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Government Leader home > news stories
02/14/06
Pondering the PMA
By Stephen Barr
Special to Government Leader
A few days before the White House’s fiscal 2007 budget was released, Clay Johnson III, who oversees the President’s Management Agenda, suggested that the Bush administration is doing a better job holding managers accountable for their programs.
Johnson is the keeper of the PMA scorecard, started in 2001, for 26 federal agencies. It looks like a traffic light—green is good, yellow means the agency is showing improvement and red means the management practices are unacceptable. At the end of 2005, Johnson said, about 40 percent of the scores were green.
From his perch as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Johnson views the scorecard as a way to bring clarity, candor and transparency to agency operations. “That, then, makes it possible to hold people accountable,” he said. “And holding people accountable is then what leads to results.”
Johnson said that he has talked with career managers in the spring of the last two years “and I’ve heard it expressed different ways, but the comment has been, ‘We’ve always had goals, we’ve always had strategic plans; we’ve just never been held accountable for actually accomplishing those goals.’ And that’s what’s different about this. There’s a lot more accountability in the federal government, I suggest ... today than there was five, 10 [years] ago. And the results reflect that.”
Federal managers, when asked about Johnson’s comments, shrug their shoulders and point out that agencies hold managers and supervisors responsible for their programs and for their employees. If the Bush administration seeks more accountability—especially in pay and performance arenas—then top officials will need to invest in training managers how to administer more rigorous systems and in communicating system changes to all employees. Without training and clear communication, efforts to tighten up employee job ratings will inspire grievances and appeals of pay decisions, the managers believe.
Holding managers accountable is a tall order, assuming there is widespread agreement on what that means. But it seems clear that the Bush administration intends to pursue the issue.
In a late January memo, Linda M. Springer, director of the Office of Personnel Management, told agencies that appraisal systems for federal executives would not be approved “if the performance plans do not hold executives accountable for achieving measurable business outcomes.”
She noted, “We have found some plans in some agencies that are weak in measuring results or setting targets. These agencies have been told they must improve those performance plans.” For 2007 programs, she said, OPM expects to see more than 50 percent of an executive’s or employee’s performance plan focused on “achieving results.”
In a February letter to the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Springer said that only 27 percent of federal employees believe steps are being taken to deal with poor performers, and only 29 percent believe differences in performance are recognized in a meaningful way. “Little of an employee’s current compensation is based on performance or mission accomplishment,” she wrote.
Going forward, she said, “OPM anticipates federal employees to be better trained for their jobs and to be held accountable for their performance as agencies implement improved performance management systems.”
It’s not easy, as past administrations have learned, to handle pay and performance issues in a way that managers and employees think is fair and credible. Like accountability, that’s a tall order, too.
Stephen Barr writes the Federal Diary column at the Washington Post and hosts a weekly discussion, Federal Diary Live, on washingtonpost.com.
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