Performance Management

Newcomer’s insight at the Brookings Institution forum on improving government performance was reinforced by OMB deputy director Jeff Zients’ keynote address – where he discussed his new responsibility to lead the effort to reorganize government functions.  He did not address the performance agenda.

So Where Is Waldo?

In the past month, I’ve participated in more than a half dozen forums related to the new law, and gotten feedback from colleagues about the forums that I just wasn’t able to make in person.

The annual federal customer satisfaction survey covering more than 100 agencies recently reported that 2010 data show the largest one-year drop in satisfaction since the survey began in 1999.

As promised in an earlier blog post on this topic, the IBM Center now has a report, “Managing Innovation Prizes in Government,” by Luciano Kay, with the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The CRS report is relatively silent on the potential impact of the recently-signed GPRA Modernization Act on congressional involvement in setting government-wide priorities.  But it does a good job reprising the history of President Obama’s performance initiatives over the past two years, including:

And he’s right.  The last major reorganization was spawned by the 1949 Hoover Commission.  And Alan Dean, the last surviving staffer from that commission, died in December.

Agency Strategic Plans.  According to the Senate committee report accompanying the new law:

Background.  Congress recently passed – and President Obama just signed -- legislation updating the nearly 20-year-old Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA).  This update effort started several years ago through the efforts of Congressman Henry Cuellar (D-TX) then evolved more recently with support from Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and

We were here for the reawakening of the Administrative Conference of the U.S. and it felt like a scene out of “National Treasure.”  In fact, I keep looking around for Nicholas Cage.  Here I was, at a reception in the Great Hall of the National Archives, able to look at the originals of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights without standing in a line and having to continually shuffle forward under the mutterings of “please keep moving” by impatient guards.

Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) summarized the need for a refresh when he introduced his bill with bipartisan support:  "Producing information does not by itself improve performance and experts from both sides of the aisle agree that the solutions developed in 1993 have not worked.”