The agency then maps out how it plans to achieve each goal and the funding it will need. Md. Mercer is an advocate of performance-based budgeting and a former congressional staff member who helped author the Results Act. Mercer also said some EPA performance goals concern agency activities and not the results it wants to achieve. For example, one goal is to develop the agency s infrastructure. To adopt the new method of budgeting, the agency had to alter the way it tracks finances.
Agencies usually track and report on their funding based on how their budget is distributed.
We had to create new accounts for everything, the EPA official said. While many appropriators appreciate EPA s efforts, some have found the new system difficult to work with and frequently have to ask the agency for more information, said one Senate Appropriations Committee aide who asked not to be named. It s very convoluted, the aide said. It doesn t allow you to readily go into EPA s budget and find information about a program. And we re still thinking about EPA in terms of programs.