The Role of Government Performance in the FY 2003 Budget

As we have said before, if improving government performance is limited to threatening agencies with cuts, rather than working together with Congress and the Administration to truly make government more effective and useful to citizens, we can't expect much good to come from this new attempt at improving government.

As we have said before, if improving government performance is limited to threatening agencies with cuts, rather than working together with Congress and the Administration to truly make government more effective and useful to citizens, we can't expect much good to come from this new attempt at improving government.

Much of President Bush's budget rests on the idea that he will achieve huge savings by trimming government waste -- primarily by curtailing unsuccessful programs -- and his 2003 budget emphasizes government performance and results. The President bases this on a simple formula -- if "objective" measures show that a program is succeeding, it will get resources, but, if not, the program needs to be "reinvented, redirected, or retired." Little is said about the difficulties of performance measurement, for instance, how hard it is to measure outcomes over the long-term, or how tempting it is to set goals that can be met rather than ambitious and useful goals, or about whether a good, well-conceived program may not be succeeding because of a lack of resources. We think there is a difference between efficiency and effectiveness and between what government does and what the market can do. The President's emphasis leans more towards efficiency and market-based solutions.

The budget contains "scorecards," rating each agency with red, yellow or green dots --red being the worst, green being the best, and yellow being a middle score. Agencies are "graded" on five criteria:

  • Human capital - developing the strategies to attract and retain "the right people, in the right places, at the right time" and make high performance a "way of life in the federal service."

  • Competitive sourcing - creating a "market-based" government with market-based competition.

  • Financial management -- improving each agency's bookkeeping as well as tracking down overpayments and errors in benefit and assistance payments.

  • Expanded e-government.

  • Budget Performance integration -- making sure that "dollars will go to programs that work; those programs that don't work will be reformed, constrained, or face closure." Further, as measurement techniques improve, those programs that yield the best bang for the buck will get the most bucks.

The current "baseline" scorecards are covered with mostly red dots, a few yellow dots, and only one green dot, for financial management at the National Science Foundation. The text makes clear that the poor scores represent the government that the President "inherited," and that he has a commitment to eliminating and reducing programs that don't produce. As we have said before, if improving government performance is limited to threatening agencies with cuts, rather than working together with Congress and the Administration to truly make government more effective and useful to citizens, we can't expect much good to come from this new attempt at improving government.

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