GPRA is the centerpiece of a statutory framework that Congress put in place during the 1990s to help resolve the long-standing management problems that have undermined the federal government’s efficiency and effectiveness and to provide greater accountability for results. GPRA was intended to address several broad purposes, including strengthening the confidence of the American people in their government; improving federal program effectiveness, accountability, and service delivery; and enhancing congressional decision making by providing more objective information on program performance. As a key part of the framework, GPRA requires executive agencies to complete strategic plans in which they define their missions, establish results-oriented goals, and identify the strategies that will be needed to achieve those goals. GPRA also requires executive agencies to prepare annual performance plans that articulate goals for the upcoming fiscal year that are aligned with their long-term strategic goals. Finally, GPRA requires agencies to measure performance toward the achievement of the goals in the annual performance plan and report annually on their progress in program performance reports. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) plays an important role in the management of federal government performance and, specifically, GPRA implementation. Part of OMB’s overall mission is to ensure that agency plans and reports are consistent with the President’s budget and administration policies. OMB is responsible for receiving and reviewing agencies’ strategic plans, annual performance plans, and annual performance reports. To improve the quality and consistency of these documents, OMB issues annual guidance to agencies for their preparation, including guidelines on format, required elements, and submission deadlines. Further, GPRA requires OMB to prepare a governmentwide performance plan, based on agencies’ annual performance plan submissions. Ten years after enactment, GPRA’s requirements have laid a solid foundation of results-oriented agency planning, measurement, and reporting. Focus group participants and high-level political appointees, as well as OMB officials we interviewed, cited positive effects of GPRA that they generally attributed to GPRA’s statutory requirements for planning and reporting. Performance planning and measurement have slowly yet increasingly become a part of agencies’ cultures. The results of our survey of federal managers indicate that since GPRA went into effect governmentwide in 1997, federal managers reported having significantly more of the types of performance measures called for by GPRA— particularly outcome-oriented performance measures. Survey data also suggested that more federal managers, especially at the Senior Executive Service (SES) level, believed that OMB was paying attention to their agencies’ efforts under GPRA. One of the premises of GPRA is that both congressional and executive branch oversight of federal agency performance were seriously hampered by a lack of adequate results-oriented goals and performance information. Our 1992 review of the collection and use of performance data by federal agencies revealed that, although many agencies collected performance information at the program level, few agencies had results-oriented performance information to manage or make strategic policy decisions for the agency as a whole. GPRA addressed agencies’ shortcomings by creating a comprehensive and consistent statutory foundation of required agencywide strategic plans, annual performance plans, and annual performance reports. Participants in all eight of our focus groups cited the creation of this statutory foundation as one of the key accomplishments of GPRA. Furthermore, prior to GPRA few agencies reported their performance information externally. In contrast, OMB officials we interviewed as part of our current review suggested that OMB has been a key consumer of agency performance information produced under GPRA and that it has provided a foundation for their efforts to oversee agency performance. Focus group participants also suggested that a major accomplishment of GPRA is the improved the transparency of government results to the American public. A key purpose of GPRA was “to improve the confidence of the American people in the capability of the Federal Government, by systematically holding Federal agencies accountable for achieving program results.” When asked about the direct effects of GPRA on the public, an estimated 23 percent of the federal managers surveyed agreed to a moderate or greater extent that GPRA improved their agency’s ability to deliver results to the American public. High-level political appointees we interviewed cited a number of examples of how the structure of GPRA created a greater focus on results in their agencies. Participants in our focus groups had mixed perceptions of GPRA’s effect on their agencies’ ability to deliver results to the American public. Participants indicated GPRA has had a positive effect by shifting the focus of federal management from program activities and processes to achieving the intended results of those programs. Other focus group participants had difficulty attributing the results their agencies achieved directly to GPRA’s requirements. Focus group and survey results suggest that performance planning and measurement have slowly, but increasingly, become a part of agencies’ cultures. Compared to the results of our 1997 governmentwide survey of federal managers, in our 2003 governmentwide survey more managers reported having performance measures for their programs. When we asked