ABSTRACT
Seeking to promote improved government performance and greater public confidence in government through better planning and reporting of the results of federal programs, the Congress enacted the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), which is referred to as “the Results Act” and “GPRA.” The Act established a govemmentwide requirement for agencies to identify agency and program goals and to report on their results in achieving those goals. Recognizing that few programs at the time were prepared to track progress toward their goals, the Act specifies a 7-year implementation time period and requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to select pilot tests to help agencies develop experience with the Act’s processes and concepts. The Results Act includes a pilot phase during which about 70 programs, ranging from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Assessment Program to the entire Social Security Administration, were designated as GPRA pilot projects. These and other programs throughout the major agencies have been gaining experience with the Act’s requirements. GPRA mandates that we review the implementation of the Act’s requirements in this pilot phase and comment on the prospects for compliance by federal agencies as govemmentwide implementation begins in 1997. This report is one component of our response to that mandate. Specifically, this report answers the following questions: (1) What analytic and technical challenges are agencies experiencing as they try to measure program performance? (2) What approaches have they taken to address these challenges? And, in particular, because program evaluation studies are similarly focused on measuring progress toward program goals and objectives, (3) How have agencies made use of program evaluations or evaluation expertise in implementing performance measurement? Indeed, the Act recognizes and encourages a complementary role for program evaluation by requiring agencies to describe its use in performance planning and reporting.
