This summary report is based on our analysis of the information contained in our reviews of 27 agencies’ draft strategic plans. To do those 27 reviews and the related reports, we used the Results Act supplemented by OMB’s guidance on developing the plans (Circular A-11, part 2) as criteria to determine whether draft plans complied with the requirement for the six specific elements that are to be in the strategic plans. To make judgments about the overall quality of the plans, we used our May 1997 guidance for congressional review of the plans. We recognized in each instance that the plans were drafts and that our assessment thus represented a snapshot at a given point in time. To make judgments about the planning issues needing attention, we also relied on other related work, including our recent report on governmentwide implementation of the Results Act and our guidance for congressional review of Results Act implementation, as tools. The Results Act is the centerpiece of a statutory framework Congress put in place during the 1990s to address long-standing weaknesses in federal operations, improve federal management practices, and provide greater accountability for achieving results. Under the Results Act, strategic plans are the starting point and basic underpinning for results-oriented management. The Act requires that an agency’s strategic plan contain six key elements: (1) a comprehensive agency mission statement; (2) agencywide long-term goals and objectives for all major functions and operations; (3) approaches (or strategies) and the various resources needed to achieve the goals and objectives; (4) a description of the relationship between the long-term goals and objectives and the annual performance goals; (5) an identification of key factors, external to the agency and beyond its control, that could significantly affect the achievement of the strategic goals; and (6) a description of how program evaluations were used to establish or revise strategic goals and a schedule for future program evaluations. In addition to the Results Act, the statutory framework includes the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act, as expanded and amended by the Government Management Reform Act of 1994; and information technology reform legislation, in particular the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. Congress enacted the CFO Act to remedy decades of serious neglect in federal financial management by establishing chief financial officers across the federal government and requiring the preparation and audit of annual financial statements. The information technology reform legislation is based on the best practices used by leading public and private sector organizations to manage information technology more effectively. Under the information technology reform legislation, agencies are to better link their planned and actual use of technology to their programs’ missions and goals to improve performance. Congress has demonstrated its commitment to the Results Act and reinforced to executive agencies the importance it places on the full and complete implementation of the Act. One such prominent demonstration occurred on February 25, 1997, when the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, and other senior members of the House and Senate sent a letter to the Director of OMB. The letter underscored the importance that the congressional Majority places on the implementation of the Results Act, noted a willingness on the part of Congress to work cooperatively with the administration, and established expectations for congressional consultations with agencies on their draft strategic plans. Under the Results Act, those consultations are to be an integral part of strategic planning. For example, consultations can help to create a basic understanding among the stakeholders of the competing demands that confront agencies and how those demands and available resources require careful and continuous balancing. In the House, the consultation effort was led by teams consisting of staff from various committees that focused on specific agencies. In an August 1997 letter, the House Majority Leader provided the Director of OMB with an overview of recent congressional consultations and highlighted some recurring themes, such as the need for interagency coordination. Although the consultation process in the Senate has been less structured than the one in the House, a number of consultations have been held there as well. In addition to consulting with agencies, several House and Senate authorizing committees also held hearings on draft strategic plans in July 1997, which further underscored congressional interest in agencies creating good strategic planning processes that support performance-based management. For example, these hearings included those held by the Subcommittee on Water and Power, House Committee on Resources; the House Committee on Science; the Subcommittee on Human Resources, House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight; the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services; the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, House Committee on Resources; and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. The Senate and House appropriations committees have been expanding their focus on the Results Act as well. For example, the Senate Appropriations and Governmental Affairs committees held a joint hearing on the status of Results Act implementation, with particular emphasis on agencies’ strategic planning efforts. The Senate Appropriations Committee has included comments on the Results Act in its reports on the fiscal year 1998 appropriations bills. The report language has discussed the Committee’s views on the status and quality of