Barack Obama has been President for exactly one week today. In the grand picture of a lifetime – or even a Presidency – seven days is not very many. However, in that time Obama has already made many controversial decisions. A week in review:
Tuesday, January 20 – Obama takes his oath of office and proclaims, “The question we ask today is not whether government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”
Thursday, January 22 – Obama orders Guantanamo Bay closed. He signed executive orders to shut down the terrorist detention center within a year and to ban harsh interrogations. “The message we are sending around the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism, and we are going to do so vigilantly; we are going to do so effectively; and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals.”
Monday, January 26 – Obama tackles energy policy. He directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review a California application to regulate greenhouse gases. In addition, told the Department of Transportation to begin implementing fuel efficiency standards passed in 2007 but not implemented by the Bush administration.
Besides these bold moves, Obama has also been urging Congress to pass his $825 billion economic stimulus plan and begun planning for a troop withdraw in Iraq.
“What you have seen in the first week is rapid change and a resetting of our global agenda,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. “The president believes we can’t afford to continue what we are doing. We can’t afford to slow down.”
Posted in
Performance Wire
With the possibility of the nation facing a trillion-dollar deficit for years to come, Obama has proposed a stimulus plan. His plan vows to set a “new higher standard of accountability, transparency and oversight.”
Click to Read More
Posted in
Performance Wire
Changes to the PMA are coming, but core areas will most likely stay the same. As Jon Desenberg, Senior Policy Director of The Performance Institute states, “We expect the agenda to be more similar than it would be different.” However two PMA objectives, performance improvement and commercial services management will go through the most changes. Obama has committed to reconstructing PART, and come up with a new and innovative way to look at government performance.
Read More Here: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=41353&dcn=e_gvet
Posted in
Performance Wire
The Government Performance Coalition, a group comprised of over a dozen organizations, made suggestions for Obama’s Transition Teams to promote implementing a performance-based framework for the executive branch. Jon Desenberg, Senior Policy Director at The Performance Institute, says, “There’s no other group in town that has such a depth and reach of experience and exposure to what’s happening.” Other recommendations included investing in federal human resources and using technology and innovation to help government progress.
To read more go to: http://www.govexec.com
Posted in
Performance Wire
There are always two sides to every story, depending on who you ask. Whether you’re in high school, a 30-year-old mother or comfortably nestled in a retirement home, there is always point/counterpoint to the same issue.
Presidents and their supporters are hardly immune. Since beginning his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama has criticized President George W. Bush’s Management Agenda (PMA) as well as the Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART) used to measure the performance of federal programs. In his Performance Plan released last fall, Obama cited critics who called the PART “insular, arbitrary and used to promote ideological goals rather than true performance standards.” He also cited a Government Accountability Office survey that found that among federal managers, only 26 percent used PART to make management decisions.
Without delving in too deep, it is easy to guess that Obama, being a Democrat and not a Bush supporter would find plenty wrong with the PMA and PART. He was able to cite statistics and surveys to validate his opinions. In defense of his performance management tools, is Bush able to do the same thing?
Last week, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released three reports that illustrate if and how performance and performance measurement improved during Bush’s eight years in office. They found that a comparison of the first and last management agenda score cards showed dramatic improvement. The first evaluation put most agencies at red across the board, with a few yellows and only one green. However, on the most recent assessment, four agencies earned greens in all five categories.
And in a dramatic shift from previous years, the OMB released the first-ever “Performance Report of the Federal Government,” a collection of brief performance updates from 24 federal agencies. According to Government Executive magazine, the goal was to provide basic information in a more user-friendly format that citizens could understand, said Clay Johnson, OMB deputy director for management.
“One of the things I think the next administration will inherit is more transparency about what works and what doesn’t in federal government than has ever existed before, so [they have] the information they need,” Johnson said.
Posted in
Performance Wire
President-elect Barack Obama is scheduled today to name Nancy Killefer Chief Performance Officer.
Killefer is a senior director of McKinsey and Company, a management consulting firm and was formerly the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration.
Obama promised to name a Chief Performance Officer (CPO) in his performance plan which he released last fall. The CPO will report directly to the president and will also be responsible for leading a White House “SWAT Team” composed of top-performing and highly-trained government professionals to set tough performance targets and hold managers responsible for progress.
Throughout his campaign, Obama emphasized that he will not just measure progress, but actually enforce standards. Much like Jefferson Smith in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” within a week of moving to the District, Obama quickly began to prepare the first bill he would like to see passed in Congress: the economic stimulus plan. The plan, which is expected to cost at least $775 billion, is intended to boost America’s troubled economy, the Associated Press reports. Not only will this plan help turn the economy around, but Obama also promises it will set a “new higher standard of accountability, transparency and oversight.”
