gov 22

Table 4: Staff Interviewed from the U.S. Senate and House of 

Representatives Congressional Oversight and Authorizing 

Committees 38

Table 5: State, Local, and Canadian Performance Reporting 

Websites Reviewed 39

Figures

Figure 1: Performance.gov Home Page 7

Figure 2: Example of an Agency Priority Goal Web Page 8

Figure 3: Performance.gov Implementation Timeline 10

Figure 4: Example of the Michigan Education Dashboard 14

Figure 5: Data.gov Energy Community Web Page 18

Figure 6: Total Number of Visits to Performance.gov, August 2011 

to March 2013 22

Figure 7: Example from Boston About Results 27

Figure 8: U.S. Department of Agriculture Agency Page on 

Performance.gov 29

Contents 
Page ii GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 9: Example of a Web Page Included in the List of Results 

Using Performance.gov’s Internal Search Engine to 

Search for “Climate Change” 32

Abbreviations

GPRA Government Performance Results Act

GPRAMA GPRA Modernization Act of 2010

GSA General Services Administration

OMB Office of Management and Budget

PIC Performance Improvement Council

PMLOB Performance Management Line of Business

PREP Performance Reporting Entry Portal

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the 

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without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain 

copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be 

necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately.
Page 1 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

441 G St. N.W.

Washington, DC 20548

June 6, 2013

The Honorable Thomas R. Carper

Chairman

The Honorable Tom Coburn

Ranking Member

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

United States Senate

The Honorable Mark R. Warner

Chairman

Task Force on Government Performance, Committee on the Budget

United States Senate

The Honorable Elijah Cummings

Ranking Member

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

House of Representatives

In increasing recognition of the value of open government and the need to 

make performance information more transparent, Congress took steps to 

improve federal performance management and reporting by updating the 

Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) through the GPRA 

Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA).1 GPRAMA established important 

changes to modernize and refine existing federal agency reporting 

requirements and to ensure more frequent, relevant data are available to 

inform decision making and the public. The act included a requirement 

that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) provide quarterly 

updates on agency and cross-agency priority goals via a central, 

government-wide website, Performance.gov.2

 

1

Pub. L. No. 111-352, 124 Stat. 3866 (Jan. 4, 2011). 

In March 2013, federal 

2

31 U.S.C. § 1122. GPRAMA requires certain agencies, as determined by OMB, to 

develop a limited number of agency priority goals every 2 years. These goals are to reflect 

the highest priorities of each selected agency, as identified by the head of the agency, and 

be informed by broad crosscutting federal government priority goals (also known as crossagency priority goals) as well as input from relevant congressional committees. GPRAMA 

requires that these cross-agency priority goals are developed by OMB, in coordination

with agencies and in consultation with Congress, every 4 years and should be long-term 

goals for a limited number of crosscutting policy areas and management improvement 

areas. 31 U.S.C. § 1120.

 
 

Page 2 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

agencies added the first performance updates for cross-agency and 

agency priority goals to the website. OMB stated that over time it plans to 

add more information from agency strategic plans, performance plans, 

and reports and produce the information in formats that allow users to see 

trends, look at goals contributing to common themes, see programs 

contributing to common goals, and cross reference other related data.

GPRAMA required OMB to establish a single, performance-related 

website by October 1, 2012, to provide program and performance 

information, which would be accessible to members and committees of 

Congress and the public. First developed by OMB in 2010 for executive 

branch use, Performance.gov was made available to the public in August 

2011. OMB’s stated goals for Performance.gov include providing both a 

public view into government performance to support transparency as well 

as providing executive branch management capabilities to enhance 

senior leadership decision making. In addition to linking agency programs 

and their relationships and contributions to strategic objectives, another 

OMB goal of the website, as a repository of federal government 

performance information, is to increase the utility of this information 

through enhanced agency comparisons, supporting both benchmarking 

and best practice identification.

This report is part of our response to a mandate to assess initial 

implementation of the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010.3 Specifically, this 

report examines the extent to which Performance.gov incorporates 

leading practices for the development of federal websites. This report is 

the fifth in a series that looks at how agencies are implementing various 

GPRAMA requirements.4

To address our objective, we analyzed information from the 

Performance.gov website and the requirements from GPRAMA regarding 

 

3

Pub. L. No. 111-352, § 15(b)(1). 

4

See GAO, Managing for Results: Agencies Should More Fully Develop Priority Goals 

under the GPRA Modernization Act, GAO-13-174 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 19, 2013); 

Managing for Results: Agencies Have Elevated Performance Leadership Roles, but 

Additional Training is Needed, GAO-13-356 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 16, 2013); Managing 

for Results: Data-Driven Performance Reviews Show Promise But Agencies Should 

Explore How to Involve Other Relevant Agencies, GAO-13-228 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 

27, 2013); and Managing for Results: GAO’s Work Related to the Interim Crosscutting 

Priority Goals under the GPRA Modernization Act, GAO-12-620R (Washington, D.C.: May 

2012).
 

Page 3 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

the website. We also examined related guidance, such as OMB’s Circular 

No. A-11, which lays out expectations for the design, development, and 

implementation of Performance.gov.5 We reviewed relevant academic 

and policy literature on performance management and reporting, 

including our previous reports on performance management, and 

conducted interviews with staff at OMB and the General Services 

Administration (GSA), who worked on the design and development of the 

website. We reviewed OMB and GSA staff’s description of the 

development of Performance.gov from our interviews and compared it 

against criteria established by HowTo.gov, a source of guidance and 

leading practices for government websites.6 We also conducted an 

analysis of the ease with which commercial search engines, and 

Performance.gov’s internal site search engine, can be used to find 

relevant information on Performance.gov. Lastly, we reviewed design 

features from a subset of other federal open government websites, 

including Recovery.gov, Data.gov, and USASpending.gov, which like 

Performance.gov are used to make government-wide information and 

data accessible.7

To further address our objective, we interviewed potential users of 

Performance.gov, including executive branch and congressional staff and 

a variety of nonfederal stakeholders. We reached out to groups most 

likely to use the information on Performance.gov because of their 

management, oversight, advocacy, or academic interests and asked them 

to review the website prior to our interviews. We interviewed staff from 

 

5

OMB Circular No. A-11, Preparation, Submission, and Execution of the Budget, pt. 6 

(August 2012).

6

http://www.howto.gov/. 

7

Recovery.gov is a website required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 

2009 that is designed to provide citizens with user-friendly, interactive tools to track how 

and where Recovery Act funds are spent and that offers the public an opportunity to report 

suspected fraud, waste, or abuse related to Recovery Act funding. Data.gov is a website 

designed to increase the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets 

that are generated and held by the federal government. Data.gov provides descriptions of 

the federal datasets, information about how to access the datasets, and tools that 

leverage government datasets. A primary goal of Data.gov is to improve access to federal 

data and expand creative use of those data beyond the government. USASpending.gov is 

a website required by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 

that provides data about the various types of contracts, grants, loans, and other types of 

spending to provide a broader picture of the federal spending process and to help to meet 

the need for greater transparency.
 

Page 4 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

five agencies—the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of the 

Interior, Department of Labor, Department of State, and the 

Environmental Protection Agency—responsible for reporting performance 

information to gather their perceptions on the utility of Performance.gov. 

We selected from agencies that have not been the subject of our 

GPRAMA mandate work and grouped them together according to the 

number of their priority goals. We then selected the agency in each group 

that used the largest number of tools of government—such as direct 

service, regulations, grants, and loans—to achieve their performance 

goals. This process allowed us to consider a mix of agency priority goals, 

an example of each of the tools of government, and performance 

improvement officers under both career and political appointments. We 

interviewed staff from 13 different majority and minority congressional 

oversight and authorizing committee offices of the U.S. Senate and 

House of Representatives to gather their views on Performance.gov and 

any suggestions they had for improving it. See appendix I for a full list of 

the 13 committees represented in our interviews.

