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United States Government Accountability Office: 
GAO: 

Report to Congressional Addressees: 

July 2014: 

Managing For Results: 

Enhanced Goal Leader Accountability and Collaboration Could Further 
Improve Agency Performance: 

GAO-14-639: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-14-639, a report to congressional addressees. 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

Leadership involvement and accountability are important factors 
driving successful performance improvement in government. GPRAMA 
established the role of the agency priority goal leader and assigned 
accountability for achieving APGs to these officials. 

This report is one of a series in which GAO, as required by GPRAMA, 
reviewed the act's implementation. It assesses (1) the roles and 
responsibilities of agency priority goal leaders in managing goal 
progress and the extent to which they are held accountable for goal 
achievement; (2) the extent to which goal leaders collaborate with 
other programs and agencies that contribute to APG achievement; and 
(3) any challenges and practices identified by goal leaders, and the 
extent to which they exchange this information with their peers. 

To address all three objectives, GAO examined nearly half (47 of 103) 
of the APGs for 2012 and 2013, and analyzed relevant documentation. 
GAO also interviewed the goal leaders and other relevant officials for 
each of the 47 selected goals. 

What GAO Found: 

Agency priority goal leaders GAO interviewed were generally highly-
placed within their agencies—-for example, several were heads of 
agencies-—and reported a range of responsibilities related to managing 
agency priority goals (APG), such as laying out goal strategies. A 
majority of the goal leaders said the goal leader designation had 
benefits for their APGs, such as greater visibility for the goal. 
Several also believed that there were benefits to designating the goal 
leader position in conjunction with other requirements from the GPRA 
Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA), such as reviewing priority goal 
progress at least quarterly. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 
directs agencies to appoint deputy goal leaders. Deputy goal leaders 
manage day-to-day implementation of APGs and provide continuity in the 
event of goal leader turnover. From the time the APGs were published 
in February 2012 to the end of fiscal year 2013 (when they were to 
have been achieved), about 40 percent of the APGs GAO examined had a 
change in goal leader, while about 30 percent had a change in the 
deputy position. In addition, although most of the 46 goal leaders GAO 
interviewed had formal deputy goal leaders in place, 11 (24 percent) 
did not. Without a designated deputy goal leader, agencies lack a 
formally designated official to fill a key role in goal 
implementation. Individual performance plans are one of several 
mechanisms to provide goal leader and deputy goal leader 
accountability for APGs. Most goal leaders and all deputy goal leaders 
had performance plans. These plans covered a range of 
responsibilities, but generally did not fully reflect their APGs. In 
fact, many did not refer to the APG. Performance plans that link more 
directly to APGs could help ensure that officials are evaluated on and 
held responsible for APG progress and outcomes. 

Goal leaders collaborated with officials from outside their agencies 
to drive progress on APGs. However, some goal leaders reported that 
these outside contributors were not included in the quarterly 
performance reviews. Goal leaders also reported that a variety of 
different types of programs, such as grant and regulatory programs, 
contributes to their APGs. However, they reported few mechanisms for 
sharing information with other agencies related to assessing these 
programs. Further, for a variety of reasons agencies have focused less 
attention on identifying the tax expenditures that contribute to their 
APGs. These findings are consistent with prior recommendations GAO 
made to OMB regarding GPRAMA implementation. OMB has taken some steps 
to address the recommendations. 

Goal leaders identified some common challenges and practices in 
managing APGs, but shared this information to a limited extent. For 
example, goal leaders commonly cited resource constraints as a 
challenge, and practices related to measuring goal progress as 
helpful. One of the roles of the Performance Improvement Council 
(PIC), a council made up of agency performance improvement officers 
and chaired by OMB, is to facilitate information exchange. The PIC has 
shared tools and information with goal leaders; however PIC staff's 
primary points of contact are agencies' performance improvement 
officers and their deputies. Overall, goal leaders and their deputies 
have had little direct interaction with the PIC. More direct outreach 
from PIC staff could facilitate information sharing among goal leaders 
and their deputies, and help ensure that they do not miss 
opportunities to better manage their APGs. 

