Managing for Results: Continuing Challenges to Effective GPRA
Implementation (Testimony, 07/20/2000, GAO/T-GGD-00-178).

The challenges to implementing the Government Performance and Results
Act are many. Each agency must focus on the results it wants to achieve,
not the products it produces and the process used to produce them.
Agencies must coordinate crosscutting programs, thereby reducing mission
fragmentation and program overlap. For example, eight federal agencies
now run 50 programs for the homeless. Agencies are to show relationships
between budgetary resources and performance goals. They must also show
how daily operations lead to results. Most fiscal year 2000 performance
plans do not sufficiently address how to strategically manage their
people (human capital). The systematic integration of human capital
planning and program planning--a critical component of high-performing
organizations--is not being adequately and uniformly addressed across
the federal government. Agencies are also to resolve all
mission-critical management challenges and program risks, not just some
of them. Agencies need reliable information during their planning
efforts to set realistic goals and, later, to gauge their progress
toward achieving these goals. For example, program evaluation provides
vital information about the contributions that programs have made to
results. Agencies must accurately record and report financial management
data on both a year-end and ongoing basis. It is imperative to
continuously improve internal controls and underlying financial
management information systems.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  T-GGD-00-178
     TITLE:  Managing for Results: Continuing Challenges to Effective
	     GPRA Implementation
      DATE:  07/20/2000
   SUBJECT:  Performance measures
	     Congressional oversight
	     Strategic planning
	     Productivity in government
	     Congressional/executive relations
	     Program evaluation
IDENTIFIER:  GPRA
	     Government Performance and Results Act

******************************************************************
** This file contains an ASCII representation of the text of a  **
** GAO report.  Delineations within the text indicating chapter **
** titles, headings, and bullets are preserved.                 **
**                                                              **
** No attempt has been made to display graphic images, although **
** figure captions are reproduced.  Tables are included, but    **
** may not resemble those in the printed version.               **
**                                                              **
** Please see the PDF (Portable Document Format) file, when     **
** available, for a complete electronic file of the printed     **
** document's contents.                                         **
**                                                              **
** A printed copy of this report may be obtained from the GAO   **
** Document Distribution Center.  For further details, please   **
** send an e-mail message to:                                   **
**                                                              **
**                                            **
**                                                              **
** with the message 'info' in the body.                         **
******************************************************************
GAO/T-GGD-00-178

United States General Accounting Office
GAO

Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on Government
Management, Information and Technology,
Committee on Government Reform, House of
Representatives

For Release on Delivery
Expected at
10:00 a.m. EST
on Thursday
July 20, 2000
GAO/T-GGD-00-178

MANAGING FOR RESULTS
Continuing Challenges to Effective GPRA

Implementation

Statement of
J. Christopher Mihm, Associate Director
Federal Management and Workforce Issues
General Government Division

Viewing GAO Reports on the Internet
For information on how to access GAO reports on
the INTERNET, send e-mail message with "info" in
the body to:
[email protected]
or visit GAO's World Wide Web Home Page at:
http://www.gao.gov

Reporting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal
Programs
To contact GAO's Fraud Hotline use:
Web site:
http://www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm
E-Mail: [email protected]
Telephone: 1-800-424-5454 (automated answering
system)

 (410596)

Managing for Results: Continuing Challenges to
Effective GPRA Implementation
Page 11                          GAO/T-GGD-00-178
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Turner, and Members of the
Subcommittee:

I appreciate the opportunity to be here this
morning to discuss the Government Performance and
Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). As agreed with the
Subcommittee, today I will (1) highlight how the
present phase of GPRA implementation holds promise
for assisting congressional oversight and
decisionmaking and (2) discuss the steps needed to
maximize the usefulness of GPRA for Congress and
the executive branch. My statement is based on our
large body of work in recent years assessing GPRA
implementation. As I will discuss in more detail,
our work has shown that overall, agencies are
continuing to make steady progress in implementing
GPRA, but a set of persistent challenges requires
additional effort if GPRA is to be fully
effective.