We also interviewed a variety of nonfederal stakeholders including 

representatives from 10 academic, advocacy, transparency, and public 

policy organizations as potential users to solicit feedback about the 

website and any suggestions they had for improving it.8

In addition, based on a review of government performance reporting 

websites, we selected a group of 12 websites from state and local levels, 

as well as one from Canada, to gather lessons learned from 

representatives of these performance reporting websites that were 

relevant to the design and development of Performance.gov. To focus 

this review on performance reporting websites, we selected only sites that 

We selected 

these individuals on the basis of our literature review and 

recommendations from other performance management and reporting 

academics and practitioners. The results of these interviews are not 

generalizable to all nonfederal stakeholders but provided insights into 

perceptions of Performance.gov.

 

8

We interviewed academics and practitioners from the California State University San 

Bernardino, Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada, 

Government Performance Coalition, Socrata, University of Victoria, and the Wilfrid Laurier 

University. Our advocacy and transparency group representatives were from the Center 

for Effective Government, Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, OpentheGovernment.org, 

and the Project on Government Oversight.
 

Page 5 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

presented performance information through web pages; we did not select 

transparency websites that are designed to make available information on 

state finances and the distribution of state expenditures. Table 1 provides 

a list of the state, local, and Canadian performance reporting websites we 

selected to review.

Table 1: State, Local, and Canadian Performance Reporting Websites Reviewed

Entity Link to the performance reporting website

State of Alaska Alaska Departmental Performance Indicators

City of Boston Boston About Results

Country of Canada Canada’s Performance

State of Indiana Results.IN.gov

State of Louisiana Louisiana Performance Accountability System

State of Maryland Maryland StateStat 

State of Michigan MiDashboard

State of New Jersey Governor’s Performance Center

City of New York New York Citywide Performance Report

State of Pennsylvania Report on State Performance

State of Utah Utah’s Performance Elevated 

State of Virginia Virginia Performs – Agency Planning and Performance 

Measures

State of Washington Washington GMAP 

Source: GAO.

We conducted our work from July 2012 to June 2013 in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards 

require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate 

evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions 

based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained 

provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on 

our audit objectives. More detailed information on our scope and 

methodology appears in appendix I.

In recent years, significant improvements in data management and 

presentation technologies have made it possible for governments to 

report performance information in new ways. Prior to the development of 

these technologies, performance information was generally reported in 

static reports, such as printed annual reports. Technology now allows 

data to be collected from different operational units and then presented 

Background
 

Page 6 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

through interactive, web-based dashboards and performance-reporting 

websites to provide an integrated, multidimensional view of a 

government’s performance. This advantage can give web-based 

performance reporting the ability to more efficiently convey 

understandable information to stakeholders and citizens.

Performance reporting websites are dynamic and can be updated on a 

more frequent basis, or in real-time if technology allows and data are 

available, ensuring that information is timely. They can also be flexible 

enough to meet the needs of different audiences. For example, they can 

be used to combine and organize, or layer, different levels of performance 

information, allowing users to quickly access information from an overall 

organizational perspective and to drill down to get a more detailed 

perspective at the sub-unit level. In addition, performance reporting 

websites can be made more engaging for users through the use of tables 

and interactive graphics and maps that allow users to visualize 

performance information in different ways.

Governments at the local and state level in the United States and in other 

countries have developed performance reporting websites. The purposes 

of these websites include, for example, compliance with statutory 

reporting requirements and making information on the goals and 

performance of government more widely accessible and transparent for 

those inside and outside of government. Officials from other state 

governments, who have developed performance reporting websites, 

emphasized that making regularly-updated and understandable 

information on goals and performance widely accessible for potential 

users of information on the site, such as interested members of the 

general public, legislators, executive branch leaders, delivery partners, 

the media, key stakeholders, advocacy groups, and researchers can 

increase oversight and lead to a greater focus within government on the 

activities and efforts necessary to improve performance. In this way, the 

websites can also enhance accountability within government and support 

a culture of performance. These websites can also be used to facilitate 

communication by providing a shared source of information on goals and 

performance.

According to OMB, the Performance.gov website is intended to highlight 

the administration’s management initiatives and address the performance 

reporting requirements of GPRAMA. Figure 1 displays the 

Performance.gov home page.
 

Page 7 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 1: Performance.gov Home Page 

Note: Web page can be accessed at http://www.performance.gov/ (last viewed April 25, 2013). 

To comply with the requirements of GPRAMA, the current version of 

Performance.gov also provides information, which is to be updated on a 

quarterly basis, on agency and cross-agency priority goals. The pages 

with information on agency and cross-agency priority goals can be 

accessed either through individual agency pages on Performance.gov or 

through the website’s “Clear Goals” page.9,10

 

9

The information available on 

http://goals.performance.gov/agencies. 10 http://goals.performance.gov/goals_2013. 
 

Page 8 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

agency priority goals includes the strategies being used to achieve each 

goal, next steps and milestones, performance indicators used to track 

progress, and contributing programs. Figure 2 provides an example of 

how performance trends are presented graphically through an agency 

priority goal page.

Figure 2: Example of an Agency Priority Goal Web Page 

Note: Web page can be accessed at http://goals.performance.gov/goal_detail/USDA/341 (last viewed 

April 25, 2013). 

We recently examined the extent to which 24 agencies implemented 

selected requirements related to 102 agency priority goals and 
 

Page 9 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

commented on the 21 agency priority goals of 5 selected agencies. We 

recommended that OMB could improve agency priority goal 

implementation by revising its guidance to better reflect interim target, 

milestone, and cross-agency priority goal alignment requirements and by 

ensuring that agencies provide complete information about external 

contributors to their agency priority goals and describe congressional 

input on the goal’s development.11

In addition, GPRAMA requires federal government performance plan 

information; agency-level strategic plans, agency performance plans, and 

agency performance updates; and detailed information about each 

program identified by agencies to be posted on the website. According to 

OMB’s guidance, these additional features will be added to the website 

over time.

OMB concurred with the 

recommendations.

12

 

11See 

Figure 3 provides a timeline of key dates in the 

implementation of Performance.gov, including OMB’s projected dates for 

the inclusion of additional information.

GAO-13-174. 

12OMB Circular No. A-11, Preparation, Submission, and Execution of the Budget, pt. 6 

(August 2012). 
 

Page 10 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 3: Performance.gov Implementation Timeline

In the past, GSA served as a technology partner in the development of 

Performance.gov, helping OMB with the technical development and with 

responsibility for hosting and operating the system. According to OMB 

staff, OMB will maintain responsibility for the website, but going forward, 

the plans are that the effort will be driven more by GSA and the 

Performance Improvement Council (PIC), with GSA continuing to provide 
 

Page 11 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

technological support and hosting the project management office.13 For 

future development of Performance.gov, OMB and federal agencies are 

working on a Performance Management Line of Business (PMLOB) that, 

according to OMB staff, will standardize the collection and reporting of 

performance information by federal agencies. A Line of Business initiative 

is a cross-agency effort to define, design, implement, and monitor a set of 

common solutions for a government-wide business function or service. 

The initiatives’ goals generally include improved agency mission 

performance; reduced government costs though consolidation and 

standardization; and simplified service delivery.

HowTo.gov is a key source of leading practices for federal website 

development and management. The website is managed by GSA and 

designed as a resource to improve how agencies communicate and 

interact with customers and use innovative tools and technologies to 

provide services and information. HowTo.gov offers best practices, 

guidance, and training on strategic planning; federal web requirements 

and policies; applications, data, and web infrastructure tools; web content 

management, usability, and design; and performance metrics. According 

to GSA staff, to provide access to key industry practices HowTo.gov 

makes available a list of the “Top 10 Best Practices” for federal websites 

and provides detailed information on how to implement each practice (see 

table 2). OMB has also encouraged the more widespread application of 

many of these practices across the federal government in its Digital 

Government Strategy.14

 

13GPRAMA established the PIC, which is chaired by the Deputy Director for Management 

at OMB and includes agency performance improvement officers (PIO) from each of the 24 

Chief Financial Officer Act agencies as well as other PIOs and individuals designated by 

the chairperson. The PIC is charged with assisting OMB to improve the performance of 

the federal government. Among its other responsibilities, the PIC is to facilitate the 

exchange among agencies of useful performance improvement practices and work to 

resolve government-wide or crosscutting performance issues. For more information on the 

PIC, see GAO-13-356. 

