 |
|
||
Getting to
Yellow
by John Kamensky
Two years ago this summer, the Bush Administration unveiled its governmentwide management improvement plan, the President’s Management Agenda, and put the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in charge of it.. OMB defined a set of criteria for each of the five elements of the Agenda and put in place a red-yellow-green scorecard to publicly grade each major agency each quarter.
The first scorecard, in February 2002, rated virtually all but one of 26 major agencies as “red” on each of the five criteria. One agency (the National Science Foundation) received a “green” for one of its five elements; a total of 19 other elements were yellow across the rest of the agencies. As of June 30, 2003, though, the number of “red lights” dropped from 111 to 87. Three agencies now share a total of 4 “green lights” while 39 other elements were rated as yellow.
Knowing that progress would be slow on meeting the Management Scorecard criteria, OMB also created another scorecard, to assess progress. The Progress Scorecard has more greens, but this still doesn’t demonstrate whether agencies are improving. So last month, the new deputy director for management at OMB, Clay Johnson, defined for the first time what “yellow” means – then challenged agencies to achieve at least that standard by July 1, 2004. For example, in the priority related to budget and performance integration, one of the “green” criteria is: “Performance appraisal plans for 60% of agency positions link to agency mission, goals, and outcomes . . . “ while a “yellow” for that criterion would be “Performance appraisal plans for SES and managers link to agency mission, goals, and outcomes . . . “
Johnson worked with OMB staff and the President’s Management Council – the chief operating officers for the major agencies – to help define what “yellow” should look like and also what they would commit to achieve by Summer 2004. He called this the “Proud to Be” achievements, having asked agency leaders where they would be proud to be by next summer. There are separate sets of criteria for human capital, competitive sourcing, financial performance, e-government, and budget and performance integration.
In the course of developing these commitments, OMB also slightly revised the criteria for achieving a “green,” but did not “dumb them down” as some political observers thought would happen before a Presidential election campaign. So far, the skeptics have been wrong – there haven’t been wholesale conversions to green, or even to yellow. But with the continued attention OMB is placing on the Agenda, there is a good chance that many will actually make significant progress by next summer. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, has spent the last 18 months significantly reorganizing its planning, budgeting, and accountability activities and linking their dollars to activities, programs, and goals. When EPA “stands up” the new system this Fall – after it submits its new strategic plan around which the new performance system is designed-- then OMB will judge its success based on whether it works and adjust its scoring accordingly.
In addition to the scorecard, the Administration continues to expand management improvements on other fronts related to its overall theme of “better managing for results.” Civil service reform and real estate asset management reform legislation continue to move through Congress. Senior executive bonuses are being increased and more tightly linked to organizational performance. And OMB is systematically scoring program results, with revised criteria for its Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) that agencies are applying to 40 percent of their programs this summer, in preparation for the FY2005 budget process that OMB will launch in September. Agencies have revised their strategic plans, due this Fall to Congress, and are using the framework from their draft strategic plans to develop their FY2005 budget submissions to OMB. In fact, OMB has asked agencies to not develop separate annual performance plans but rather integrate their plans into their budgets this year. About half of all agencies did this for the coming year, FY2004, in anticipation of the mandatory integration for the FY2005 budget, to be submitted to Congress in February 2004.
The fascinating thing seems to be the defined, focused, and relentless execution of the Agenda. After the September 11th terrorist attacks, many observers said the focus on the Agenda would wane. After the turnover of the entire top political leadership in OMB in the past six months, observers said the focus on the Agenda would wane. As we approach the Presidential elections, observers have said the focus on the Agenda would wane. But it has not. If anything, there is more emphasis. The controversies surrounding civil service reform and competitive sourcing are not causing the Administration to back down. In fact, the 60-page mid-session budget review released in mid-July contains a 15-page update on the President’s Management Agenda. As the federal budget gets tighter, there may be even more emphasis on the improved program performance promised in the Agenda, such as reducing payment errors and streamlining operations. And it seems that as the budget gets tighter, there is clearly a greater emphasis on managing for results by focusing on what works and what doesn’t, program by program, agency by agency.