Using GPRA to Assist Congressional Oversight and
Decisionmaking
GPRA holds great promise in helping Congress and
the executive branch ensure that the federal
government provides the results that the American
people expect and deserve. We are now at a new
phase in the implementation of GPRA. The issuance
of the first performance reports-showing the
degree to which goals were met and the actions,
plans, and schedules to meet unmet
goals-represents a potentially more substantive
phase in the implementation of GPRA. These
reports, in addition to federal agencies'
strategic and annual performance plans and the
governmentwide performance plans, represent the
completion of the first full planning and
reporting cycle of GPRA implementation. This
suggests that we are at an appropriate point in
the process to examine the status of GPRA
implementation and how it can be more fully
integrated into congressional and executive branch
decisionmaking.

This examination is important to ensure that the
issuance of GPRA planning and reporting documents
does not become merely an annual paperwork
exercise unrelated to the real work of agencies
and Congress. On the contrary, GPRA should be a
foundation for congressional oversight and
decisionmaking and thereby help Congress maximize
the performance and ensure the accountability of
the federal government for the benefit of the
American people. GPRA also should provide a
performance-based management framework for
agencies to set goals; measure progress toward
those goals; deploy strategies and resources to
achieve them; and, ultimately, use performance
information to make the programmatic decisions
necessary to improve performance.

In that regard, we have often noted that concerted
and continuing congressional oversight is key to
addressing the federal government's persistent
performance, management, and accountability
problems. In recent testimonies, the Comptroller
General has suggested that the significant
performance problems in federal programs and
agencies can be organized around four broad
themes.1

ï¿½    Comprehensively reassess what the federal
government does and how it does it: reconsider
whether to terminate or revise outdated programs
or services provided.
ï¿½    Reexamine and redefine the beneficiaries of
federal programs: reconsider who is eligible for,
pays for, and/or benefits from a particular
program to maximize federal investments.
ï¿½    Improve economy, efficiency, and
effectiveness of federal operations: capture
opportunities to reduce costs through
restructuring and streamlining federal activities.
ï¿½    Attack activities at risk of fraud, waste,
abuse, and mismanagement: focus on minimizing
risks and costs associated with the delivery of
major federal programs and activities.

GPRA's concepts, practices, and products provide
tools that Congress can use to help its
decisionmaking and strengthen its oversight,
thereby helping to resolve these issues. More
specifically, this Subcommittee can have a central
role in building GPRA into the congressional
oversight process. House Rule X requires standing
committees of the House to provide oversight plans
to the Committee on Government Reform.2  These
oversight plans are then published by the
Committee along with its recommendations for
ensuring the most effective coordination of such
plans.

The new information now available from agencies'
first annual performance reports, along with
information being developed under other management
reforms such as the Chief Financial Officers (CFO)
Act, can provide new opportunities for
congressional oversight that House committees can
consider as they develop their oversight plans.
For example, performance reports will provide
annual information on programmatic results that
can help Congress systematically review
achievements and performance gaps. One opportunity
available to this Subcommittee is to work with
House committees to ensure that this information
is used in developing oversight plans.

A second opportunity is to look across House
committees and lead the development of integrated
oversight agendas that target areas of
congressional emphasis. Specifically, information
from annual performance reports, by focusing on
the results to be achieved, should suggest program
areas and agencies that cut across individual
committee jurisdictions, and that would benefit
from more coordinated oversight. Scheduling joint
hearings, for example, can provide synergy in
addressing crosscutting issues.

Finally, the House Government Reform Committee
could play a central role in coordinating
oversight hearings related to how different
governing tools (for example, intergovernmental
partnerships, performance-based contracts, and
financial credits) will be, or can be, used in
achieving goals. Such oversight could assist in
the development of a base of governmentwide
information on the strengths and weaknesses of
various tools used to address differing public
policy issues.