14The Digital Government Strategy is a federal government initiative, released in May 

2012, designed to help federal agencies improve the digital information and services they 

deliver to citizens. 

Leading Practices for 

Federal Websites 

Should Guide the 

Continued 

Development of 

Performance.gov in a 

Number of Areas
 

Page 12 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Table 2: Top 10 Best Practices for Government Websites from HowTo.gov

HowTo.gov best practice Summary description of implementation guidance

1. Meet all laws, requirements, policies and 

directives for federal public websites

Recommends being aware of how well a website meets relevant laws, regulations, 

executive orders, policies, and other directives

2. Document and follow a web governance 

plan

Recommends defining and documenting the goals or purposes of a website, its 

organization and management, the roles and responsibilities of those involved in its 

development and management, and the policies and procedures for how content will 

be managed

3. Implement a content strategy Recommends, among other things, developing a content strategy, organizing content 

based on audience needs, and using common content, terminology, placement, 

consistent navigation, and plain language

4. Focus on top tasks Recommends analyzing the needs of an audience to identify the top tasks for which a 

visitor will use the website, and then structuring information and tools in a way that will 

help them quickly complete those tasks

5. Collaborate across agencies to avoid 

duplication

Recommends collaborating with staff across agencies to develop cross-agency 

portals, and letting the organization with the greatest expertise create content, to 

avoid duplication or potential inconsistencies and to help ensure the accuracy of 

information

6. Regularly conduct user testing with actual 

customers 

Recommends regularly testing a website with actual users to find out what is or is not 

working with a website

7. Use performance metrics (not opinion) to 

influence design and drive improvements

Recommends collecting and analyzing web performance, customer satisfaction, and 

other metrics to identify potential improvements to the organization and content of a 

website

8. Make sure that people can find the most 

important content using search tools

Recommends using search engine optimization to ensure that commercial search 

engines can find and display a website, and that content available on the website can 

be found through the site’s search engine

9. Engage customers to create a two-way 

dialogue

Recommends engaging users through surveys, focus groups, user testing, and other 

outreach to collect feedback and insights necessary to inform improvements to a 

website

10. Stay current with the latest research and 

best practices

Recommends staying apprised of the latest research, best practices, and training 

opportunities in website management and design, digital media, and citizen 

engagement

Source: GAO analysis of information available through HowTo.gov.

Note: The list of best practices can be accessed at http://www.HowTo.gov/web-content/requirementsand-best-practices/top-10-best-practices (last viewed May 9, 2013). 

In addition to these leading practices for the development of federal 

websites, lessons learned from the experiences of those who have 

developed other government performance reporting websites and views 

of potential users provide useful insights that could help inform the 

continued development of Performance.gov.

OMB staff stated that, thus far, the specific legal requirements of 

GPRAMA have been the primary framework used to guide efforts to 

develop Performance.gov. They have been focused on working to comply 
 

Page 13 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

with these requirements by providing information on agency and crossagency priority goals and by establishing a phased development plan for 

integrating additional information from agency strategic plans, 

performance plans, and performance reports and the inventory of federal 

programs. OMB and GSA staff members have said, however, that the 

leading practices provided by HowTo.gov will help guide the future 

development of Performance.gov.

Leading practices for the development of federal websites from 

HowTo.gov recommend identifying the purposes of a website and the 

ways in which specific audiences could use a website to accomplish 

various tasks, from finding relevant information to commenting on a 

government regulation to conducting a transaction, and then structuring 

information and navigation to help visitors quickly complete these tasks. 

According to HowTo.gov, this is important because people often visit 

government websites with a specific task in mind, and if it is not easy to 

find the information they want to quickly complete that task, they will leave 

the site. Providing guidance about the tasks that can be accomplished on 

a website, along with explanations and navigation assistance, can help 

website users successfully achieve their objectives.

Similarly, some officials we interviewed from other governments with 

experience developing performance reporting websites emphasized the 

importance of understanding and articulating the purposes that a 

performance reporting website is designed to achieve. They noted that 

the audiences the website is designed to serve, along with the intended 

uses of a site, should influence its design and content. For example, the 

main purpose of the state of Michigan’s dashboards is to provide citizens 

with a quick reference to see how the state is performing in key areas and 

whether trends are moving in the right direction. To fulfill this purpose, 

according to Michigan officials, the dashboards were designed to be 

simple, easy to access and navigate, and provide the public with an at-aglance overview of the state’s progress. Users interested in more 

information on a specific performance measure can click on the link for 

that measure and will be directed to a separate page with trend data and 

information on why the measure is significant. A prominent link at the 

bottom of the page also allows them to provide direct feedback on the 

dashboard. The dashboards are supplemented by departmental 

“scorecards” that include relevant performance measures to inform 

internal departmental management and decision making. An example of 

the Michigan Education Dashboard is shown in figure 4.

OMB Provides Little 

Direction on How 

Different Audiences Could 

Use Performance.gov’s 

Information
 

Page 14 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 4: Example of the Michigan Education Dashboard

Note: Website can be accessed at https://www.michigan.gov/midashboard/0,4624,7-256-58084—-

,00.html (last viewed April 25, 2013). 

GPRAMA provides direction on the purposes and audiences for 

Performance.gov. In addition to specifying the types of information to be 
 

Page 15 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

made available on the website, the act states that information on the 

website “shall be readily accessible and easily found on the Internet by 

the public and members and committees of Congress.”15 OMB’s written 

guidance states that Performance.gov “serves as the public window on 

the Federal Government’s goals and performance in key areas of focus,” 

and will be “the single, government-wide performance website required 

under the GPRA Modernization Act.” OMB’s written guidance and 

information on the website also say that Performance.gov will make 

information about cross-agency and agency-specific goals and 

performance easier to find for the public and Congress, as required by 

GPRAMA, as well as for delivery partners, agency employees, the media, 

and other stakeholders. Lastly, the guidance specifies that the website 

will “support coordination and decision-making to advance shared 

goals.”16

An analysis of statements from OMB and GSA staff, agency officials, and 

feedback we obtained from potential users, however, indicates that there 

are varying expectations regarding the primary audiences and uses of 

Performance.gov. For example, OMB and GSA staff emphasized that 

they have viewed Performance.gov as a tool for agencies to support 

cross-agency coordination and efforts to achieve agency goals. 

Consistent with this, OMB staff said that Performance.gov has been used 

to facilitate conversations between OMB examiners and agency 

managers about progress on agency priority goals. While officials we 

interviewed from the five agencies said that OMB has collected feedback 

from agencies in the development of Performance.gov, officials from four 

of these agencies also said, however, that Performance.gov is not being 

used as a resource by agency leadership or other staff. According to 

agency officials, agencies have information sources tailored to meet their 

needs, and Performance.gov does not contain critical indicators or the 

ability to display some visualizations used for internal agency 

performance reviews. Agency officials stressed instead that they view 

Performance.gov primarily as an external reporting tool so that the public 

and other external stakeholders can get a sense for how agencies are 

performing on key priorities. For example, an agency official noted that a 

key function of Performance.gov is to make performance data more 

 

1531 U.S.C. § 1122(d).

16OMB Circular No. A-11, Preparation, Submission, and Execution of the Budget, pt. 6 

(August 2012).
 

Page 16 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

readily available in one place so that members of the public and external 

stakeholders do not have to go to individual agency sites to collect 

information on agency goals and performance.

