Dall W. Forsythe

Preface Dall W. Forsythe n 1998, two of America’s top experts in public management agreed that government’s use of performance management de- Iserved a searching and critical review. Those experts were Rich- ard P. Nathan, director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, and Paul Light, then a program director at The Pew Charitable Trusts. This book is one of the products of their agree- ment. As the bibliography in this volume demonstrates, the literature on performance management and measurement in the public sector is extensive. Most of the authors writing in this field advocate in- creased use of performance management systems, and see them as indispensable tools for improving management and accountability in government. Light and Nathan, however, were concerned that too little attention had been given to the problems of “managing for results,” as performance management is sometimes known. As de- tailed in the cases and analyses in this volume, performance management initiatives in government face difficulties in implemen- tation in the best of circumstances. At their worst, they create incen- tives for unexpected or even undesirable behavior by agency managers and front-line personnel. vii Quicker, Better, Cheaper? Managing Performance in American Government To look more deeply into the problems and possibilities of performance management systems, The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Rockefeller Institute brought together a group of experts in public policy and management to discuss these issues. An effort was made to include critics as well as enthusiasts. In addition to Nathan and Light, members of the Task Force included: ] Walter Broadnax, dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington. ] Patricia Ingraham, professor at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, and director of the Government Performance Project. ] Donald Kettl, professor at the University of Wisconsin and director of the LaFallotte Institute. ] Allen Schick, professor at the University of Maryland and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. As the Task Force was being assembled, the editor of this volume joined the Rockefeller Institute as a senior fellow, and was added to the Task Force and assigned responsibility as project director for its activities. Members of the Task Force met twice to discuss performance management, once in Albany at the Rockefeller Institute, and the second time in Washington at American University. In these meet- ings, the Task Force members were joined by performance management experts in government, including Jonathan Breul of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and J. Christopher Mihm of the U.S. General Accounting Office. Also invited were many of the authors of cases and essays included in this volume. On behalf of the Task Force, the editor also interviewed performance management experts on Congressional staffs and in nongov- ernmental organizations specializing in this area. An early product of this work was a monograph on the status of the Government Per- formance and Results Act (GPRA) (Forsythe 2000). Presentations on performance management and GPRA were also made at a confer- ence organized by the Council on Excellence in Government and viii Preface several professional organizations. The Public Administration Times published a summary of the monograph. Finally, Forsythe and Na- than published an article in a collection edited by Mark Abramson to provide background for the incoming Bush administration (Forsythe and Nathan 2001). While the work of the Task Force was under way, its members and other authors were preparing case studies and analytic essays for this volume. The question mark in the title is intended to remind the reader that the efficacy of performance management in Ameri- can government is a question for discussion, not a settled issue. With that in mind, considerable care was taken to encourage dis- senting voices on the topic, and case studies explored problems in performance management — JTPA and Empowerment Zones, for instance — as well as success stories. The logic of this point and counterpoint is developed in detail in Richard Nathan’s introduction to the volume. The volume concludes with a chapter essay by the editor exploring the practical pitfalls and possibilities of performance management, using experience from state and local governments to outline the hurdles faced as the federal government continues to implement GPRA. The aim of these chapters — and the book as a whole — is to give the reader a richer understanding of when and how top managers succeed or fail in their efforts to use performance management systems to improve the functioning of government. The editor would like to acknowledge many debts accumu- lated during work on this volume. This book could not have been completed without the generous support of The Pew Charitable Trusts, and Elaine Casey and Michael Delli Carpini provided en- couragement and helpful advice as well as funding. While the Task Force members contributed critical intellectual guidance and the authors’ contributions are obvious, several other people also provided knowledge and advice that shaped the final product in important ways. In addition to Jonathan Breul and Chris Mihm, Paul Posner of the GAO and Barry White of the Council on Excellence in Government were indispensable advisors. While most of the chapters in this volume are original, special thanks are also due to authors — Harry Hatry, Beryl Radin, and Virginia Thomas — who ix Quicker, Better, Cheaper? Managing Performance in American Government gave permission to reprint several important essays, and to their publishers. Richard Nathan conceived this project, and provided invalu- able advice at every single stage, from inception to final editing. His contributions are so extensive that a less generous colleague would have insisted on — and deserved — billing as a co-editor. As a con- sulting editor, Sandra Hackman applied her formidable skills to every original essay in the volume, challenging authors to clarify their thinking as well as their writing. Like Nathan, she did much of the editor’s work, and deserves more credit than this acknowledge- ment. Ellen Blake’s assistance as a project manager provided mo- mentum to keep the book moving forward, and Rose Sullivan stepped in to help when Ellen moved on to another assignment. Mi- chael Cooper, the director of publications at the Rockefeller Insti- tute, expertly guided the project through its final production stages. Francine Spinelli painstakingly produced the bibliography. I am in- debted to all of these people. Without their assistance, this volume would never have been completed. x 1 Introduction Richard P. Nathan ne of the frustrating things about edited books is that they typically attempt, but fail, to instill cohesion into the work of Oacademic experts who have a strong tendency to go their own way. This edited volume on performance management and budgeting in government, compiled by Dall Forsythe, takes a different approach. Forsythe deliberately selected authors who both offer a range of experience with the contemporary performance movement at different levels of government and present different voices on this subject. As a result, what comes through in this compen- dium is a strong point-counterpoint theme. The yin and yang of the performance movement in government is what the reader should take away. This is what the Rockefeller Institute sought to achieve when we initiated this project three years ago. In his foreword to this book, Dall Forsythe discusses the tasks he pursued for the project, including the wide dissemination of a white paper issued in Febru- ary 2000: Performance Management Comes to Washington: A Status Re- port on the Government Performance and Results Act. The report was the first product of the Rockefeller Institute’s project on performance management and measurement, supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. 3 Quicker, Better, Cheaper? Managing Performance in American Government Although we instigated the project particularly to take a close look at the budget reforms embodied in the 1993 Government Per- formance and Results Act, we have also stretched the canvas more broadly to consider state and local budget reforms of the same genre. These reforms emphasize outputs rather than inputs. They are often referred to in governmental shorthand as focused on “results.” The results focus launched by the 1993 GPRA produced “little GPRAs” among state and local governments, as often occurs with new managerial reforms in American federalism. Dall Forsythe and I have had more than a dozen conversations about how to view this new period of budget and management re- form. It is interesting that, although our ideas are similar, our roles have reversed. I began as highly skeptical, while Forsythe was more of an enthusiast for GPRA and the performance management and budgeting movement generally. However, Forsythe’s ideas meta- morphosed into a viewpoint, presented in the final chapter of this book, that highlights problems entailed in fulfilling the goals of GPRA. On the other hand, I became increasingly impressed with the way the idea underlying “results management” and “results budgeting” has permeated the thinking and conversations in and around governments, reflected in subtle ways in the questions policymakers and public managers ask and the kinds of conversations they have. The simple idea is appealing, namely to focus attention on the outcomes of government programs. That is, what happens to people as a result of government programs (i.e., the outputs and outcomes of governmental action), not the inputs of government programs, is what really counts. This idea has become more than a slogan. It has become a way of viewing decisions and issues across the governmental landscape. It is not possible to measure this subtle internalization effect. Moreover, it may be too much to expect that it could ever be formularized in the ways the elaborate GPRA law stipulates.

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