US federal agencies have been under pressure for years to improve the way they select and prioritise the programmes they manage, with successive administrations and Congress beating the efficiency drum. Government budgets threaten deep cuts, and that pressure will increase. Most agencies are not where they need to be to meet these demands. Individual programme management has improved, but there has been no progress on techniques for assessing the impact of a portfolio of programmes and their alignment with agency strategies and goals. Evaluation practices have not kept pace, and programmes have fallen through the cracks. Ineffective programmes continue to run seemingly under their own momentum, with scant justification of their efficacy.
New requirements will ratchet the pressure even higher. The Obama administration’s Accountable Government Initiative will require agencies to identify their worst-performing projects, and weed out the least critical. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in March detailed overlaps and duplications in hundreds of government programmes. Congress will undoubtedly use these findings to cut billions of dollars from agency spending. Meanwhile, in line with the enactment of the revamped Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) in 2010, agencies now have to link their programme evaluation and selection more closely to annual performance plans and strategy goals.
The government is not a monolith, and each agency has its own culture and unique set of stakeholders. No one template can provide an answer for all government agencies, but there are common approaches that can improve the performance of most programmes:
- Take a holistic approach to programme evaluation. New programmes cannot be considered without knowing how they fit with existing ones, how they will operate and what they will cost. This portfolio based approach provides the best way to gain a holistic view of agency needs.
- Build a feedback loop into the evaluation process. Agencies will need the ability to redefine their planning continually, instead of only at the beginning of each budget cycle, in order to adjust the mix of programmes in their portfolio more quickly to changes imposed by overall demands on agencies and subsequent changes in strategies.
- Make sure there is a clear prioritisation of programmes. Know which programmes are vital to maintain the agency’s mission and which are less so. Build this into the agency’s operating plan so that budgets can be reallocated across the portfolio of programmes as needed to make sure the needs of those with the highest priorities are met.
- Assume the worst, and plan accordingly. While the budgets for certain individual programmes may rise, most agency budgets overall will drop substantially over the next few years. Planning for that eventuality will require a robust process for evaluating programmes across the enterprise, and how they link with agency strategies and goals.
Creating value in the public sector: Intelligent project selection in the US federal government is an Economist Intelligence Unit research report, sponsored by Oracle. The findings and views expressed in the report do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor.