Several potential users and a practitioner we interviewed also indicated 

that it was unclear to them who the audience of Performance.gov is, and 

how audiences would use the site, given its content and design. For 

example, some said that, while the public is listed as an audience of the 

website, the detailed, technical nature of the website seemed primarily 

oriented toward a government, rather than a public audience. Some also 

commented that developers need clarity about how different audiences 

should be able to use a website, as developers can then ensure it is 

designed to present information in a way that addresses the needs of 

those audiences. OMB and GSA staff members have acknowledged that, 

given the requirements of GPRAMA, Performance.gov will need to shift to 

become a more publicly-oriented website in the future, which could 

involve a more thematic presentation to engage the public.

While the “Areas of Focus” section of the Performance.gov home page 

directs visitors to pages that allow them to explore information and 

metrics in specific areas, OMB has not yet articulated various ways that 

intended audiences, such as interested members of the public, Congress, 

experts and researchers, agency staff, and delivery partners could use 

the website or the information available through it to accomplish other 

specific tasks. For example, as mentioned previously, OMB has stated 

that a purpose of Performance.gov is to support coordination and 

decision making to advance shared goals. While OMB said that this 

intended use will help provide direction as they take a phased approach 

to development, the current version of the website gives no indication or 

examples of the ways that agency staff, or others, such as delivery 

partners or congressional staff, could use Performance.gov to facilitate 

coordination or communication about goals, activities, and performance 

between agencies and with interested stakeholders from other sectors. It 

is also unclear whether Performance.gov includes all the information and 

design elements necessary to support coordination across agencies. The 

President’s budget for fiscal year 2014 indicates that, in the future, efforts 

will be undertaken to test the potential use of Performance.gov to 

facilitate coordination among goal allies, enlist ideas and assistance to 

accelerate progress on goals, and enhance public understanding of the 

work of the federal government.

Other federal open government websites have indicated how visitors can 

use them to accomplish specific tasks. For instance, Recovery.gov 
 

Page 17 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

contains an entire page that outlines what users can do on the site, 

including how to use the raw data available through the website, report 

waste, fraud, and abuse, or find job and grant opportunities. Data.gov 

states that it is designed to enable “the public to participate in government 

by providing downloadable Federal datasets to build applications, conduct 

analyses, and perform research,” and offers an introductory video that 

provides information on the purposes of the website and instructions on 

how to use it.

These websites have also integrated Web 2.0 technologies, such as links 

to social media feeds, to help people share and use of the information 

available through these sites.17 For example, Recovery.gov and Data.gov 

have integrated social-networking tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, 

blogs, and online discussion forums to facilitate the sharing of 

information, provide new venues for communication and participation, and 

enable collaboration and discussions between stakeholders and webbased communities of interest. Recovery.gov and Data.gov also have 

dedicated pages for different audiences that compile and organize 

relevant resources according to the needs and interests of those 

audiences. Data.gov, for instance, contains individual pages that allow 

users interested in specific areas, such as education, health, or energy, to 

find data and resources on those specific topics and to communicate with 

others who share those interests. Figure 5 provides a page for the energy 

community. To comply with the recommendations of the Digital 

Government Strategy, the Digital Services Advisory Group and the 

Federal Web Managers Council have also encouraged the use of social 

media to distribute content to large and diverse audiences and more 

effectively engage with customers.18

 

17According to GSA’s Social Media Policy, “social media” and “Web 2.0” are umbrella 

terms that encompass the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, 

and content creation.

18The Digital Services Advisory Group is made up of leaders from across the federal 

government, including representatives from the Federal Chief Information Officers Council 

and Federal Web Managers Council. Under the Digital Government Strategy, a federal 

government initiative released in May 2012 to help federal agencies improve the digital 

services they deliver to citizens, the Digital Services Advisory Group and Federal Web 

Managers Council recommended guidelines for improving digital services and customer 

experience. Those guidelines have been published on HowTo.gov (see 

http://www.HowTo.gov/customer-experience/improve-digital-services). 
 

Page 18 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 5: Data.gov Energy Community Web Page

Note: Webpage can be accessed at http://www.data.gov/energy/community/energy (last viewed April 

25, 2013). 

OMB and GSA have been working to ensure that Performance.gov 

complies with the reporting requirements of GPRAMA. However, if the 

specific intended uses of Performance.gov are not clarified, while taking 

into consideration what the law requires, it could lead to varying ideas and 

expectations for how Performance.gov should be developed and 

designed and the audiences it should serve. The website’s accessibility to 

visitors and its relevance to them could be increased by additional 
 

Page 19 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

direction on how various audiences could use the information available 

through the website, such as explanations or navigation assistance, or by 

tools, such as Web 2.0 technologies, that could facilitate that use.

Leading practices from HowTo.gov on the development of federal 

websites recommend that developers collaborate with officials from other 

agencies to avoid duplication of effort, use content that already exists, 

and let organizations with the greatest expertise on a topic create content. 

According to HowTo.gov, this is important because allowing the 

organization with the greatest expertise to create content can help ensure 

its accuracy and quality, and linking to existing content can help save time 

and resources. HowTo.gov also recommends that developers engage 

potential users through focus groups and other outreach; regularly 

conduct usability tests to gather insight into navigation, the organization of 

content, and the ease with which different types of users can complete 

specific tasks; and collect and analyze performance, customer 

satisfaction, and other metrics. HowTo.gov states that these efforts are 

important for collecting and analyzing information about audiences, their 

needs, and how they are using, or want to use, the website. This 

information is also critical to help inform the development of a useful and 

usable website that meets the needs of intended audiences.

Similarly, some developers of other government performance reporting 

websites who we interviewed reported that it is important to use a 

developmental approach focused on continuous improvement, providing 

users with opportunities to give input and feedback, so that websites can 

be adjusted and improved to meet their needs. For example, following the 

initial creation of the state’s performance reporting website, officials in 

Maryland analyzed the website’s performance metrics to get a sense for 

how people were accessing the site, as well as the information they were 

searching for. They also employed usability testing to collect insight into 

the navigation and content of the website. From these insights, they 

identified the need to make information on related state programs and 

resources more easily accessible through the website, which is now 

reflected in its design.

According to OMB and agency officials we interviewed, to leverage the 

expertise of agencies in the development of content for Performance.gov, 

OMB established a content management and review process by which 

each agency shared information and data on their own goals and 

activities with OMB. OMB also developed the Performance Reporting 

Entry Portal (PREP), a data input system, which allowed agencies to 

OMB Collaborated with 

Agency Officials and 

Collected Feedback from 

Some Congressional Staff 

and Stakeholders, but Has 

Not Indicated How It Will 

Use Outreach to Other 

Audiences to Inform 

Future Changes
 

Page 20 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

directly input their information and data on agency priority goals into 

Performance.gov. For many of the pages on cross-agency management 

initiatives, they also leveraged information from agencies and other 

federal websites, linking to existing resources and reports.

OMB used other strategies to help maintain a collaborative environment 

and open lines of communication with federal agencies. According to 

OMB staff, during the initial development of Performance.gov, OMB used 

a pilot project involving several agencies to model different iterations of 

the website and collect feedback on potential designs from agency staff. 

OMB staff members also continue to hold biweekly conference calls with 

agency staff to provide status updates on the development of 

Performance.gov, answer questions, and address concerns. A GSA staff 

member supporting the PMLOB also recently met individually with staff 

from 24 agencies to discuss the data requirements for Performance.gov 

and the best way for agencies to provide information to be made available 

through the website. According to OMB, GSA, and agency staff, they 

have been able to use this ongoing communication to collect feedback on 

Performance.gov and ideas to gradually improve the design and usability 

of the system agencies use to input data on agency priority goals. For 

instance, the PREP system has been changed in response to agency 

requests so that data from prior time periods will be pre-populated in the 

system, an improvement that was made to help reduce the burden of data 

collection on agencies.

According to OMB and GSA staff, to gather input from other audiences as 

they developed Performance.gov, they also held briefings on the website 

for congressional staff and government transparency organizations and 

performance experts based in Washington, D.C. Since 2010, OMB staff 

said that they met several times with staff from the Senate Homeland 

Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, House Oversight and 

Government Reform, and the Senate Budget Committee to discuss the 

development of Performance.gov. They noted that they used this 

outreach to stakeholders to identify several specific website modifications. 

