Results Act: Observations on USDA's Draft Strategic Plan (Testimony,
10/01/97, GAO/T-RCED-98-17).

GAO discussed the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) draft
strategic plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act.

GAO noted that: (1) GAO's July 1997 report stated that a significant
amount of work remained to be done before USDA's plan fulfilled the
requirements of the Results Act; (2) specifically GAO found that USDA's
May 1997 draft strategic plan did not: (a) contain all six elements
required by the Results Act; and (b) provide a comprehensive strategy to
accomplish the Department's mission because it lacked some key
attributes that are necessary for a quality strategic plan; and (3)
GAO's review of the August revised draft strategic plan indicates that
while USDA has made significant progress in addressing these concerns
there remains a need for additional work in some areas.

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

 REPORTNUM:  T-RCED-98-17
     TITLE:  Results Act: Observations on USDA's Draft Strategic Plan
      DATE:  10/01/97
   SUBJECT:  Agricultural programs
             Agricultural industry
             Strategic planning
             Agency missions
             Information resources management
             Program evaluation
             Interagency relations
             Internal controls
             Public administration
IDENTIFIER:  Government Performance and Results Act
             GPRA
             
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Cover
================================================================ COVER


Before the Subcommittee on Departmental Operations,
Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives

For Release
on Delivery
Expected at
10 a.m.  EDT
Wednesday
October 1, 1997

RESULTS ACT - OBSERVATIONS ON
USDA'S DRAFT STRATEGIC PLAN

Statement of Robert A.  Robinson,
Director, Food and Agriculture Issues,
Resources, Community, and Economic
Development Division

GAO/T-RCED-98-17

GAO/RCED-98-17T


(150735)


Abbreviations
=============================================================== ABBREV

  USDA -

============================================================ Chapter 0

Mr.  Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

We are pleased to be here today to discuss the U.  S.  Department of
Agriculture's (USDA) draft strategic plan required by the Government
Performance and Results Act of 1993 (Results Act).  Our testimony is
based primarily on our July 1997 review of USDA's May 1997 draft
strategic plan,\1 and our observations on the August 1997 revised
draft plan, which we recently obtained from USDA.  Our testimony does
not reflect any subsequent changes that may have been made and
included in the final plan that USDA submitted to the Congress on
September 30, 1997. 

In summary, our July 1997 report stated that a significant amount of
work remained to be done before USDA's plan fulfilled the
requirements of the Results Act.  Specifically we found that USDA's
May 1997 draft strategic plan did not

  -- contain all six elements required by the Results Act; and

  -- provide a comprehensive strategy to accomplish the Department's
     mission because it lacked some key attributes that are necessary
     for a quality strategic plan. 

Our review of the August revised draft strategic plan indicates that
while USDA has made significant progress in addressing these concerns
there remains a need for additional work in some areas. 


--------------------
\1 Results Act:  Observations on USDA's Draft Strategic Plan
(GAO/RCED-97-196R, July 10, 1997). 


   BACKGROUND
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:1

With an operating budget of about $57 billion, USDA is one of the
largest civilian agencies in government.  USDA administers over 200
programs that cover a wide range of issues related to food and
agriculture.  Among other things, USDA's programs support farmers'
incomes, stabilize domestic markets, promote U.S.  exports, manage
national forests, conserve agricultural lands, provide access to food
for low-income households, improve the nutritional status of the
American people, ensure a safe food supply, and support research for
the development of new agricultural products and processes.  The
programs are administered by 18 agencies in seven mission areas. 

The diverse nature of USDA's programs raises several challenges in
developing a comprehensive strategic plan that adequately addresses
all the responsibilities falling under the Department's purview.  To
best address the wide range of program activities and functions that
support its mission and respond to the Results Act, USDA chose to
develop a strategic plan that consists of a departmentwide strategic
overview accompanied by 30 plans for the mission areas, agencies, and
staff offices that constitute the Department.  While the
departmentwide strategic overview lays out the overall mission and
goals for USDA, the agency plans provide greater detail on the
missions and the goals of the individual agencies that make up the
Department. 

