United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office General Government Division author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 1997-02-12 monographic deposited born digital 19 p. GA 1.13:T-GGD-97-43 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-T-GGD-97-43 P0b002ee1803a4388 f:gg97043t DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-23 GAOREPORTS-T-GGD-97-43 machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-T-GGD-97-43 T-GGD-97-43 Agency missions Information technology Federal agency reorganization Strategic planning Management information systems Interagency relations Financial management systems Congressional/executive relations Congressional oversight SBA Minority Enterprise Development Program Testimony GGD GAO discussed the major management challenges faced by federal agencies in implementing the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), focusing on how GPRA can be used to address those challenges and better ensure that agencies are the focused, results-driven organizations that today's fiscal environment requires.<p/>GAO noted that: (1) efforts to build an effective and efficient organization must begin with a clearly defined mission, a concrete sense of why the organization exists and what it is to accomplish; (2) over the years, GAO's work has identified instances where an agency's effectiveness was hampered by the lack of a clearly defined mission; (3) while progress is needed in better defining the missions of individual agencies, it is equally important to manage and coordinate federal program efforts that cut across several agencies; (4) GAO's work has shown that many program areas suffer from fragmented and overlapping initiatives; (5) such unfocused efforts waste scarce funds, confuse and frustrate program customers, and limit the overall effectiveness of the federal effort; (6) as Congress provides input to agencies' strategic plans, it can insist that agencies show how their programs are aligned with related efforts in other agencies; (7) Congress can also use the planning process to seek opportunities to streamline government by comparing the effectiveness of similar program efforts carried out by different agencies; (8) as successful organizations define their missions, they also establish results-oriented performance goals that can be used to assess whether they are fulfilling their missions; (9) many agencies have a difficult time moving from measuring program activities to establishing results-oriented goals and managing to achieve those results; (10) the fundamental reason that establishing results-oriented goals is so difficult is that, to set such goals, agencies must move beyond what they control, that is, their activities, to focus on what they merely influence, their results; (11) GAO's work has shown that many agencies are struggling to develop coherent strategies for restructuring their organizations, workforces, and operations to meet results-oriented goals and that agencies need to do a better job of designing mission-based strategies to improve efficiency and reduce costs; (12) taken together, the key steps and practices drawn from the organizations GAO studied provide a useful framework to assist Congress and the executive branch as they work to implement GPRA; (13) although each of the leading organizations GAO studied set its agenda for management reform according to its own environment, needs, and capabilities, they all commonly took three key steps; (14) these steps * https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-T-GGD-97-43/html/GAOREPORTS-T-GGD-97-43.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-T-GGD-97-43/pdf/GAOREPORTS-T-GGD-97-43.pdf GAO/T-GGD-97-43 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-T-GGD-97-43 Testimony GAO/T-GGD-97-43; Managing for Results: Using GPRA to Assist Congressional and Executive Branch Decisionmaking; Agency missions Information technology Federal agency reorganization Strategic planning Management information systems Interagency relations Financial management systems Congressional/executive relations Congressional oversight SBA Minority Enterprise Development Program Volume 102 Page 3856 102 Stat. 3856