Key Challenges to GPRA Implementation
Over the past several years, we have reported on a
consistent set of challenges for agencies in using
GPRA to become high-performing organizations.3
These challenges include

ï¿½    articulating a results orientation,
ï¿½    coordinating crosscutting programs,
ï¿½    showing performance consequences of budget
decisions,
ï¿½    showing how daily operations contribute to
results, and
ï¿½    building the capacity to gather and use
performance information.

Articulating a Results Orientation
The cornerstone of federal efforts to successfully
meet current and emerging public demands is to
adopt a results-orientation. That is, to develop a
clear sense of the results an agency wants to
achieve as opposed to the products and services
(outputs) an agency produces and the processes
used to produce them. Adopting a results-
orientation will require a cultural transformation
for many agencies-it entails new ways of thinking
and doing business.

In our assessment of the fiscal year 1999 plans,
we identified the lack of comprehensive sets of
goals that focused on results as one of the
central weaknesses that limited the usefulness of
the performance plans for congressional and other
decisionmakers. Important progress was made over
the next year, and all of the fiscal year 2000
plans we reviewed contain at least some goals and
measures that address program results.

Still, additional opportunities for improvement
continue to exist. For example, the Small Business
Administration's (SBA) fiscal year 2000
performance plan goals and measures generally
focus on outputs, rather than results. To assess
progress in its goal to "increase opportunities
for small business success," SBA relies on
measures such as an increase in the number of
loans made by SBA, the number of clients served,
the number of bonds issued, and the amount of
dollars invested in small businesses. This is
important information, but the plan does not show
how the measures are related to increasing
opportunities for small businesses to be
successful-the key result SBA hopes to achieve.
SBA revised some of its performance goals in the
fiscal year 2001 plan; however, SBA continues to
focus its performance goals and measures on
outputs instead of results.

With the issuance of the first performance
reports, Congress now has information on the
extent to which agencies met their fiscal year
1999 goals. For example, the Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA) showed progress in providing
quality healthcare at a reasonable cost.
Specifically, VA reported that it met one of its
most important goals-that is, to reduce the
average healthcare cost per patient by 13 percent
since fiscal year 1997; actual performance
reported was a 16 percent reduction. VA slightly
missed one of its other key goals-that is, to
improve quality as measured by the Chronic Disease
Index. The goal was to achieve a score on this
index of 91 percent; VA's actual performance was
89 percent.

Setting goals that focus on results and reporting
on the performance that has been accomplished will
provide critical information needed for making
judgments about the continuing value of a given
program. As goals are being set, Congress can make
decisions on whether the goals are appropriate and
whether the expected level of performance is
sufficient to justify the federal expenditure and
effort. Later, as results are being reported,
Congress can determine if progress is being made
on the expected level of performance.

Coordinating Crosscutting Programs
Virtually all of the results that the federal
government strives to achieve require the
concerted and coordinated efforts of two or more
agencies. Although the fiscal year 2000
performance plans indicate that the federal
government continues to make progress in showing
that crosscutting efforts are being coordinated to
ensure effective and efficient program delivery,
agencies still need to complete the more
challenging task of establishing complementary
performance goals, mutually reinforcing
strategies, and common performance measures, as
appropriate.

Unfocused and uncoordinated crosscutting programs
waste scarce resources, confuse and frustrate
taxpayers and program beneficiaries, and limit
overall program effectiveness.4 Our work in over
40 program areas across the government has
repeatedly shown that mission fragmentation and
program overlap are widespread, and that
crosscutting federal program efforts are not well-
coordinated. For example, we have reported on the
50 programs for the homeless that were
administered by 8 federal agencies. Housing
services were provided under 23 programs operated
by 4 agencies, and food and nutrition services
were under 26 programs administered by 6 agencies.5

     If GPRA is effectively implemented, the
governmentwide performance plan and the agencies'
annual performance plans and subsequent
performance reports should provide Congress with
new information on agencies and programs
addressing similar results. Once these programs
are identified, Congress can consider the
associated policy, management, and performance
implications of crosscutting programs as part of
its oversight over the executive branch. This will
present challenges to the traditional committee
structures and processes.