For example, OMB staff heard from stakeholders, including congressional 

staff, that it was important for Performance.gov visitors to be able to 

understand how agency priority goals relate to broader agency strategic 

goals and objectives, so OMB nested the priority goals within the larger 

agency goal framework. OMB staff also said that several stakeholders 

noted that they appreciated the ability to filter goals by different themes, 

so OMB included the capability to apply this feature to all categories of 

goals and objectives. Of the three congressional staff we spoke with who 

said they had received briefings on the development of Performance.gov, 

Outreach and Usability Testing
 

Page 21 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

however, only one felt she had been consulted on website input. Also, 

since 2010, OMB staff reported holding no meetings on the development 

of Performance.gov with staff from other House or Senate committees 

who might use the website to inform their federal agency oversight.

Furthermore, while a focus of GPRAMA is to make federal performance 

information more accessible to the public, efforts to collect input and 

feedback from interested members of the public and other potential 

audiences have thus far been limited to the collection of suggestions 

through the website’s “Feedback” page. According to OMB staff, the 

submissions received through this portal are generally on topics unrelated 

to the website, although they do receive questions about the website or 

suggestions for minor corrections to content. They also said that the 

suggestions received through this portal have not yet had a significant 

impact on the design of the site. GSA staff said that usability testing of 

Performance.gov is planned for September 2013 and that the tests will be 

managed by usability experts from GSA and will include a mixture of 

participants from within government and from the general public. From 

this testing, they hope to inform new development and interface and 

navigation improvements.

Other federal open government websites have used broader outreach 

efforts to inform their development and design. For instance, the 

developers of Recovery.gov used both focus groups and usability testing 

with interested citizens to collect feedback and recommendations and 

inform the development of the website from its initial stages. The 

developers of Data.gov also used a technology service called IdeaScale 

to collect feedback and ideas from hundreds of users during the initial 

development of the site.

OMB and GSA monitor visitors’ use of Performance.gov using a variety of 

metrics. For example, one metric that is tracked is the total number of 

visits to Performance.gov, by month, as seen in figure 6.

Performance Metrics 
 

Page 22 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 6: Total Number of Visits to Performance.gov, August 2011 to March 2013

HowTo.gov recommends that agencies collect, analyze, and report on a 

minimum baseline set of performance, search, customer satisfaction, and 

other metrics, which allow officials to get a holistic view of how well online 

information and services are delivered. Of the 24 metrics recommended 

by Howto.gov, 15 are currently tracked for Performance.gov. See table 3 

for the list of recommended metrics and whether they are collected for 

Performance.gov.

Table 3: Performance Metrics Recommended by HowTo.gov that Are Tracked for Performance.gov

Performance metric Description

Metric tracked for 

Performance.gov

Website performance

1 Total visits An interaction by an individual viewing one or more pages on a website ●

2 Total page views The number of times a page was viewed during the designated time period 

(e.g., monthly)

●

3 Unique visitors One person (or a computer/IP address) who visits a website at least once 

during a designated time period 

●
 

Page 23 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Performance metric Description

Metric tracked for 

Performance.gov

4 Page views per visit The number of page views in a reporting period divided by the number of 

visits in the same reporting period

●

5 Average visit duration The length of time in a session (activity on a website during a specific time 

period)

●

6 Time on page The time visitors spend on individual pages ●

7 Bounce rate The percentage of visitors who looked at only one page and immediately 

left the site

●

8 New vs. returned visitor The ratio between first-ever site visitors to returning visitors (i.e., a user that 

visited the site prior to the reporting period)

●

9 Visits per visitor for a given 

time frame

The number of times a visitor visited a website during the designated time 

period (e.g., monthly)

●

10 Total number of on–site 

search queries

The total number of times the site’s search function was used ●

External search metrics

11 Top referring commercial 

search engines

The search engines (e.g., Google, Bing, Yahoo) that send the most traffic 

to the website

●

12 Top referring search terms The most-used words and phrases people type into commercial search 

engines to find content on the website

●

13 Top referring search terms 

with low click through rates 

The most common links followed for specific search terms that don’t lead to 

clicks on the website

○

Internal/site search

14 Top search terms/phrases The most-used words and phrases people type into the site’s search box ●

15 Top “no results” queries Most popular, valid searches that don’t return any results on the site’s 

search results page (e.g., because the content isn’t on the site, or the 

content isn’t findable by the person’s search term)

○

16 Top searches with low click 

through rates 

Most popular search terms that people generally don’t act (click) on ○

17 Top changing search terms 

(movement up/down)

Shows trending topics, what’s hot or not ○

18 Percentage of visitors using 

site search

Percentage of people who visited the site and used the search box on the 

web site

●

19 Top clicked URLs for specific 

queries

Most common results that searchers found most relevant or appealing, for 

specific search terms

○

Speed

20 Page load time How quickly pages (including the search results page) load on the site ●

Customer satisfaction

21 Overall customer experience Customer’s perception of the experience of their visit ○

22 Completion rate of intended 

task

The customer’s perceived ability to get the information or service they 

came to accomplish

○

23 Percent of visitors likely to 

return

A customer’s perceived willingness to choose the service for the same or 

similar task in the future

○
 

Page 24 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Performance metric Description

Metric tracked for 

Performance.gov

24 Percent of visitors likely to 

recommend 

A customer’s perceived willingness to recommend the product or service ○

Source: GAO analysis of information from GSA.

Legend: 

● This metric is tracked for Performance.gov. 

○ This metric is not tracked for Performance.gov. 

HowTo.gov also recommends setting goals for metrics, and making sure 

that these align with the objectives of a website, to help prioritize and 

guide design changes for improved performance and usability. These 

goals can be identified based on prevailing practices or the desire to 

improve a particular metric over time. Except for customer satisfaction, 

which is discussed later in this report, OMB has not yet established goals 

for any recommended metrics.

GSA staff acknowledged the need to collect additional recommended 

metrics for the website. They said that as they expand the list of metrics 

that are collected, they are planning usability testing to identify the most 

appropriate metrics for analyzing the website’s use and identifying 

improvements that will increase the usability of Performance.gov. OMB 

staff also said that right now their primary goal is releasing the legally 

required information on Performance.gov, but they will consider setting 

targets for certain metrics in the future.

In addition to performance and search metrics, HowTo.gov recommends 

that agencies collect customer satisfaction metrics, which include 

measures of overall customer experience, the completion rate of intended 

tasks, and the percentage of visitors likely to return and recommend the 

website. The Digital Government Strategy requires that agencies use 

customer satisfaction measurement tools for all .gov websites. While 

OMB has established a numerical customer satisfaction target for 

Performance.gov, the agency has not established tools on the website, 

such as online customer satisfaction surveys, that would allow them to 

collect the data necessary to track the recommended customer service 

metrics. GSA staff said that there are no public-focused customer 

satisfaction tools for Performance.gov, outside of the “Feedback” page, 

on the website because, at this stage in the website’s lifecycle, the 

primary focus has been on collecting feedback from Congress and 

agency management. They said, however, that they have used feedback 

collected through congressional meetings and feedback from members of 

the PIC, as well as comments from the “Feedback” page of the website, 
 

Page 25 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

to get a general sense of how satisfied some users are with the website. 

The “Feedback” page, however, does not ask users to rate their overall 

satisfaction or the quality of their experience.

As stated earlier, according to OMB and GSA staff, complying with the 

time frames and requirements for public reporting in GPRAMA has been 

the focus of development, although they used outreach to collect 

feedback from some congressional staff, government transparency 

organizations, and performance experts to inform changes to the website. 

A lack of outreach to other potential audiences and user testing, however, 

means that developers have not yet had an opportunity to systematically 

collect input on the information needs and preferences of potential 

audiences of the website, including interested members of the public, 

other congressional committees, delivery partners, or others; whether the 

content on the website meets the needs of different audiences; or if it is 

presented or organized in a way that makes it easily accessible. 