For our July 1997 report, we reviewed the departmentwide strategic
overview and the 16 agency plans that are directly related to
accomplishing USDA's mission and implementing its programs.  These 16
agency plans cover USDA's seven primary mission areas:  Farm and
Foreign Agricultural Services; Food, Nutrition, and Consumer
Services; Food Safety; Marketing and Regulatory Programs; Natural
Resources and Environment; Research, Education, and Economics; and
Rural Development. 


   USDA'S MAY 1997 DRAFT PLAN DID
   NOT CONTAIN ALL THE REQUIRED
   ELEMENTS
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2

USDA's May 1997 draft plan did not contain all six elements required
by the Results Act.  The six critical components required by the act
are (1) a comprehensive mission statement; (2) agencywide long-term
goals and objectives for all major functions and operations; (3)
approaches (or strategies) and the various resources needed to
achieve the goals and objectives; (4) a relationship between the
long-term goals and objectives and the annual performance goals; (5)
an identification of key factors, which are external to the agency
and beyond its control, that could significantly affect the
achievement of the strategic goals; and (6) a description of how
program evaluations were used to establish or revise strategic goals
and a schedule for future program evaluations. 

We found that the departmentwide strategic overview only provided a
mission statement for USDA as a whole and laid out four general goals
and their related subgoals.  The overview referred readers to the
agencies' plans for detailed information on all six required elements
of the Results Act.  However, our review of the 16 agencies' plans
found that they were generally incomplete and, except for the plan of
the Food and Consumer Service, none of them contained all six key
elements required by the Results Act.  While all of the 15 incomplete
plans contained a mission statement and goals and objectives, the
information provided for the other four key elements varied
significantly.  Specifically, for these 15 agency plans we found that

  -- 7 did not provide information on the resources needed to achieve
     the agencies' goals and objectives;

  -- none provided sufficient information on the relationship between
     an agency's long-term goals and annual performance goals; most
     plans indicated that this information was being developed;

  -- 7 did not provide information on the external factors that were
     beyond the control of the agency and that could affect the
     achievement of its goals; and

  -- 13 plans alluded to the fact that program evaluations might be
     used to modify goals and objectives in the future, but none
     described the general scope and methodology for the evaluations,
     the key issues that would be addressed during the evaluations,
     or the timing of the evaluations. 

We also found that while many of the agencies' plans included
sections that should have covered information on the required
elements, the information actually provided was incomplete and often
not relevant or directly linked to the goals and objectives stated in
that agency's plan.  As we have discussed with USDA officials, merely
having a subheading for a required element does not satisfy the
requirements of the Results Act.  For example, almost all of the 16
agency plans included a section that discussed the external
environment facing the agency, but only about half of the plans
provided any indication of how these external factors could affect
the agency's ability to accomplish specific goals and objectives. 
Because external factors can influence the achievement of a goal
directly and significantly, not including a discussion of these
factors could invalidate the assumptions underlying a goal. 
Similarly, providing a schedule of future program evaluations is
important not because it is required but because without these
evaluations an agency cannot have the confidence that it has set the
right goals and that its strategies will be effective in achieving
them. 

Our review of USDA's August draft strategic plan found significant
improvements in two of the four required elements.  All of the
agencies' plans included sections describing the (1) resources needed
to accomplish the stated goals and (2) key external factors that
could affect the achievement of their goals and objectives.  However,
the agencies' plans continued to lack sufficient information on the
relationship between the long-term goals and annual performance goals
as well as program evaluations that will be used in the future to
ensure that those goals and objectives are being achieved.  We found
that although all the agencies' plans had subheadings to address
these two requirements, the information provided in about half of
them continues to be inadequate. 


