Performance measurement enthusiasts have mourned the general dearth of congressional and organized group attention to the Results Act. Achieving such interest is crucial to improving agency performance, since improvement often requires wrenching organizational changes that many will not pursue without political pressure. Getting legislators interested in performance measures involves a number of barriers under any circumstances, but the purveyors of performance measurement have made things unnecessarily difficult. They have encouraged legislators to take an arcane approach to rating agency plans rather than agency results, an approach institutionalized by the House Committee on Government Reform's report cards on the quality of agency reports. At a recent Results Act seminar for environmental groups, participants were surprised to learn that the legislation was something more than a bunch of bureaucratic reporting requirements.
Performance measurement is crucial.
Let's not foul it up.