Furthermore, without collecting all recommended search, and customer 

satisfaction metrics, and establishing goals or targets for metrics, it may 

be more difficult for the developers of Performance.gov to get a holistic 

picture of how they are delivering information and to identify and prioritize 

potential improvements.

OMB and GSA staff have said that as the phased development of 

Performance.gov takes place, they expect to use outreach to a broader 

set of audiences, including members of the public, and usability testing 

with these audiences to make Performance.gov more “public-facing” and 

“citizen-centric.” While they have developed a general time frame for 

conducting usability tests, they have not yet established a specific plan, a 

timeline for other forms of outreach, or indicated the specific audiences 

they plan to target for greater outreach.

Leading practices from HowTo.gov recommend organizing website 

content based on audience needs and using common terminology and 

placement, consistent navigation, and plain language. HowTo.gov states 

this is important because providing consistent terminology and placement 

across a website helps users easily find what they need as they will know 

what labels to look for. Consistent navigation makes websites easier to 

use because users are more likely to find what they need from a website 

if they are familiar with its navigation scheme. Using plain language also 

makes the content of a website more accessible by using words that the 

website’s typical user can understand the first time. Lastly, leading 

practices recommend organizing and categorizing website content to help 

Performance.gov Was 

Designed with a Consistent 

Structure and Navigation, 

but Users Reported Some 

Issues with Accessibility, 

Complexity of Navigation, 

and Search Capabilities
 

Page 26 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

ensure that it can be found using commercial search engines or a 

website’s internal search engine. All of these elements factor into the 

overall usability of a site, which is key to ensuring an effective user 

experience.

Similarly, developers of some government performance reporting 

websites we interviewed emphasized the importance of designing these 

websites in a way that makes them easy to access, use, and navigate. 

Several states have tried to increase the visibility of their performance 

reporting websites by integrating them with other transparency and open 

data websites and by including prominent links on other state government 

websites. A number of state and local officials also emphasized the 

importance of making the information and data on a performance 

reporting website engaging and easily understandable. They suggested 

doing this by organizing information so users can quickly locate what is of 

interest to them through visual displays of data, minimizing the amount of 

text, avoiding the use of jargon, and ensuring that data is current and 

timely. For example, City of Boston staff said that visitors generally stay 

on these sites for limited amounts of time, so they designed the Boston 

About Results website to present performance information in a way that 

can be easily consumed and understood, using brief descriptions of key 

strategies and graphics to depict performance trends. Figure 7 shows an 

example of a screen shot from the Boston About Results website.
 

Page 27 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 7: Example from Boston About Results

Note: Web page can be accessed at 

http://www.cityofboston.gov/bar/scorecard/details_ie8.html?contextId=100435040618495&isExternal=

_external (last viewed April 25, 2013). 

Performance.gov is accessible from some other federal websites, a key 

source of potential traffic. For example, USASpending.gov includes a link 

to Performance.gov on its home page and the “Government 

Performance” link on the “topics” page of USA.gov includes 

Performance.gov at the top of a list of links. Other federal websites, 

however, including Data.gov, the White House and OMB home pages, 

and the websites of the five agencies included in our study do not have 

links to Performance.gov. As one potential user from a government 

transparency organization pointed out, if Performance.gov is not 

connected in any meaningful way with other federal information and data 

Accessibility of 

Performance.gov 
 

Page 28 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

websites, it may not be a site that government data users would naturally 

go to. Furthermore, a lack of social media integration on Performance.gov 

could increase the effort required for users to share content from the 

website. A lack of other communication tools, such as RSS feeds and 

social media, which can be used to alert users to new or important 

content and enable website administrators to push out timely and relevant 

information, could also limit the website’s ability to keep interested users 

informed about new content.19

The various sections of Performance.gov were designed with a consistent 

organization and navigation. This can be seen particularly in the structure 

of individual agency pages. As shown in the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture example in figure 8, each page includes a brief overview of 

the agency’s mission, includes links to the agencies existing performance 

reports, and has three tabs with information on the agency, the agency’s 

goals, and the agency’s efforts on government-wide management 

initiatives. The “agency goals” tabs also use a consistent, layered 

structure to provide lists of agency strategic goals, objectives, and priority 

goals. According to GSA staff, this platform will also be used to organize 

the Performance.gov information on agency strategic goals and 

objectives that will be added to comply with the GPRAMA requirement 

that the website include agency strategic plans, annual performance 

plans, and annual performance reports.

 

19RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is defined by HowTo.gov as a web content format 

which, when used with an RSS aggregator, allows a website to alert users to new content. 

RSS feeds enable users to avoid the conventional methods of browsing or searching for 

information on websites, as the content is delivered directly to them. 

Organization and Navigation 
 

Page 29 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 8: U.S. Department of Agriculture Agency Page on Performance.gov

Note: Web page can be accessed at http://goals.performance.gov/agency/usda (viewed on April 25, 

2013). 

The use of layering is a common practice in the design of performance 

reporting websites, as it allows developers to structure the presentation of 

information in a way that meets the needs of different audiences by 

allowing them to access the level of information that is most relevant for 

them. For example, the approach begins with the presentation of higherlevel goals, highlights, or more aggregated information, while allowing 
 

Page 30 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

those users interested in progressively more detailed goals or information 

to drill down and find the level of information most appropriate for their 

needs.

Several individuals we interviewed had positive comments on the layered 

structure used to organize the information on agency strategic goals, 

objectives, and priority goals within Performance.gov and said that using 

the same format across goals and agencies facilitated navigation. 

However, others we spoke with, including some agency officials, raised 

concerns that the complexity of the website’s navigation contributes to the 

difficulty of finding critical pieces of information on the site, particularly 

information on individual agency priority goals. For example, if a user 

chooses to access information on agency priority goals through the page 

of an individual agency, the user would need to click through multiple 

drop downs and tabs, and navigate to a new page, before reaching the 

tab that has a graphic depicting a specific agency priority goal’s progress. 

If a user is unaware that this information exists, the user may not be able 

to easily find it, and Performance.gov does not include instructions on 

how to locate this information. To facilitate access to information on 

agency and cross-agency goals, a number of experts and potential users 

suggested that the Performance.gov home page include a thematic index, 

similar to the filter on the “Clear Goals” page that currently allows users to 

search for goals by different themes, like agriculture, energy, or natural

resources and environment. Other suggestions for the pages on 

individual agency priority goals were to make the goals and visualizations 

of performance trends a more central part of the presentation.

OMB staff said that lessons learned through the federal government’s 

past experience with performance reporting have emphasized presenting 

performance information in an appropriate context with relevant 

information on agency missions, goals, activities, and factors that 

influence performance. According to OMB staff, the use of plain language 

was a focus in trying to make Performance.gov easy to understand, and 

OMB held a briefing on plain language for agencies developing content 

for Performance.gov. However, several potential users we spoke with 

also noted that some pages on Performance.gov include jargon and 

technical detail that may not be understandable or relevant to certain 

audiences, including members of the general public. Concerns were also 

expressed that some pages on Performance.gov contain too much text, 

which can limit the accessibility of information. 

Our analysis of the ease with which commercial search engines, and 

Performance.gov’s internal site search engine, can be used to find 

Search Optimization
 

Page 31 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

relevant information on the website produced mixed results. When using 

a commercial search engine to search for several general, governmentwide terms, including “federal government goals,” “agency performance,” 

and “federal agency performance measures,” we found that a link to 

Performance.gov was listed on the first page of results for all of these 

searches. We also found that a link to Performance.gov was included on 

the first page of results when using a variety of agency-specific search 

terms, including “Department of Agriculture performance,” “EPA goals,” 

“Department of Labor goals,” “Department of Interior goals,” and 

“Department of State performance.” 