What GAO Recommends: 

GAO recommends that OMB work with agencies to (1) ensure that they 
appoint deputy goal leaders; and (2) more clearly link goal leaders' 
and deputies' performance plans to APGs, and work with the PIC to 
further involve goal leaders and deputies in information-sharing 
related to APGs. OMB staff generally agreed with GAO's recommendations. 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Background: 

Goal Leaders Are Carrying out Their Roles and Responsibilities on Goal 
Progress, but Their Performance Plans Do Not Always Hold Them Directly 
Accountable: 

Goal Leaders Collaborate with a Diverse Array of Organizations and Use 
Different Types of Programs to Drive Progress on Their Agencies' APGs, 
but Continue to Miss Opportunities for Further Collaboration: 

Goal Leaders Identified Some Common Challenges and Practices in Goal 
Management, but Share This Information to a Limited Extent: 

Conclusions: 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

Agency Comments: 

Appendix I: GAO Sample of Agency Priority Goals for 2012-2013: 

Appendix II: Objectives, Scope and Methodology: 

Appendix III: Comments from the Social Security Administration: 

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

Tables: 

Table 1: Requirements of Agency Priority Goal Leaders: 

Table 2: Examples of External Entities with Which Goal Leaders 
Reported Collaborating: 

Table 3: Examples Goal Leaders Provided of How Different Program Types 
Contribute to Their APGs: 

Figures: 

Figure 1: OPM's Goal Leader Core Competencies: 

Figure 2: Goal Leader's Performance Plan with Clear Link to Goal: 

Figure 3: Goal Leader's Performance Plan with Weaker Link to Goal: 

Abbreviations: 

APG: Agency Priority Goal: 

BIA: Bureau of Indian Affairs: 

CAP: Cross-Agency Priority: 

COO: Chief Operating Officer: 

DOD: Department of Defense: 

DOJ: Department of Justice: 

DOL: Department of Labor: 

DOT: Department of Transportation: 

Education: Department of Education: 

EPA: Environmental Protection Agency: 

FAA: Federal Aviation Administration: 

GPRA: Government Performance and Results Act of 1993: 

GPRAMA: GPRA Modernization Act of 2010: 

HHS: Department of Health and Human Services: 

HUD: Department of Housing and Urban Development: 

Interior: Department of the Interior: 

NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration: 

NSF: National Science Foundation: 

OMB: Office of Management and Budget: 

OPM: Office of Personnel Management: 

PIC: Performance Improvement Council: 

PIO: Performance Improvement Officer: 

QPR: Quarterly Performance Review: 

Reclamation: Bureau of Reclamation: 

SBA: Small Business Administration: 

SES: Senior Executive Service: 

SSA: Social Security Administration: 

Treasury: Department of the Treasury: 

[End of section] 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
GAO:
441 G St. N.W. 
Washington, DC 20548: 

July 22, 2014: 

Congressional Addressees: 

Leadership involvement and accountability are two of the most 
important factors in driving successful performance improvement. Our 
prior work has found that these two factors are critical to driving 
change and improvement in government by overcoming resistance, 
marshaling resources, building and maintaining organization-wide 
commitment, and ensuring persistent follow through.[Footnote 1] 
Congress took steps to promote leadership involvement and 
accountability in the federal government when it updated the 
Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) with the GPRA 
Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA), which established certain 
leadership roles in law and provided the officials in these roles with 
responsibilities for various aspects of performance management. 
[Footnote 2] One of the key leadership roles under GPRAMA is the 
agency priority goal leader. Individuals in this role are responsible 
for the achievement of agency priority goals (APG), which are to 
reflect agencies' highest priorities.[Footnote 3] For example, APGs 
focus on issues related to ensuring worker safety, supporting small 
businesses, and protecting the environment. Goal leaders are to play 
an important role in managing and achieving these goals, and in 
working with other agency officials to review progress on them. Office 
of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance directs that goal leaders be 
individuals authorized to coordinate across their agency and program, 
and that they review goal progress and make course corrections as 
needed, among other responsibilities. 

This report is part of a series of reports responding to GPRAMA's 
mandate that we examine implementation of the act.[Footnote 4] The 
objectives of this report are to (1) evaluate the roles and 
responsibilities of agency priority goal leaders in managing goal 
progress and the extent to which they are held accountable for 
achievement of priority goals; (2) review the extent to which agency 
priority goal leaders collaborate with other programs and agencies 
that contribute to the achievement of the priority goals; and (3) 
describe any challenges and practices identified by agency priority 
goal leaders in managing goals, and evaluate the extent to which they 
exchange this information with other agency priority goal leaders. 

