GAO and the Results-Based Management Approach

January 16, 2009

by Anna Lafferre

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