By Stephen Barr
Monday, February 4, 2008
As the Bush administration nears an end, the president's key policy lieutenants are mustering data to show that many federal agencies are meeting the goals for improved performance laid out by the White House seven years ago.
In 2001, according to the administration's scorecard, 15 percent of agencies met or partially met the president's goals, compared with 82 percent today.
His administration's efforts to improve the government's internal operations will be a part of the narrative in President Bush's fiscal 2009 budget, scheduled for release today. Parts of the budget will stress the importance of the government getting its financial house in order at a time when the administration is pushing to balance the budget by 2012.
Clay Johnson III, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, citing the scorecard, told reporters last week, "We've come a long way, baby."
But the president's management scorecard has drawn skepticism and controversy.
Congress, for example, recently placed new restrictions on a key element of the administration's initiative -- stepped-up outsourcing of federal jobs. Congress also has moved slowly on the administration's vision for e-gov, or electronic government, another administration goal.
The administration is not giving in, though.
Paul Denett, in charge of government-wide procurement policy at the OMB, said studies are underway to show that savings from job competitions "are real," a concern of Congress. The OMB will help agencies comply with new restrictions on job competitions and promote efforts to re-engineer business practices and take other steps to improve efficiency.
The budget will propose spending more for technology improvements in the government and show savings of several million dollars because of e-gov initiatives in fiscal 2007, officials said.
Even areas where the administration has made substantial progress, such as financial management, appear likely to get more scrutiny from Congress.
For instance, the administration has pushed to reduce "improper payments," such as overpayments to individuals and vendors, payments that are not allowed under program rules and payments whose validity cannot be backed up with documents.
The administration has reduced the error rate for improper payments, but the estimated total still remains large, about $55 billion in fiscal 2007. Daniel I. Werfel, acting controller at the OMB, said the budget will again propose a "program integrity" effort to help eliminate wrong payments.
Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate federal financial management subcommittee, has his own proposal to reduce improper payments. His bill, announced last week, would tighten the law, expand the number of programs analyzed for improper payments and levy fines on agencies not in compliance with the law.
Efforts to improve the internal management of federal programs have been a staple of numerous administrations, including the Clinton administration, which put Vice President Al Gore in charge of "reinventing government."
The Bush administration has called on 26 agencies to adopt plans to better manage their people, money, technology and programs, and to cut costs, either by becoming more efficient or outsourcing work.
Robert Shea, a senior policy official at the OMB, has overseen an effort to evaluate the government's major programs. Currently 22 percent of the programs cannot demonstrate results or are ineffective, down from 55 percent when the effort began, he said.
To track progress toward Bush's goals, the administration created a scorecard using traffic-light dots to signify each agency's status -- green for good, yellow for moderately acceptable and red for unsatisfactory.
The OMB's Johnson updates the scorecard on a quarterly basis, posts the results on an administration Web site ( http://www.results.gov/) and meets with Bush at least once a year to show him the scorecard.
Last week, Johnson said two more agencies -- the Environmental Protection Agency and the Social Security Administration -- have achieved all green scores. They joined the Labor Department, which has had a perfect score since 2005.
Perfect scores do not mean that the three agencies operate flawlessly, Johnson said, but "they have a greater ability to be effective than other agencies that aren't all green."
New Postal Board ChairmanAlan C. Kessler, a partner in a Philadelphia law firm, has been elected chairman of the U.S. Postal Service board of governors.
Kessler, a Democratic Party fundraiser and financial co-chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, succeeds James C. Miller III, a Republican and former member of the Reagan administration.
The postal board elects a chairman every year, and governors usually take turns holding the position. Miller, whose term expires in 2010, had held the chair for the last three years.
Kessler's term expires in December. He is a partner at Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen and served on the presidential transition team for Bill Clinton, who appointed him to be a postal governor.
Stephen Barr's e-mail address isbarrs@washpost.com.
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