The results of using Performance.gov’s internal search engine to find 

relevant information on the website were mixed, however. To analyze the 

ease with which a user could find relevant agency priority goal pages 

using the website’s search engine, we used topic-focused search terms 

taken from specific agency priority goals of the five agencies included in 

our study, including “rural communities,” “greenhouse gas,” “climate 

change,” “training programs,” and “Afghanistan.” For only two of these 

five searches—on “rural communities” and “Afghanistan”—however, did 

the results include a link to the relevant agency priority goal page. The 

results sometimes included links to other potentially relevant pages on 

Performance.gov, such as those with information on related cross-agency 

priority goals, cross-government management initiatives, or featured 

stories. Many of the links included in the results direct users to web pages 

that include agency overviews or lists of agency strategic goals, but which 

do not appear to be part of the normal Performance.gov structure. Figure 

9 is an example of one of these pages.
 

Page 32 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Figure 9: Example of a Web Page Included in the List of Results Using Performance.gov’s Internal Search Engine to Search 

for “Climate Change” 

Note: Web page can be accessed at 

http://goals.performance.gov/agency/usda/agency_performance_goals (web page last accessed April 

25, 2013). 

While the opinions of potential users on the organization and navigation 

of Performance.gov were mixed, comments and our analysis of 

Performance.gov’s internal search engine indicated the site’s overall 

usability could be limited for potential audiences by several factors: the 

complexity of the website’s navigation, difficulty accessing some 

information, the lack of an effective internal search engine, and the level 

of detail and technical information provided. Actions OMB and GSA are 

taking to develop a more public-oriented and usability-focused 

perspective for Performance.gov are discussed later in the report.

Leading practices for the development of federal websites recommend 

defining and documenting how a website will be governed, including the 

structure of the team managing the website, the roles and responsibilities 

of different stakeholders, and the policies and procedures that will be 

used to govern the creation and management of content. HowTo.gov 

states this is important because codifying how a website will be governed, 

as well as its organizational structure, policies, and procedures provide 

involved staff with a common understanding of how things are supposed 

to work.

The Proposed 

Performance Management 

Line of Business Offers a 

Potential Structure for 

Addressing Identified 

Issues and Applying 

Leading Practices
 

Page 33 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

As noted previously, staff from OMB, GSA, and members of the PIC are 

considering whether to create a Performance Management Line of 

Business (PMLOB). According to OMB and GSA staff, in an effort to 

document the potential governance structure of the PMLOB and 

Performance.gov, as well as the roles and responsibilities of various key 

stakeholders and the processes that will be used for major decisions, a 

draft charter was developed. OMB staff said the charter was completed in 

May 2013.

The proposed creation of the PMLOB has also offered an opportunity to 

define the purposes and scope of the system that will be used to 

centralize the collection of performance data from agencies, as well as 

how it will be displayed on Performance.gov. For instance, an executive 

steering committee made up of staff from OMB, GSA, and several 

members and staff from the PIC, has been created. OMB staff said that 

the intent of the committee is to provide a forum for the discussion of 

potential options and to help determine the requirements that a future 

iteration of Performance.gov and its underlying data collection system 

must fulfill and what purposes they should be designed to accomplish.

According to OMB and GSA staff, they are also developing working 

groups to examine various issues. For example, a working group on 

“business intelligence” has been established through the PIC to help 

determine how to more effectively use the website’s performance 

information to support internal management and coordination. They are 

also starting a working group on the presentation and display of 

performance information through Performance.gov. GSA staff said that 

members of the PIC have been asked to collect agency input on the 

current version of Performance.gov, the reporting burden it presents, 

what they like and do not like about it, and what they would like to see in 

future iterations of the website. Potential solutions to address identified 

issues will then be developed and considered.

OMB and GSA staff also said that the knowledge and capacity of the 

Center for Excellence in Digital Government, a component within GSA 

that provides government-wide support on the use of the Web, social 

media, and other technologies to improve customer service, will be used 

to help bring a more public-oriented and usability-focused perspective to 

Performance.gov.

A GSA representative emphasized that the development of 

Performance.gov will happen in phases as funding becomes available. 

Performance.gov has been funded through the E-Government fund, 
 

Page 34 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

which consists of funding appropriated by Congress every year.20 GSA 

staff said that while funding for the development of the website has been 

consistent over the past 2 years, it has varied over time. The staff added 

that at times funding was only sufficient to cover operational expenses 

with no funding available for new development. The GSA representative 

also noted that while the focus of the PMLOB is on making performance 

information more visible and transparent for Congress and the public by 

replacing printed reports with a publicly accessible website, there is hope 

that the shift to the PMLOB will provide improved, steady governance of 

performance management across government and greater stability from 

one administration to another.

OMB’s and GSA’s development efforts for Performance.gov have been 

focused on ensuring that information required by GPRAMA is available on 

the website. Leading practices for the development of federal websites, 

however, offer insights into approaches that could be used to guide the 

development of Performance.gov going forward. For example, clarity 

about the intended uses of Performance.gov could provide additional 

direction to ensure that the website is developed as a valuable and 

relevant tool for its audiences, including interested members of the public 

and Congress, agency staff, delivery partners, and other potential 

audiences. The practices could also help determine any design changes, 

such as navigation assistance or the integration of Web 2.0 technologies, 

to facilitate those intended uses.

While OMB collected input from some congressional staff, government 

transparency organizations, and performance experts, the limited 

outreach to a broader set of potential audiences and the lack of usability 

testing to date means that OMB does not know whether Performance.gov 

meets users needs or how the website could be further developed. Not 

tracking all recommended performance metrics, particularly those 

measuring user satisfaction or establishing appropriate goals for certain 

metrics, may also make it more difficult to analyze the effectiveness of the 

website and to identify and prioritize potential improvements.

 

2044 U.S.C. § 3604.

Conclusions
 

Page 35 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

To enhance the value of Performance.gov for intended audiences and 

improve the ability to identify and prioritize potential improvements, we 

are recommending that the Director of the Office of Management and 

Budget—working with the Performance Improvement Council and the 

General Services Administration—take the following three actions:

• Clarify the ways that intended audiences could use the information on 

the Performance.gov website to accomplish specific tasks and specify 

the design changes that would be required to facilitate that use.

• Seek to more systematically collect information on the needs of a 

broader audience, including through the use of customer satisfaction 

surveys and other approaches recommended by HowTo.gov.

• Seek to ensure that all performance, search, and customer 

satisfaction metrics, consistent with leading practices outlined in 

HowTo.gov, are tracked for the website, and, where appropriate, 

create goals for those metrics to help identify and prioritize potential 

improvements to Performance.gov.

We provided a draft of this report to the Director of OMB and the Acting 

Administrator of GSA for review and comment. OMB staff provided oral 

comments, and we made technical changes as appropriate. OMB staff 

agreed with our recommendations. GSA did not have comments on the 

report. We also provided the draft for review and comment to the five 

agencies with officials we interviewed regarding their perspectives on 

Performance.gov. None of the five agencies had comments.

We are sending copies of this report to the Director of OMB and the 

Acting Administrator of GSA as well as appropriate congressional 

committees and other interested parties. The report is also available at no 

charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov. If you have any 

questions concerning this report, please contact me at (202) 512-6806 or 

mihmj@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional 

Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. 

Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix II.

J. Christopher Mihm

Managing Director, Strategic Issues

Recommendations for 

Executive Action

Agency Comments
Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and

Methodology

Page 36 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

This report is part of our response to a mandate to assess initial 

implementation of the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010.1 Specifically, this 

report examines the extent to which Performance.gov incorporates 

leading practices for the development of federal websites. This report is 

the fifth in a series that looks at how agencies are implementing various 

GPRAMA requirements.2

To address our objective, we analyzed information from the 

Performance.gov website and the requirements from GPRAMA regarding 

the website. We also examined related guidance, such as the Office of 

Management and Budget’s (OMB) Circular No. A-11, which lays out 

expectations on the design, development, and implementation of 

Performance.gov.3

We conducted interviews with staff at OMB and the General Services 

Administration (GSA), who worked on the design and development of the 

website. We reviewed OMB and GSA staff’s description of the 

development of Performance.gov from our interviews and compared it 

against criteria established by HowTo.gov, a source of guidance and 

We reviewed relevant academic and policy literature 

on performance management and reporting, including our previous 

reports on performance management. The literature was selected based 

on whether it provided relevant information on the reporting requirements 

in GPRAMA, lessons learned from the development of other federal 

reporting systems, or insights into performance reporting best practices or 

lessons learned.