A continuing issue for Congress to consider is how
to best focus on common results when mission areas
and programs cut across committee jurisdictions.
More specifically, at present, Congress has no
direct mechanism to use in responding to and
providing a congressional perspective upon the
President's governmentwide performance plan.
Congress also has no established mechanism to
articulate performance goals for the broad
missions of government, to assess alternative
strategies that offer the most promise for
achieving these goals, or to define an oversight
agenda targeted on the most pressing crosscutting
performance and management issues.

I mentioned earlier the promise that House Rule X
holds in this regard. Another possible approach
would involve modifying or supplementing the
current budget resolution.6 Already organized by
budget function, similar to the program
performance section of the President's
governmentwide performance plan, the resolution
could be adapted to permit Congress to respond to,
and present a coordinated congressional
perspective on, the President's governmentwide
performance plan.

Showing Performance Consequences of Budget
Decisions
A key GPRA objective is to help Congress develop a
clearer understanding of what is being achieved in
relation to what is being spent. Toward this end,
GPRA requires that annual performance plans link
performance goals to the program activities in
agencies' budget requests.7

We reported that agencies are making progress in
developing useful linkages between their annual
budget requests and performance plans, but much
additional work is needed.8 We observed that the
fiscal years 1999 and 2000 performance planning
cycles produced useful experiments in "connecting
resources to results." Collectively, the actions
by many agencies constituted important first steps
in forging closer links between plans and budgets
and could be seen as a baseline from which to
assess future progress.

     Agencies have developed a variety of
approaches and techniques to show relationships
between budgetary resources and performance goals.
In each case, agencies were able to make their
performance plans more relevant for budget
decisionmaking by showing the performance
consequences of requested levels of funding.  For
example,

ï¿½    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission revised their
budgets' program activity structures to reflect
their plans' strategic goals and supporting
performance goals.
ï¿½    The Internal Revenue Service and the Federal
Bureau of Investigation fully integrated their
performance plans with their budget requests into
a single submission.
ï¿½    Several administrations within the Department
of Health and Human Services and the Department of
Housing and Urban Development (1) developed
summary crosswalks that consolidated or aggregated
funding from separate budget accounts and/or
program activities and (2) related this funding
information to strategic objectives or discrete
sets of performance goals.

We also noted that agencies continue to face many
challenges in this area-from challenges in goal
definition and measurement to deficiencies in cost
accounting systems. Given these challenges, we
recommended that Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) take the initiative to develop a practical
and constructive agenda to further clarify the
relationship between budgetary resources and
results, beginning with the fiscal year 2001
plans. Recent actions by OMB hold promise for
reinforcing and strengthening agency efforts in
this area. OMB issued guidance and policy
expectations for the 2002 process that should spur
further development and improvement. For example,
agencies will be expected to develop integrated
plans and budgets that associate budgetary
requests "insofar as possible with each goal."

Showing How Daily Operations Contribute to Results
     Understanding and articulating how agencies'
day-to-day operations contribute to results is
important for congressional and executive branch
decisionmakers to (1) design and implement cost-
effective strategies to achieve results and (2)
pinpoint initiatives to improve performance. Such
understandings are by no means easy or
straightforward. As I previously noted, virtually
all of the results that agencies hope to achieve
must be accomplished through the coordinated
efforts of several players. The challenge for
agencies is to understand how they can best
influence the results to be achieved. Simply
stated, agencies that do not have clear
understandings of how what they do now contributes
to results are hard pressed to determine what they
need to do to improve performance.