individual agencies’ efforts to implement the Results Act and expressed the need for continuing consultations, among other issues. In the House, the Appropriations Committee has included a standard statement in its appropriations reports that strongly endorses the Results Act. This standard statement notes that each appropriations subcommittee “takes (the annual performance plan) requirement of the Results Act very seriously and plans to carefully examine agency performance goals and measures during the appropriations process.” A significant amount of work remains to be done by executive branch agencies before their strategic plans can fulfill the requirements of the Results Act, serve as a basis for guiding agencies, and help congressional and other policymakers make decisions about activities and programs. Although all 27 of the draft plans included a mission statement, 21 plans lacked 1 or more of the other required elements. Specifically, of the 27 draft strategic plans: 2 did not include agencywide strategic goals and objectives, 6 did not describe approaches or strategies for achieving those goals and 19 did not describe the relationship between long-term goals and objectives and annual performance goals, 6 did not identify key factors that are external to the agency and beyond its control that could affect the achievement of the goals and objectives, and 16 did not discuss program evaluations that the agency used to establish or revise goals and objectives or provide a schedule of future program evaluations. Moreover, while all but six of the plans were missing at least one required element, one-third were missing two required elements. Just over one-fourth of the plans failed to cover at least three of the required elements. Because most of the draft plans did not contain all six required elements, Congress did not have access to critical pieces of information for its consultations with the agencies on their draft strategic plans; and, if these elements are not included in the final plans, federal managers will not have a clear strategic direction upon which to base their daily activities. For example, agencies whose plans lacked strategic goals and strategies for achieving those goals will not have a solid foundation upon which to build the performance measurement and reporting efforts that are required by the Results Act. The incomplete or inadequate coverage of the six required elements in the plans is an indication of the amount of additional work necessary to fulfill the Act’s minimum requirements that agencies had to undertake prior to the submission of strategic plans to Congress on September 30, 1997. Many agencies showed progress in developing comprehensive mission statements upon which they can build strategic goals and strategies for achieving those goals. A mission statement is important because it focuses an agency on its intended purpose. It explains why the agency exists and tells what it does and is the basic starting point of successful planning efforts. However, our reviews of draft strategic plans for 27 agencies found several critical strategic planning issues that are in need of sustained attention to ensure that those plans better meet the needs of agencies, Congress, and other stakeholders and that agencies shift their focus from activities to results. These issues were: the lack of linkages among required elements in the draft plans, the weaknesses in long-term strategic goals, the lack of fully developed strategies to achieve the goals, the lack of evidence that agencies’ plans reflect coordination with other federal agencies having similar or complementary programs, the limited capacity of agencies to gather performance information, and the lack of attention to program evaluations. The majority of the draft strategic plans lacked critical linkages among required elements in the plans. We have noted in our Executive Guide and other recent reports that for strategic plans to drive an agency’s operations, a straightforward linkage is needed among its long-term strategic goals, strategies for achieving goals, annual performance goals, and day-to-day activities. First, as prior work has shown, a direct alignment between strategic goals and strategies for achieving those goals is important for assessing an agency’s ability to achieve those goals. Second, we have noted that the linkage between long-term strategic goals and annual performance goals is important because without this linkage, agency managers and Congress may not be able to judge whether an agency is making annual progress toward achieving its long-term goals. In several draft strategic plans, the agencies’ presentation of information on strategic goals, objectives, and strategies made it difficult to determine which strategy was supposed to achieve which goal or objective and what unit or component within the agency was supposed to carry out the strategy. For example, in the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) plan, objectives were listed as a group under goals, followed by strategies, which were also listed as a group. This presentation does not convey how specific strategies would lead to achieving specific goals. In another example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) listed several areas of focus and operational objectives under each of its five strategies, but if did not establish linkages among them or between the strategies and the agency’s strategic objectives. Accordingly, although an affiliation between specific strategies and objectives may exist, it was not readily apparent from these agencies’ draft strategic plans. In contrast, the Department of Education’s plan linked each strategic goal to a set of objectives that were, in turn, linked to a set of strategies.