C H A P T E R 1
Overview
The Government Performance and
Results Act (GPRA)
In recognition of the growing concern regarding the performance
of the federal government, in 1993 Congress enacted the
Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA).1 This legislation
changed the way that the federal government managed
its performance by requiring federal agencies to become
results-oriented. ‘‘The Government Accountability Office
(GAO) has described GPRA as being ‘the centerpiece of a statutory
framework Congress put in place during the 1990s to address
long-standing weaknesses in federal operations, improve
federal management practices, and provide greater accountability
for achieving results.’ ’’2
Its goals were to:
‘‘(1) improve the confidence of the American people in the
capability of the Federal Government, by systematically
holding Federal agencies accountable for achieving
program results;
(2) initiate program performance reform with a series of
pilot projects in setting program goals, measuring
program performance against those goals, and reporting
publicly on their progress;
(3) improve Federal program effectiveness and public accountability
by promoting a new focus on results, service
quality, and customer satisfaction;
(4) help Federal managers improve service delivery, by requiring
that they plan for meeting program objectives
and by providing them with information about program
results and service quality;
(5) improve congressional decision-making by providing
more objective information on achieving statutory objectives,
and on the relative effectiveness and efficiency
of Federal programs and spending; and
(6) improve internal management of the Federal Government.’’3
The Act required agencies to develop long-term strategic
plans that identified outcome-related goals and objectives, explained
how the goals and objectives would be achieved, identified
the key external factors to the organization and beyond its
control that could hamper its achievement of the general goals
and objectives, and explained the program evaluations used in
developing or adjusting the general goals and objectives, with a
timetable for future program evaluations.
Each agency was further required to prepare an annual performance
plan for every program activity contained in its budget.
The plan had to establish performance goals defining the level of
performance to be achieved by an activity; list such goals in a
quantifiable and measurable form, if possible; describe what was
required to meet these goals; develop the appropriate perform-
ance indicators; and provide a way to compare program results
with the established performance goals.
The GPRA is important to this discussion because it
changed the focus of federal agencies from process/compliance
to outcomes. It let everyone know that, more than ever, they
would be accountable for achieving the desired results. This
important distinction placed that much more pressure on government
managers at all levels to deliver excellent performance.
Why Is It So Difficult to Manage
Performance in the Government?
The simple reason it is difficult to manage performance in government
is that there are a wide variety of factors and variables
at play, a number of which are extremely difficult to manage
and control. By the same token, it is important to recognize
that many of these factors and variables are not as tough to
handle as you might think and that the difficulties managers
face with them are often a function of inexperience, a lack of
will, or simply poor decision making.
If you look at many of the potential issues that managers
have to deal with, you will begin to appreciate the challenges
that every government manager faces on a daily basis. Let’s take
a look at some of them.
Budget Constraints and Difficulties
First of all, there is the government’s budget cycle, which often
takes one to two years from the time money is budgeted until
it is eventually allocated to an individual department, agency,
or administration. This built-in delay often means that by the
time government managers receive their budgets, they may not
be sufficient for the task at hand due to changing situations.
A good example of this was 9/11. Since no one anticipated
the unprecedented terrorist attacks on our nation, the resources
needed to respond to these attacks were not included in the
normal budget cycle. While Congress quickly allocated hundreds
of billions of dollars to ramp up the war effort and address
homeland security, it did not initially budget for
programs that were ancillary to these efforts, such as veterans’
health care, the processing of veterans’ benefits claims, and so
on. The net result was that performance in these areas deteriorated;
for example, VA hospitals were inundated with veterans
seeking services, and the backlog of claims to be adjudicated
grew to exceed a million cases.4
On a day-to-day basis, government managers deal with this
issue all the time, and, in most cases, the reasons for the disconnect
are far less dramatic. For example, it may be that the budget
distribution system is flawed, resulting in some organizations receiving
a disproportionately low amount of money relative to
their mission. It may be that this is a lean budget year due to a
national emphasis on deficit reduction or a local shortfall in tax
collections, resulting in everyone suffering from cutbacks. Or it
may simply be that the resources have remained stable but, due
to outside forces, the workload has dramatically increased, which
for all intents and purposes means that the budget is insufficient
to achieve the organization’s goals.