High-performing organizations reinforce a focus on results through demonstrated top leadership commitment, through positive recognition to employees for their contributions to organizational goals, and by holding managers accountable for results while giving them the necessary decisionmaking authority to achieve them. Our survey data suggest that across the 28 agencies there are ample opportunities to better instill these key attributes of a performance-based culture. Successfully addressing the challenges that federal agencies face in becoming high-performing organizations requires agency leaders who are fully committed to achieving results. Top leadership’s commitment to achieving results is essential in driving continuous improvement to achieve excellence throughout an agency and inspiring employees to accomplish challenging goals. Without clear and demonstrated commitment of agency leadership—both political and career—organizational cultures will not be transformed, and new visions and ways of doing business will not take root. However, the responses of many managers in the 28 agencies did not indicate a strong perception that their agencies’ top leadership demonstrated a strong commitment to achieving results. Managers’ positive responses across the 28 individual agencies varied widely from a low at FAA (23 percent) to 3 times that percentage at NSF (69 percent), as shown in figure 1. Specifically, at only four agencies—NSF, the Social Security Administration (SSA), NASA, and NRC—did more that two-thirds of managers perceive such commitment to a great or very great extent. At 11 agencies, less than half of the managers perceived that there was such a degree of commitment. The clear and demonstrated top leadership commitment needed to sustain high levels of performance is not widely perceived among managers across the government overall and progress in fostering such leadership has remained stagnant. Governmentwide, our survey results show that in 2000, just over half of managers—53 percent—reported strong top leadership commitment, while 57 percent had this perception in 1997—not a statistically significant change. Incentives are important in steering an agency’s workforce to high levels of performance and they are critical to establishing a results-oriented management environment. A key element in agencies’ efforts to achieve results is their ability to motivate and reward their employees for supporting results through effective incentives, such as positive recognition. However, both our agency-specific and governmentwide survey results suggest that positive recognition has not been an extensively used technique for motivating employees. On an individual agency basis, there are no agencies that stand out as notable at the top of the range for providing positive recognition to employees for helping the agency accomplish its strategic goals. The percentage of managers responding to a great or very great extent at the 28 agencies ranged from 12 percent at FAA to 52 percent at GSA. Even at the top of the range, the percentage of managers who reported that employees received such positive recognition barely exceeded 50 percent at GSA and SBA. At 14 of the 28 agencies surveyed, less than one-third of managers perceived that employees in their agencies were receiving positive recognition to at least a great extent for contributing to the achievement of agency goals. (See fig. 2.) Governmentwide, few managers (31 percent) reported in 2000 that employees in their agencies received positive recognition to a great or very great extent for helping their agencies accomplish their strategic goals. This was not a statistically significant change from the 26 percent reporting this extent of positive recognition in 1997. Because effective incentive programs can help federal agencies maximize the results they achieve by both reinforcing personal accountability for high performance and motivating and rewarding employees, the results of our survey suggest that in most cases agencies are missing opportunities to positively affect program results through more widespread use of effective positive recognition techniques. Agencies need to create organizational cultures that involve employees and empower them to improve operational and program performance while ensuring accountability and fairness for those employees. Devolving decisionmaking authority to program managers in combination with holding them accountable for results is one of the most powerful incentives for encouraging results-based management. Additionally, providing managers with such authority gives those who know the most about an agency’s programs the power to make those programs work. The range of responses across individual agencies regarding managers being held accountable for the results of their programs to a great or very great extent ranged from a low of 40 percent at the Forest Service to 79 percent at HUD. At 22 of the 28 agencies included in our survey, more than 50 percent of managers reported such accountability, with 66 percent or more at 10 of these agencies reporting such accountability. (See fig. 3.) In comparison, for each of the individual agencies included in our survey, the percentage of managers who reported that they had, to a great or very great extent, the decisionmaking authority they needed to help their agencies accomplish their strategic goals ranged from 15 percent at IRS to 58 percent at OPM. At only one agency—OPM—was the percentage of managers reporting that they had the decisionmaking authority they needed above 50 percent. In fact, at 10 of the 28 agencies, only one-third or less of managers responded that they had such