The President's Management Agenda is almost an unbelievable success story! Money has been saved, efficiencies have been achieved, and higher accountabilities demonstrated. We have been in the midst of this transformation the past seven years with significant and positive changes in government that we taxpayers should applaud. Since most of these are not public activities, very few people outside the government know about them.
The Secret. The din of the debates about the Iraq war, the historical certainty of the 2008 presidential elections, and the disenchantment about this presidency drown out many positive successes. Quiet successes of government improvements are not splashy and front page news and are mostly buried under louder news. The President's Management Agenda (PMA) of 2001 has successfully impacted twenty-six agencies, effectively one of best kept secrets in government. It has not been press worthy, but an astounding success from a government reform perspective. The desire to improve government has been a goal of every administration. During President Bill Clinton's years, VP Al Gore led the effort to improve government. Using the Government Performance and Reform Act (GPRA, 1993) as a driver, Gore championed a Golden Hammer award to encourage agencies to improve program results. The GPRA required each agency to provide a five-year strategic plan followed each year with an annual plan. The challenge was that there were no real consequences for non-compliance. Many of the plans were created and filed away and not used to guide the agencies as intended.
The Plan. In 2001, President George W. Bush announced his five-point PMA. The PMA pushed corporate ideas into the Federal government to create greater efficiencies and effectiveness. The PMA included: 1) strategic management of human capital to optimize placement of people and to support their growth; 2) competitive sourcing to outsource non-mission critical efforts and to be competitive with commercial companies; 3) improving financial performance with better and timely information to better inform decisions; 4) expanding e-government by using technology wherever possible to reduce manual tedium, improve information flow; and 5) integration of budget and performance by tying funding with desired performance outcomes. Additionally, a Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART) was added to measure performance in the five areas. Performance standards/goals were established between each agency and the President's Management Council, the body tasked to evaluate results. These performance results are annually posted using a Stoplight scoring system -- Red for unsatisfactory, Yellow for mixed results, and Green for successfully achieving goals.
The Challenge. When the first (baseline) scorecard was published in 2001 for the twenty-six agencies against the five PMA measures, there were 109 Red results, 20 Yellow, and only 1 Green (National Science Foundation). In 2007, there were 17 Red, 53 Yellow, and 60 Green, an astounding decrease of 84% in the red category! Several Websites are worth a visit: Results.gov to view the annual scorecards since 2001, Whitehouse.gov/omb for descriptions of the GPRA, PART, and PMA, and ExpectMore.gov to read more and to see the candor within government about being more effective, and less bureaucratic. The implementation of the PMA has been good news for the government and for those from the commercial world looking in. The result is that government processes get better and more aligned with the business world, and best practices from the business world are welcomed and being applied to government efforts. Ultimately, there are real benefits for the public in increased efficiencies and effectiveness in the use of public funds.