   KEY ATTRIBUTES NECESSARY FOR A
   QUALITY PLAN WERE MISSING
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3

Collectively, USDA's May 1997 departmentwide overview and the
agencies' plans did not provide a comprehensive strategy for carrying
out the Department's mission or achieving the purposes of the Results
Act (such as improving management, program effectiveness, and public
accountability and confidence) because some key attributes were
missing.  Many of the attributes necessary for a quality strategic
plan are described in the Office of Management and Budget's Circular
A-11, Part 2.  We found that the attributes missing from USDA's May
1997 plan included the following: 

  -- As we just stated, many agency plans were incomplete.  Until all
     the plans are completed, they cannot provide an overall guide to
     help the agencies set priorities and allocate resources
     consistent with these priorities. 

  -- Some agency plans had inadequate descriptions of the strategies
     that an agency would use to achieve its goals and objectives. 
     General goals and objectives should elaborate how an agency will
     carry out its mission, outline planned accomplishments, and
     schedule their implementation.  Without fully descriptive
     strategies, it was unclear to us how these agencies would
     achieve their stated goals and objectives. 

  -- Some agency plans contained goals and objectives with results
     that exceeded the agency's span of influence.  In these cases,
     achieving the performance goal often depended on several
     external factors, some of which may be more significant than the
     agency's functions and programs.  As we discussed with USDA
     officials, at a minimum, these external factors should be
     recognized in the agency's plan and linked to particular goals. 

  -- Only a few agency plans included clear linkages between the
     agency's goals and objectives and how they contributed to USDA's
     major goals.  We believe that these linkages are important
     because an agency's goals and objectives set out the long-term
     programmatic policy and goals of the Department as a whole and
     are important for providing direction and guidance to that
     agency's staff. 

  -- Many agency plans lacked a clear emphasis on externally focused
     goals that directly relate to the mission of the agency.  While
     the Results Act does not preclude the development of agency
     goals that are process-oriented, we believe that formulating
     goals that relate to an agency's mission are important because
     this process provides an opportunity for the agency to identify
     programs that are essential, as well as those that can be
     eliminated, reduced in scope, or transferred to another agency. 

  -- Some of the goals and objectives in the agency plans were not
     measurable and thereby may preclude a future assessment of
     whether the goals have been or are being achieved.  While the
     Results Act does not require agencies' goals to be stated in a
     quantitative fashion, we found that some of them were stated so
     broadly that they were inherently unmeasurable, either directly
     or through the use of performance measures. 

  -- Many agency plans had performance measures that were either
     missing, not useful, or incomplete, thus making a comprehensive
     assessment of performance and results difficult.  Although some
     agency plans did provide information on performance measures,
     the information was not sufficient to show the relationship
     between an agency's strategic goals and the performance goals to
     be included in the annual performance plans. 

Our review of the August revision of USDA's draft strategic plan
found that it was generally better because the agency plans had been
improved in three specific areas.  First, the agency plans had a
clearer focus on mission-related goals and objectives partly because
process-oriented and internal goals had been separated from strategic
goals.  Second, the agency plans included better linkages between an
agency's goals and objectives and its authorizing legislation, as
well as clearly identified how the agency goals contributed to the
Department's overall goals.  Finally, the agency plans provided more
detailed information on the various governmental and nongovernmental
entities involved in accomplishing the agencies' goals.  However, we
remain concerned about the lack of complete information in some
agency plans on the strategies that will be used to achieve the goals
as well as the performance measures that will be used to gauge an
agency's progress in meeting its goals.  In particular, some of the
agency plans continue to have broadly defined objectives and
incomplete performance measures that will preclude an assessment of
an agency's progress. 


-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3.1

In conclusion, it is important to recognize that while USDA's May
1997 draft strategic plan was inadequate in many respects, the
Results Act anticipated that the process of developing an effective
strategic plan may take several planning cycles to perfect.  We are
pleased to see improvements in USDA's August draft strategic plan,
which has incorporated many of the suggestions that we made during
informal meetings with USDA officials after the issuance of our July
1997 report as well as suggestions that the Department received from
congressional committees and the Office of Management and Budget.  We
look forward to continuing to work with the Congress and USDA to
ensure that the requirements of the Results Act are met.  Mr. 
Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement.  I would be pleased
to answer any questions that you or Members of the Subcommittee may
have. 


*** End of document. ***