decisionmaking authority. (See fig. 4.) The differences reflected in managers’ responses to our questions on authority and accountability suggest that many agencies can better balance accountability for results with the authority needed to help achieve agency goals. For managers at 27 agencies, the percentage reporting that they were held accountable for results exceeded the percentage reporting that they had the authority they needed. At 16 of these 27 agencies, the percentage by which being held accountable exceeded having the authority needed was more than 20 percent. At only one agency—the Forest Service—were the percentages approximately equal. However, they were not very high, with the percentage of Forest Service managers responding positively at 41 percent for authority and at 40 percent for accountability. Governmentwide, the differences between the level of accountability and the level of authority managers perceived was great in both our 1997 and 2000 surveys. In 2000, 63 percent of federal managers overall reported that they were held accountable for program results but only 36 percent reported that they had the decisionmaking authority they needed to help their agencies accomplish their strategic goals. These percentages were not statistically significantly different than those from our 1997 survey, when 55 percent of managers reported such accountability for results while 31 percent reported such decisionmaking authority, We recently reported that several agencies have begun to use results- oriented performance agreements for their senior political and career executives to define accountability for specific goals, monitor progress during the year, and then contribute to performance evaluations. Although each agency developed and implemented agreements that reflected its specific organizational priorities, structure, and culture, we identified common emerging benefits from each agency’s use of performance agreements. For example, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) decentralized its management structure from 4 regions to 22 Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISN). VHA gave each VISN substantial operational autonomy and established performance goals in the agreements to hold network and medical center directors accountable for achieving performance improvements. Senior VHA officials we spoke to as part of that review credit the use of performance agreements to improvements in key organizational goals. A fundamental element in an organization’s efforts to manage for results is its ability to set meaningful goals for performance and to measure performance against those goals. High-performing, results-oriented organizations establish a set of measures to gauge progress over various dimensions of performance. As discussed in our January 2001 Performance and Accountability Series, a major challenge that agencies face in implementing GPRA is articulating and reinforcing a results orientation. Encouragingly, more managers overall reported having performance measures in 2000 than in 1997. Specifically, 84 percent of federal managers governmentwide said they had performance measures for the programs they were involved with, a statistically significant increase over the 76 percent of managers who responded that way in 1997. The degree to which managers reported having each of the five types of performance measures we asked about—outcome, output, customer service, quality, and efficiency—varied by agency. However, managers’ responses at most federal agencies showed that they still may have room for improvement in this regard. Output measures that tell how many things are produced or services provided are an essential management tool in managing programs for results, but they represent only one basic dimension in the measurement of program performance. Rather, it is outcome measures that demonstrate whether or not program goals are being achieved and gauge the ultimate success of government programs. Collectively, managers’ responses across the 28 agencies suggest a need for further emphasizing and developing both outcome and output measures to address the multidimensional aspects of performance. For outcome measures specifically, the percentage of managers responding that they had them to a great or very great extent ranged from 17 percent at HCFA to 63 percent at NASA and HUD. At only eight agencies did more than 50 percent of managers report having outcome measures. (See fig. 5.) In comparison, at 17 of the 28 agencies, 50 percent or more of managers reported that they had output measures to a great or very great extent. The percentage of managers responding that they had output measures to that extent ranged from 19 percent at HCFA to 75 percent at SBA and HUD, as shown in figure 6. Governmentwide, 50 percent of managers reported in 2000 that they had output measures to a great or very great extent for their programs, a statistically significant increase over the 38 percent reporting having these measures in 1997. In comparison, 44 percent of managers governmentwide reported in 2000 that they had outcome measures to a similar extent, significantly more than the 32 percent reporting in this way in 1997. Although more managers overall said they had output measures than outcome measures in 2000, at 7 of the 28 agencies—the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy (Energy), the U.S. Agency for International Development, NSF, NASA, and OPM—slightly more managers said they had outcome measures than output measures. Among GPRA’s stated purposes is the improvement of federal program effectiveness and public accountability by promoting a new focus on customer satisfaction.