managers who said they had performance measures which of the five types of measures they used to a “great” or “very great” extent, they reported statistically significant increases in all five types of measures between 1997 and 2003 (see fig. 1). Similarly, focus group participants commented on certain cultural changes that had taken place within their agencies since the passage of GPRA in which the “vocabulary” of performance planning and measurement—that is, a greater focus on performance measurement, orientation toward outcomes over inputs and outputs, and an increased focus on program evaluation—had become more pervasive. This perception is partly borne out by our survey results. Consistent with our survey results indicating increases in results-oriented performance measures and increasing GPRA knowledge, we also observed a significant decline in the percentage of federal managers who agreed that certain factors hindered measuring performance or using the performance information. For example, of those who expressed an opinion, the percentage of managers who noted that determining meaningful measures was a hindrance to a “great” or “very great” extent was down significantly from 47 percent in 1997 to 36 percent in 2003. Likewise, the percentage that agreed to a “great” or “very great” extent that different parties’ use of different definitions to measure performance was a hindrance also declined significantly from 49 percent in 1997 to 36 percent in 2003. Our survey data suggested that more federal managers, especially at the SES level, believed that OMB was paying attention to their agencies’ efforts under GPRA (see fig. 2), but with no corresponding increase in their concern that OMB would micromanage the programs in their agencies. In our survey, we asked respondents to assess the extent to which OMB pays attention to their agencies’ efforts under GPRA. In 2003, the percentage of respondents who responded “great” or “very great” to this question (31 percent) was significantly higher than in 2000 (22 percent). Of those, SES respondents showed an even more dramatic increase, from 33 to 51 percent. We also asked respondents to describe the extent to which their concern that OMB would micromanage programs in their agencies was a hindrance to measuring performance or using performance information. The percentage among those expressing an opinion that it was a hindrance to a “great” or “very great” extent was low—around 24 percent in 2003—with no significant difference between 2000 and 2003. The foundation of results-oriented planning and reporting that has been established is also reflected in the quality of the plans and reports of six federal agencies we reviewed for our report. Beginning with federal agencies’ initial efforts to develop effective strategic plans in 1997 and annual performance plans and reports for fiscal year 1999, Congress, GAO, and others have commented on the quality of those efforts and provided constructive feedback on how agency plans and reports could be improved. On the basis of our current review of the strategic plans, annual performance plans, and annual performance and accountability reports of six selected agencies—Education, DOE, HUD, DOT, SBA, and SSA—we found that these documents reflect much of the feedback that was provided. The quality of the six agencies’ strategic plans we reviewed reflected improvements over these agencies’ initial strategic plans. In our current review, the six strategic plans we looked at reflected many new and continuing strengths as well as improvements over the 1997 initial draft plans, but we continued to find certain persistent weaknesses. Of the six elements required by GPRA, the plans generally discussed all but one— program evaluation—an area in which we have found agencies often lack capacity. Although the strategic plans listed the program evaluations agencies intended to complete over the planning period, they generally did not address how the agencies planned to use their evaluations to establish new or revise existing strategic goals, as envisioned by GPRA. Finally, although not required by GPRA, the strategic plans would have benefited from more complete discussions of how agencies planned to coordinate and collaborate with other entities to address common challenges and achieve common or complementary goals and objectives. The six selected agencies’ fiscal year 2004 annual performance plans addressed some weaknesses of earlier plans, but there is still significant room for improvement. Most of the 2004 plans that we reviewed showed meaningful improvements over the fiscal year 1999 plans by showing a clearer picture of intended performance, providing strategies and resources that were more specifically related to achieving agency goals, and providing a greater level of confidence that performance data would be credible. But these plans also contained a number of serious weaknesses, such as inadequate discussion of coordination and collaboration and inconsistent or limited discussions of procedures used to verify and validate performance data, which limited their quality and undermined their usefulness. Our review of the six agencies’ fiscal year 2002 performance and accountability reports showed a number of strengths and improvements over their fiscal year 1999 performance reports, as well as areas that needed improvement. These fiscal year 2002 reports generally allowed for an assessment of progress made in achieving agency goals. In addition, the majority of agencies discussed the progress achieved in addressing performance and accountability challenges identified by agency inspectors general and GAO.