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Executive order codifies controversial Bush performance appraisal program

The Bush White House published another executive order on Nov. 13, this time to institutionalize the administration’s controversial performance appraisal system for government programs.

Following on the heels of a September memorandum exerting more political control over risk assessments, the executive order is the latest in what is expected to be a series of White House power grabs through administrative means.

The new order essentially creates a permanent mechanism for the Bush White House’s controversial approach to performance management, the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART).  Reviled by appropriators on both sides of the aisle, PART has been used to provide a technical rationale for ideologically-motivated budget slashings, as well as to send management signals to regulatory agencies for failing to live up to Bush anti-regulatory ideals, as detailed by a recent backgrounder by OMB Watch.

Requirements of the executive order

Among other things, the new executive order

• stresses a primary cost-effectiveness policy of “spend[ing] taxpayer dollars effectively, and more effectively each year” by “apply[ing] taxpayer resources efficiently in a manner that maximizes the effectiveness of government programs”;

• charges agency heads with
  • establishing performance management plans based on “objectively measured outcomes,”
  • working with OMB on feeding performance measurement “data” into budget requests, and
  • reaching down into all levels of the agency to push political priorities by “ensuring continuous accountability of the specified agency personnel to the head of the agency for achievement of the goals and efficiency in use of resources in achievement of the goals”;

• installs “Performance Improvement Officers” in the agencies, who are charged with
  • supervising the development of performance management goals, strategic plans, and performance reports,
  • operating as an internal performance watchdog advising agency heads on the adequacy of performance goals and measures, and
  • conducting performance assessment of agency programs;

• creates a “Performance Improvement Council” in OMB, consisting of the OMB deputy director, selected Program Improvement Officers, and any other government officials whom OMB conscripts, charged with
  • drafting government-wide program assessment tools and performance management policies,
  • supervising agency heads as they review the performance and management of all federal programs,
  • monitoring agency adherence to the primary policy of cost-effectiveness, including “review[ing] and provid[ing] advice” on agency proposals to implement the primary cost-focused policy; and

• requires agencies to provide information as requested by OMB to permit its performance appraisal.

Problems

The executive order is a barely disguised attempt to codify PART, the reviled program assessment tool that OMB has touted as a management revolution.  PART has been widely criticized as a political process that penalizes agencies for following the law rather than Bush administration priorities and is too simplistic to cover the complexity of government programs, in particular scientific research programs that are not amenable to short-term results measures.

Performance measurement, assuming agencies can overcome the limits of the Paperwork Reduction Act to even gather the data that would be needed for exercises like PART, adds to the already overwhelming burden on agencies to perform analyses and assessments and other paperwork exercises that divert agency resources away from their vital mission of getting things done to meet the public’s needs.  Simplistic, one-size-fits-all tools like PART do not enlighten the public on whether agencies are meeting needs; instead, they provide seemingly objective cover for highly political judgments.

PART and the whole Bush approach to performance management (as well as PART’s Clinton-Gore precursor, the Reinventing Government debacle) continue the dubious trend of ham-handedly pushing corporate-style measurement and management approaches in the nonprofit and government sectors.  Aside from being inapposite in the public sector, these approaches are born of the myth of the perfectly efficient corporate machine.  In fact, as tales of corporate corruption, ineptitude, and dependence on government handouts greed come to light day after day, it should be clearer every day that the values which drive the corporate sector are not the values that should shape the people’s government.

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