To address all three objectives, we selected a random sample of 47 
APGs for 2012 and 2013, or almost half of the 103 APGs established for 
this time period.[Footnote 5] Although our sample represented a 
significant portion of APGs and goal leaders, we did not generalize 
information to the population of APGs or goal leaders. We chose our 
sample to ensure that it included at least one goal from each of the 
24 agencies that had APGs, and approximately half of the total number 
of APGs per agency. For the APGs in our sample, we obtained and 
analyzed documentation related to goal leaders' roles and 
responsibilities. For example, we obtained agendas and minutes from 
meetings at which APGs were discussed. We also obtained and analyzed 
individual performance plans from the goal leaders and deputy goal 
leaders who had them to understand how those plans are used to hold 
officials accountable for goal progress.[Footnote 6] To inform our 
analysis, we also reviewed our prior work on performance management 
leadership roles under GPRAMA, APGs, and interagency collaboration. 
[Footnote 7] To assess goal leader and deputy goal leader performance 
plans, we reviewed our prior work on leading practices related to 
linking individual and organizational performance.[Footnote 8] We also 
reviewed our prior work on data-driven performance reviews (also 
referred to as quarterly performance reviews [QPR]) as part of our 
examination of accountability mechanisms for goal achievement and goal 
leaders' collaboration.[Footnote 9] 

In addition, we reviewed GPRAMA and related OMB guidance, as well as 
information on the APGs published on Performance.gov, a government-
wide performance website.[Footnote 10] We used information from 
Performance.gov throughout this engagement, but all references to data 
from Performance.gov in this report are as of May 23, 2014, the date 
we most recently downloaded information from the website. To assess 
the reliability of APG information available through Performance.gov, 
we collected information from agencies and reviewed relevant 
documentation and our prior work. We concluded that information from 
the website was sufficiently reliable for the purpose of drawing our 
sample of APGs and providing contextual information on them. We did 
not evaluate the accuracy of agency data on goal progress to determine 
if the APG progress they described to us and on Performance.gov was 
accurate. But, we did ask agency officials to verify information on 
the goal progress we reported from Performance.gov. 

To further address all three objectives, we conducted semistructured 
interviews with the goal leaders for 43 of the 47 APGs in our sample, 
a total of 46 goal leaders.[Footnote 11] Seven of the goal leaders we 
interviewed were heads or acting heads of their agencies. Appendix I 
includes a list of the goals in our sample and the names and titles of 
the goal leaders we interviewed. Our interview questions focused on 
their roles and responsibilities, including how they are held 
accountable for goal progress, how they collaborate, and how they 
share promising practices and challenges. We also interviewed OMB and 
Performance Improvement Council (PIC) staff about actions the PIC has 
taken to reach out to and facilitate information exchange among goal 
leaders. Further details of our objectives, scope, and methodology are 
contained in appendix II. 

We conducted our work from June 2013 to July 2014 in accordance with 
generally accepted government audit standards. Those standards require 
that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate 
evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and 
conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the 
evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and 
conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

Background: 

GPRAMA added new requirements for setting and achieving agency goals. 
Every 2 years, GPRAMA requires the heads of certain agencies to 
identify a subset of agency goals to be identified as APGs.[Footnote 
12] These goals are to reflect the highest priorities of the agency 
and are to have clearly-defined milestones and ambitious targets that 
can be achieved within 2 years.[Footnote 13] GPRAMA also directs 
agencies to describe how goals are to be achieved, including the 
processes, training, skills and technology, and the human, capital, 
information, and other resources and strategies required to meet them. 
In addition, they are to identify performance indicators to be used in 
measuring progress, among other things.[Footnote 14] The first round 
of APGs was publicly reported in February 2012, and they were to be 
completed by the end of fiscal year 2013.[Footnote 15] New APGs, for 
2014 and 2015, were published on Performance.gov in March 2014. 
According to OMB staff, approximately 40 percent of the APGs for 2014 
and 2015 were carried over from and focus on the same areas as the 
APGs from 2012 and 2013, although they typically have updated targets 
for achievement. In conjunction with these goal-setting requirements, 
GPRAMA also established a requirement that, for each APG, agencies 
identify an agency official-the goal leader-responsible for goal 
achievement.[Footnote 16] 