     We have found that although agencies' fiscal
year 2000 plans contain valuable and informative
discussions of how strategies and programs relate
to goals, substantial opportunities exist to make
continued improvements in presentations of
strategies and resources. Specifying clearly in
performance plans how strategies-including the use
of capital assets-are to be used to achieve
results is important to Congress and managers in
order to determine the right mix of strategies and
to maximize performance while limiting costs. As
an example, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's fiscal year 2001 performance plan
does not provide a clear rationale for how
information technology-related strategies and
programs will contribute to achieving its goals or
show any allocation of information technology-
related dollars and personnel to performance
goals.

     The Department of Transportation (DOT), in
its performance report for fiscal year 1999, shows
why it is important that agencies know the factors
that affect results. Such knowledge is key to
designing improvement strategies. DOT did not
achieve its fiscal year 1999 goal concerning
recreational boating fatalities. DOT notes that
most recreational boating fatalities are the
result of accidents involving factors under the
operator's control, and that boaters tend not to
wear life jackets, although doing so would vastly
improve their chance of surviving accidents. To
achieve this goal, DOT's strategy now includes
boater education and research on life jackets to
promote greater use.

     Building, Maintaining, and Marshaling the
Human Capital Needed to Achieve Results. Effective
implementation of performance-based management, as
envisioned in GPRA, hinges on agencies' abilities
to strategically manage their most important
asset-their people resources or "human capital"-to
achieve results.9 However, most of the fiscal year
2000 performance plans do not sufficiently address
how the agencies will use their human capital to
achieve results. Although the plans often discuss
human capital issues in general terms, such as
recruitment and training efforts, they do not
consistently discuss other key human capital
strategies used by high-performing organizations.
For example, few agencies discussed how they would
build, maintain, and marshal the human capital
needed to achieve their performance goals. This
suggests that one of the critical components of
high-performing organizations-the systematic
integration of human capital planning and program
planning-is not being adequately and uniformly
addressed across the federal government.

     In June, President Clinton issued a
memorandum to the heads of executive departments
and agencies detailing actions to further improve
the management of human capital. Among other
things, the memorandum directs agencies to clearly
state specific human capital management goals and
objectives in their strategic and annual
performance plans. This is an important and
helpful reminder to agencies that GPRA requires
agencies to describe in these documents how they
will use their human capital to support the
accomplishment of agency goals and objectives.

     Resolve Management Challenges and Program
Risks. Any serious effort to fundamentally improve
the performance of federal agencies must address
management challenges and program risks.
Unfortunately, we found that the fiscal year 2000
annual performance plans showed inconsistent
attention to the need to resolve the mission-
critical management challenges and program risks
that continue to undermine the federal
government's economy, efficiency, and
effectiveness.

For example, the Department of Agriculture's
performance report shows varied progress in
resolving the major management challenges
identified by GAO and its Inspector General in
fiscal year 1999. In particular, progress has been
made in improving the agency's farm loan
portfolio-the delinquency rates for direct loans
and the loss rates for direct and guaranteed loans
were all within the target levels for fiscal year
1999. Conversely, the report does not demonstrate
progress in addressing or resolving other
previously identified management challenges. For
example, the report shows little, if any, progress
in reducing inefficiency and waste throughout the
Forest Service's operations.

Building the Capacity to Gather and Use
Performance Information
Agencies need reliable information during their
planning efforts to set realistic goals and later,
as programs are being implemented, to gauge their
progress toward achievement of those goals. Our
work over the past several years has identified
limitations and selected approaches to improve
agencies' abilities to produce credible program
performance and cost data.10 These limitations are
substantial and long-standing, and they will not
be quickly or easily resolved. We found in our
assessment of the fiscal year 2000 performance
plans that agencies provide limited confidence in
the credibility of their performance information.
This limited confidence in the credibility of
performance information is one of the single,
greatest continuing weaknesses with GPRA
implementation.