With the naming of Killefer CPO, his selection of Peter Orszag as the director of the Office of Management and Budget and his quick preparation of the economic stimulus plan, it is clear that Obama is serious about his mission to improve government performance.
Posted in
Performance Wire
In 2003 federal agencies were given the ability to raise the pay caps of their Senior Executive Service (SES) members if the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget agreed that the appraisal systems they used met the proper criteria. Agencies factor in how the performance of the SES aligned with the performance of the overall organization when considering the pay raise – a “results-oriented management” approach.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released the findings of the study they did on results-oriented management. They based their findings off six federal agencies: Department of Defense, Department of the Treasury, Department of State, Department of Energy, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
While all six agencies use the results-oriented criteria, only five provided the Performance Review Board (PRB) members, who certify the pay raise, with specific information on the alignment of the SES’s performance and the organizations’ – one, the USAID, did not.
The GAO concluded that organizational performance assessments should be presented when seeking a SES pay raise; they concluded, “the Administrator of USAID provide uniform organizational performance assessments to PRB members and other reviewing officials to help inform their appraisal recommendations for senior executives at the end of the performance appraisal cycle.” In addition the GAO provided the OPM and the OMB with recommendations on how they can help clarify aspects of the certification decisions.
To read the full report: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0982.pdf
Posted in
Performance Wire
Even though President-Elect Barack Obama is not President yet, we’ve heard a lot of his opinions: everything from the government needing to use technology more effectively to college football needing to change to a playoff system.
Arguably one of his most important decisions is the budget cuts he’s promised to make to improve the federal government by rooting out wasteful programs. However, while everyone likes to save money, what’s not always appreciated is when that money is saved by cutting something you want. Complicating the matter is there are a lot of things in the federal budget that simply can’t be cut – either because it is a necessity (Homeland Security) or because cutting it would mean political suicide (health care).
Simply put, cutting spending from the federal budget is not as easy as clipping coupons for Saturday’s trip to Super Wal-Mart.
The Associated Press reported that a member of the transition team, speaking on a condition of anonymity, said that nothing will be considered off the table, at least for discussion, when considering budget cuts.
The annual federal budget is $3 trillion, and it will take a lot of work to discover which programs funded by this budget can go. But it’s a necessary step in curbing federal spending and making government more efficient.
As Obama said, “We will go though our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible, cost-effective way.”
Posted in
Performance Wire
The OMB requested the AGA evaluate the pilot program they started as an alternative to the Federal Performance and Accountability Reports (PAR). Many agencies have complained that the PAR is too lengthy and wanted a way to report their financial data in a more concise form.
In response to the complaints, the OMB enacted a pilot program to test a way agencies could report their performance information in a more effective way than PAR. The new form consists of only three sections which are streamlined to present highlights of each agency’s financial position. Nine federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security, participated in the pilot program.
Determining that the OMB’s objectives are transparency, internal controls, sound information for decision-makers and process improvement, the AGA undertook an evaluation of the new program.
The AGA found that the pilot program “can provide a foundation for meeting the reporting objectives,” however they also provided the OMB with recommendations to make the program better, many of which could also be applied to the original PAR.
The full report can be read here
Posted in
Performance Wire
After naming a Chief of Staff, Barack Obama shifted his transitions focus to economic appointees, where he chose Peter Orszag Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Orszag has been the director of the Congressional Budget Office since 2007 where he oversees a staff of 235 and an annual budget of $40 million. He was also a past economic adviser to President Bill Clinton. In his new position, Orszag will be responsible for ensuring Obama’s management plans are enforced as well as executing spending decisions.
Most importantly, Orszag will be responsible for helping Obama carry out his performance plan – a detailed list of promises made to “make government work for the people again.” In the plan, Obama intends to create a Chief Performance Officer and a White House SWAT team who will work closely with Orszag and the OMB to set tough performance targets for Federal agencies and hold managers responsible for progress.
Orszag is one part of Obama’s economic team, which also includes Timothy Geithner, former president of the New York Federal Reserve, as Treasury secretary and Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, as head of the National Economic Council. To chair the council of economic advisers, Obama named Christina Romer, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
Now that he’s named Orszag, Obama will need to get to work on his version of Bush’s President’s Management Agenda, and insiders say Obama’s management agenda will be similar to Clinton’s National Performance Review.
Posted in
Performance Wire
Loading ...