GPRAMA and OMB guidance describe responsibilities and specific tasks 
for goal leaders, including that they participate in quarterly 
performance reviews (QPR) (see table 1). OMB also directs agencies to 
identify a deputy goal leader to support the goal leader, though it 
does not provide details of the responsibilities or specific tasks of 
the deputy position. 

Table 1: Requirements of Agency Priority Goal Leaders: 

GPRAMA: 
31 U.S.C. § 1120(b)(1)(C); 
"The agency priority goals shall... have a clearly identified agency 
official, known as a goal leader, who is responsible for the 
achievement of each agency priority goal." 
31 U.S.C. § 1121(b)(1); 
"Not less than quarterly, at each agency required to develop agency 
priority goals… the head of the agency and Chief Operating Officer, 
with the support of the agency Performance Improvement Officer, 
shall - for each agency priority goal, review with the appropriate 
goal leader the progress achieved during the most recent quarter, 
overall trend data, and the likelihood of meeting the planned level of 
performance."[A] 

OMB Circular No. A-11 (2013)[B]: 
Section 200.15 "A goal leader is an official named by the agency head 
or Chief Operating Officer who will be held accountable for leading 
implementation efforts to achieve a goal. A goal leader will lay out 
strategies to achieve the goal, manage execution, regularly review 
performance, engage others as needed and make course corrections as 
appropriate. Agency goal leaders will be individual(s) authorized to 
coordinate across an agency or program to achieve progress on a goal"; 
Section 270.2 "COOs must run at least quarterly, data-driven reviews on 
each of the Agency Priority Goals with agency goal leaders or their 
designees." 

Sources: GAO analysis of laws and guidance. GAO-14-639. 

[A] Under GPRAMA agencies' chief operating officers (COO) are to be 
deputy agency heads or equivalent. 

[B] OMB Circular No. A-11, Preparation, Submission, and Execution of 
the Budget, pt. 6 (July 2013). 

[End of table] 

In addition, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has identified 
core competencies for key roles under GPRAMA, including the goal 
leader.[Footnote 17] These competencies are illustrated in figure 1. 
OPM has also identified executive core qualifications for Senior 
Executive Service officials. Some of the competencies for the 
executive core qualification for building coalitions, such as 
partnering, are the same as those OPM identified as core competencies 
for agency priority goal leaders. Several of these competencies are 
also consistent with ones we identified in our prior work as important 
attributes for collaborative leadership.[Footnote 18] For example, 
these leadership competencies included communication, building and 
maintaining relationships, and setting a vision. 

Figure 1: OPM's Goal Leader Core Competencies: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustration] 

Competencies of the Goal Leader: 
Accountability; 
Creativity and Innovation; 
Customer service; 
Decision Making; 
External Awareness; 
Influencing/Negotiating; 
Oral Communication; 
Organizational Awareness; 
Partnering; 
Planning and Evaluating; 
Problem Solving; 
Strategic Thinking; 
Vision; 
Written Communication. 

Source: OPM, Memorandum for Chief Human Capital Officers: Government 
Performance and Results Act Modernization Act of 2010 Functional 
Competencies (Jan. 3, 2012). GAO-14-639. 

[End of figure] 

Under GPRAMA agencies are to make information on APGs available to OMB 
for online publication.[Footnote 19] This information, which includes 
APG strategies, performance indicators, progress updates, and 
identification of the relevant goal leader, is published on 
Performance.gov. Agencies are to update information on each APG at 
least quarterly. Agencies are also to identify programs and activities 
that contribute to each APG. These include organizations, program 
activities, regulations, policies, and other activities, both internal 
and external to the agency. OMB also directs agencies to include, as 
appropriate, tax expenditures in their identification of programs that 
contribute to their APGs.[Footnote 20] 