One challenge confronting agencies in obtaining
timely and reliable results-oriented performance
information is their dependence on state and local
agencies to provide data. For example, the
Administration for Children and Families could not
report on its progress in meeting fiscal year 1999
goals for the Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families or child support programs. According to
the Department of Health and Human Services'
performance report, time lags in obtaining these
data from the states make it difficult to provide
a comprehensive summary of agency performance.

We have noted that agencies can use their GPRA
planning and reporting documents to discuss their
actions to compensate for unavailable or low-
quality data. For example, EPA highlights
discrepancies between its data and state water
quality data. EPA discusses its strategies for
improving water quality data, including state-
specific training for data entry into the Safe
Drinking Water Information System.

Discussing data credibility and related issues in
performance reports can provide important
contextual information to Congress. For example,
Congress can use this discussion to raise
questions about problems the agencies have had in
collecting needed results-oriented performance
information and the cost and data quality trade-
offs associated with various collection
strategies.

     Program Evaluation. A federal environment
that focuses on results-where federal efforts are
often but one factor among many that determine
whether goals are achieved-depends on program
evaluation to provide vital information about the
effect of the federal effort. Program evaluation
studies are important for assessing the
contributions that programs are making to results,
determining factors affecting performance, and
identifying improvement opportunities. However, we
continue to be concerned that many agencies lack
the capacity to undertake program evaluations. In
our 1997 review of agencies' strategic plans, we
found that many agencies had not given sufficient
attention to how program evaluations will be used
in implementing GPRA and improving performance.11
In another report, we noted that agencies' program
evaluation capabilities would be challenged to
meet the new demands for information on program
results.12 It will be important that the updated
strategic plans, to be issued this fall, contain
fuller discussions of how agencies are using
program evaluations.

     Financial Management Capabilities. The long-
standing inability of many agencies to accurately
record and report financial management data on
both a year-end and an ongoing basis for
decisionmaking and oversight purposes continues to
be a serious weakness. Without reliable data on
costs, decisionmakers cannot effectively evaluate
programs' financial performance or control and
reduce costs. As this Subcommittee is well aware,
the CFO Act laid the legislative foundation for
the federal government to provide taxpayers, the
nation's leaders, and agency program managers with
reliable financial information through audited
financial statements. In addition to requiring
annual audited financial statements, the CFO Act
sets expectations for agencies to build effective
financial management organizations and systems and
to routinely produce sound cost and operating
performance information throughout the year.

     Although obtaining unqualified "clean" audit
opinions on federal financial statements is an
important objective, it is not an end in and of
itself. The key is to take steps to continuously
improve internal controls and underlying financial
management information systems. The Federal
Financial Management Improvement Act (FFMIA)
focuses, among other things, on ensuring greater
attention to making much needed improvements in
financial management systems. The primary purpose
of FFMIA is to ensure that agency financial
management systems routinely provide reliable,
useful, and timely financial information. With
such information, government leaders will be
better positioned to invest scarce resources,
reduce costs, oversee programs, and hold agency
managers accountable for the way they run
government programs.

     For fiscal year 1999, auditors for 21 of the
24 CFO Act agencies reported that those agencies'
financial systems did not substantially comply
with FFMIA's requirements. The three agencies in
compliance were the Department of Energy, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the
National Science Foundation.

Summary
In summary, Mr. Chairman, GPRA has the potential
to help Congress and the executive branch ensure
that the federal government provides the results
that the American people expect and deserve.
Agencies have completed their first full set of
GPRA planning and reporting documents. The
performance and cost information that are required
in these documents have the potential to help
Congress set its oversight agenda and agencies
address challenges to becoming high-performing
organizations. These documents also provide a
performance-based management framework for
agencies to improve performance and reinforce
accountability throughout their organizations.

We are very pleased that Congress continues to
rely on us to assess the implementation of GPRA
and assist Congress in its use. Most recently,

ï¿½    At the request of Chairman Dan Burton of the
House Government Reform Committee, we are
reviewing the use of performance agreements as an
approach for instilling accountability for results
within organizations.