 

1

Pub. L. No. 111-352, § 15(b)(1). 

2

See GAO, Managing for Results: Agencies Should More Fully Develop Priority Goals 

under the GPRA Modernization Act, GAO-13-174 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 19, 2013); 

Managing for Results: Agencies Have Elevated Performance Leadership Roles, but 

Additional Training is Needed, GAO-13-356 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 16, 2013); Managing 

for Results: Data-Driven Performance Reviews Show Promise But Agencies Should 

Explore How to Involve Other Relevant Agencies, GAO-13-228 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 

27, 2013); and Managing for Results: GAO’s Work Related to the Interim Crosscutting 

Priority Goals under the GPRA Modernization Act, GAO-12-620R (Washington, D.C.: May 

2012).

3

OMB Circular No. A-11, Preparation, Submission, and Execution of the Budget, pt. 6 

(August 2012).

Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and 

Methodology 
Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 37 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

leading practices for government websites.4 We also conducted an 

analysis of the ease with which commercial search engines and 

Performance.gov’s internal site search engine can be used to find 

relevant information on Perfomance.gov. Lastly, we reviewed a subset of 

federal open government websites, including Recovery.gov, Data.gov, 

and USASpending.gov. These websites were selected because, like 

Performance.gov, they are used to make government-wide information 

more transparent through publicly-accessible websites. We reviewed 

design features of each, including whether they identified their purposes, 

audiences, and potential uses, and approaches they used to facilitate 

access to information.5

To further address our objective, we obtained the views and suggestions 

of potential users of Performance.gov. We interviewed executive branch 

and congressional staff and a variety of nonfederal stakeholders. We 

reached out to groups most likely to use the information on 

Performance.gov because of their management, oversight, advocacy, or 

academic interest and asked them to review the website prior to our 

interviews. We selected five agencies to gather their perceptions on the 

utility of Performance.gov—the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 

Department of the Interior, Department of Labor, Department of State, 

and the Environmental Protection Agency. We selected these agencies 

from those that have not previously been the subject of our GPRAMA 

mandate work. We grouped agencies with the same number of priority 

 

4 http://www.howto.gov/. We applied HowTo.gov best practice #1, meeting all laws, 

requirements, policies, and directives for federal public websites, only to meeting the 

requirements specified in the GPRA Modernization Act requiring the website. We did not 

evaluate Performance.gov for compliance with the legal requirements generally applicable 

to all federal public websites.

5

Recovery.gov is a website required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 

2009 that is designed to provide citizens with user-friendly, interactive tools to track how 

and where Recovery Act funds are spent, and that offers the public an opportunity to 

report suspected fraud, waste, or abuse related to Recovery Act funding. Data.gov is a 

website designed to increase the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use 

datasets that are generated and held by the federal government. Data.gov provides 

descriptions of the federal datasets, information about how to access the datasets, and 

tools that leverage government datasets. A primary goal of Data.gov is to improve access 

to federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond government. 

USASpending.gov is a website required by the Federal Funding Accountability and 

Transparency Act of 2006 that provides data about the various types of contracts, grants, 

loans, and other types of spending to provide a broader picture of the federal spending 

process and to help meet the need for greater transparency.
Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 38 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

goals together, and selected the agency in each group that uses the 

largest number of tools of government—such as direct service, 

regulations, grants, and loans—to achieve their performance goals. This 

process allowed us to consider a mix of agency priority goals, an example 

of each of the tools of government, and performance improvement 

officers under both career and political appointments.

We also interviewed staff from 13 different majority and minority 

congressional oversight and authorizing committee offices of the U.S. 

Senate and House of Representatives to gather their views on 

Performance.gov and any suggestions they had for improving it. We 

interviewed congressional staff from the committees shown in table 4.

Table 4: Staff Interviewed from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives 

Congressional Oversight and Authorizing Committees

Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Majority

Senate Budget Committee Government Performance Task Force, Majority

Senate Budget Committee, Minority

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Minority

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on 

Federal Financial Management, Majority

Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Majority

Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Minority

House Budget Committee, Minority

House Foreign Affairs Committee, Minority

House Homeland Security Committee, Majority

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Majority

House Veterans Affairs Committee, Majority

House Veterans Affairs Committee, Minority

Source: GAO.

We also interviewed a variety of nonfederal stakeholders including 

representatives from 10 academic, advocacy, transparency, and public 

policy organizations to solicit feedback about the use of performance 

reports, their use of the website, and suggestions they had for improving 

it. We interviewed academics and practitioners from the California State 

University San Bernardino; Government Finance Officers Association of 

the United States and Canada; Government Performance Coalition; 

Socrata; University of Victoria; and the Wilfrid Laurier University. Our 

advocacy and transparency group representatives were from the Center 

for Effective Government; Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy; 
Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 39 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

OpentheGovernment.org; and the Project on Government Oversight. We 

selected these academics and practitioners on the basis of our literature 

review and recommendations from other performance management and 

reporting academics and practitioners. The results of these interviews are 

not generalizable to all nonfederal stakeholders but provided insights into 

perceptions of Performance.gov.

In addition, based on a review of government performance reporting 

websites, we selected a group of 12 websites from state and local levels, 

as well as one from Canada, to gather lessons learned and best practices 

from representatives of these performance reporting websites that were 

relevant to the design and development of Performance.gov. To identify 

examples of web-based performance reporting by state governments, we 

visited the main government websites of all 50 states, or their governor’s 

website, and searched each one using the search term “performance” to 

identify any relevant agency or government-wide websites providing 

performance information in a web-based format. We selected only sites 

that presented performance information through web pages; we did not 

select transparency websites that are generally designed to make 

available information on state finances and the distribution of state 

expenditures. To identify relevant examples of web-based performance 

reporting by local governments, we conducted a search similar to the 

state sites and talked to representatives from the local websites who 

agreed to be interviewed. To identify international performance reporting 

websites, we visited the websites of several national governments of 

English-speaking countries recognized for performance reporting—

Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand—to examine if 

these governments had developed government-wide performance 

reporting websites. Through this approach, we identified the Canadian 

government’s “Planning and Performance Gateway,” which consists of 

the Canada’s Performance and Overview of Government Spending and 

Performance websites. None of the other countries had government-wide 

performance reporting websites. Table 5 provides a list of the state, local, 

and Canadian performance reporting systems we selected to review with

representatives who agreed to be interviewed.

Table 5: State, Local, and Canadian Performance Reporting Websites Reviewed

Entity Link to the performance reporting website

State of Alaska Alaska Departmental Performance Indicators

City of Boston Boston About Results

Country of Canada Canada’s Performance
Appendix I: Objective, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 40 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

Entity Link to the performance reporting website

State of Indiana Results.IN.gov

State of Louisiana Louisiana Performance Accountability System

State of Maryland Maryland StateStat 

State of Michigan MiDashboard

State of New Jersey Governor’s Performance Center

City of New York New York Citywide Performance Report

State of Pennsylvania Report on State Performance

State of Utah Utah’s Performance Elevated 

State of Virginia Virginia Performs – Agency Planning and Performance 

Measures

State of Washington Washington GMAP 

Source: GAO.

We conducted our work from July 2012 to June 2013 in accordance with 

generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards 

require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate 

evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions 

based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained 

provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on 

our audit objectives.
Appendix II: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments

Page 41 GAO-13-517 Performance.gov

J. Christopher Mihm, (202) 512-6806 or mihmj@gao.gov

In addition to the contact named above, Elizabeth Curda, Assistant 

Director; Judith Kordahl; and Adam Miles made key contributions to the 

report.

Appendix II: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

GAO Contact 

Staff 

Acknowledgments

(451004)
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