performance

The Military Health System (MHS) is a global, comprehensive, integrated system that includes combat medical services, health readiness, and a health care delivery system amongst many other functions. As one of the largest health care systems in the U.S, with total spending of more than $50 billion per year, the MHS includes both a direct care component, composed of DoD-operated and staffed military treatment facilities (MTFs), and a purchased care component operated through TRICARE regional contracts.

John Kamensky

This week the General Services Administration (GSA) is hosting its 49th annual Interagency Resources Management Conference. An estimated 300 Chief Acquisition Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Human Capital Officers, Inspectors General, program managers and other senior executive leaders are attending. It is the most well known government-wide, government-only conference where leaders delve into emerging management issues and how they are being confronted.

The Challenge

Government is famously a team sport. Almost everything (really) important we do in government requires effective teams. Whether it is reducing child mortality, disaster management, fighting opioid crisis or stopping money laundering. The list is indeed long and familiar.

The IBM Center for The Business of Government hosted a forum in November 2009 to examine the Obama Administration’s themes for a high-performing government and to frame a public management research agenda.

Participants included nearly 50 of the nation’s top public management researchers, scholars, and distinguished practitioners.  The forum was an effort to help bridge the gap between research and practice, and to collectively develop a research agenda that would help government executives move things forward.

Most of the news media focused on the size of the budget and which agencies gained or lost. However, the budget also included an overview of the Obama Administration’s management initiatives, as well.

The overall emphasis of these initiatives is on achieving defined mission-oriented results. It de-emphasizes (but still addresses) improvements to mission-support functions and the reporting of performance information.

Given what we have learned from experience and careful research, the performance management approach the Obama Administration lays out in the Analytic Perspectives section of the FY 2011 budget is very promising and represents a more aggressive, more coherent, and more comprehensive approach than that of past Administrations. We know that when leaders focus on a few priority goals, we see tremendous performance improvement on those goals.

It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the preference for “soft-targets” is a near universal phenomenon. Anyone designing a government performance management system (GPMS) must assume we humans have a preference for soft targets.

Recent years have seen a growing emphasis on the reporting of the outputs and outcomes of government programs. Yet there is limited information on what outputs and outcomes are actually reported on in practice.

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) was enacted in 1993 to bring about a greater focus on results in the federal government. GPRA's requirements have built a strong foundation for results-oriented performance planning, measurement, and reporting.