ï¿½    At the request of Chairman Fred Thompson and
Ranking Minority Member Joseph Lieberman of the
Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, we
reviewed the 24 CFO Act agencies' fiscal year 1999
performance reports and fiscal year 2001
performance plans to assess the extent to which
the agencies addressed key outcome areas and
management challenges. Chairman Thompson also
requested that we update our reviews of agencies'
efforts to better align their performance plans
with their budgets.
ï¿½    At the request of Chairman George Voinovich
of the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management, Restructuring and the District of
Columbia, Senate Committee on Governmental
Affairs, we are conducting a follow-up to our 1996
survey to obtain information on federal managers'
experiences with and attitudes about results-
oriented performance and management issues.
ï¿½    At the request of Ranking Minority Member
Joseph Lieberman of the Senate Committee on
Governmental Affairs, we will begin work on the
relevant foreign experiences in public-sector
management reforms and the possible application of
those experiences to the United States.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared
statement. I would be pleased to respond to any
questions that you or other Members of the
Subcommittee may have.

Contacts and Acknowledgments

For further information regarding this testimony,
please contact J. Christopher Mihm at (202) 512-
8676. Individuals making key contributions to this
testimony include Lisa Shames, Mike Curro, Allen
Lomax, Dottie Self, and Janice Lichty.

_______________________________
1 Managing in the New Millennium: Shaping a More
Efficient and Effective Government for the 21st
Century (GAO/T-OCG-00-9, Mar. 29, 2000); Managing
for Results: Using GPRA to Help Congressional
Decisionmaking and Strengthen Oversight (GAO/T-GGD-
00-95, Mar. 22, 2000); and Congressional
Oversight: Opportunities to Address Risks, Reduce
Costs, and Improve Performance (GAO/T-AIMD-00-96,
Feb. 17, 2000).
2 Rules of the House of Representatives - H.Res.
5, 106th Congress, Rule X, Clause 2(d).
3Managing for Results: Opportunities for Continued
Improvements in Agencies' Performance Plans
(GAO/GGD/AIMD-99-215, July 20, 1999); and Managing
for Results: An Agenda to Improve the Usefulness
of Agencies' Annual Performance Plans
(GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-228, Sept. 8, 1998).
4 Managing for Results: Using the Results Act to
Address Mission Fragmentation and Program Overlap
(GAO/AIMD-97-146, Aug. 29, 1997).
5 Managing for Results: Barriers to Interagency
Coordination (GAO/GGD-00-106, Mar. 29, 2000).
6 Budget Issues: Effective Oversight and Budget
Discipline Are Essential-Even in a Time of Surplus
(GAO/T-AIMD-00-73, Feb. 1, 2000).
7 Subject to clearance by the Office of Management
and Budget and generally resulting from
negotiations between agencies and appropriations
subcommittees, program activities are intended to
provide a meaningful representation of the
operations financed by a specific budget account.
8 Performance Budgeting: Fiscal Year 2000 Progress
in Linking Plans With Budgets (GAO/AIMD-99-239R,
July 30, 1999); and Performance Budgeting: Initial
Experiences Under the Results Act in Linking Plans
With Budgets (GAO/AIMD/GGD-99-67, Apr. 12, 1999).
9 Human Capital: Managing Human Capital in the
21st Century (GAO/T-GGD-00-77, Mar. 9, 2000).
10 Managing for Results: Challenges Agencies Face
in Producing Credible Performance Information
(GAO/GGD-00-52, Feb. 4, 2000); and Performance
Plans: Selected Approaches for Verification and
Validation of Agency Performance Information
(GAO/GGD-99-139, July 30, 1999).
11 Managing for Results: Agencies' Annual
Performance Plans Can Help Address Strategic
Planning Challenges (GAO/GGD-98-44, Jan. 30,
1998).
12 Program Evaluation: Agencies Challenged by New
Demand for Information on Program Results (GAO/GGD-
98-53, Apr. 24, 1998).
*** End of document ***