GPRAMA also established in law the Performance Improvement Council 
(PIC), chaired by OMB's Deputy Director for Management and composed of 
performance improvement officers from various federal agencies. 
[Footnote 21] According to PIC staff, officials from a broad range of 
agencies, both large and small, participate in the PIC. The PIC is 
charged with facilitating the exchange of successful performance 
management practices among agencies and assisting OMB in implementing 
certain GPRAMA requirements (among other responsibilities).[Footnote 
22] 

Although this report focuses on the goal leaders for APGs, similar 
positions exist for other types of goals as well. At the agency level, 
OMB directs agencies to designate leaders for each agency strategic 
objective, which reflects the outcomes or impacts the agency is 
intending to achieve. OMB's 2013 guidance directs agencies to conduct 
annual strategic reviews of progress toward strategic objectives to 
inform their decision making, starting in 2014.[Footnote 23] At the 
government-wide level, GPRAMA requires a lead official to be 
identified for each cross-agency priority (CAP) goal.[Footnote 24] CAP 
goals either focus on issues that cut across agency boundaries or on 
management improvement across the federal government. Each of the 15 
CAP goals announced in the President's 2015 budget has a leader within 
the Executive Office of the President and within a related agency. 
Although these other types of goal leaders exist, throughout this 
report, when we refer to goal leaders we are only referring to goal 
leaders for the APGs. 

Goal Leaders Are Carrying out Their Roles and Responsibilities on Goal 
Progress, but Their Performance Plans Do Not Always Hold Them Directly 
Accountable: 

Goal Leaders are Generally Highly-Placed within Their Organizations 
and Reported a Range of Roles and Responsibilities: 

The goal leaders for the goals in our sample were, in general, placed 
at high levels within their agencies and so were in senior leadership 
positions that enabled them to drive progress on their APGs. For 
example, of the 46 goal leaders we interviewed, 7 were heads or acting 
heads of agencies and 9 were agency assistant secretaries or acting 
assistant secretaries. Most (28) of the 46 goal leaders we interviewed 
were in career positions and the remainder (18) were political 
appointees. This high placement of goal leaders is consistent with OMB 
guidance, which states that goal leaders should be officials with the 
authority to coordinate across an agency or program. It is also a 
practice supported by our prior work, in which we noted that personal 
involvement of top agency leadership is important to successful 
management.[Footnote 25] The Administrator of the Federal Aviation 
Administration (FAA), who is the goal leader for the Department of 
Transportation's (DOT) Reduce Risk of Aviation Accidents APG, told us 
that, in his opinion, having a goal leader who is also the head of an 
agency is important because he or she has the authority to engage 
agency employees to achieve the goal. As an example, FAA officials 
provided us with a list of the Administrator's site visits to FAA 
facilities around the country. According to DOT, aviation fatality 
rates--this APG's performance measure--are at historic lows and have 
continued to drop over time.[Footnote 26] While officials we 
interviewed noted the importance of having goal leaders at a high 
enough level that they have authority within their agencies, some 
noted the importance of balancing that with the need for a goal leader 
who has the time for close, regular involvement with the goal. 

Goal leaders we interviewed provided many examples of ways in which 
they fulfill goal leader responsibilities required by OMB guidance, 
including laying out strategies to achieve the goal, managing 
execution, regularly reviewing performance, engaging others as needed, 
and making course corrections as appropriate. They also engage in 
other activities. For example, the Associate Administrator of the 
Office of Disaster Assistance at the Small Business Administration 
(SBA), who is also the goal leader for the Process Disaster Assistance 
Applications Efficiently APG, told us that he and others at SBA 
started developing strategies and targets in 2011, prior to the 
beginning of the fiscal year 2012-2013 agency priority goal cycle. He 
said that it was important to consider reasonable targets as part of 
setting and implementing the APG. This meant determining a feasible 
target for the percentage of disaster assistance applications the 
agency would aim to receive electronically as part of goal setting. 
SBA reported on Performance.gov that the rate of applications filed 
electronically had more than doubled from fiscal year 2011 to 2013, 
when 55 percent of applications were filed electronically.[Footnote 
27] In addition, the Department of the Treasury's (Treasury) Fiscal 
Assistant Secretary, who was also the goal leader for the agency's 
Increase Electronic Transactions with the Public to Improve Service, 
Prevent Fraud, and Reduce Costs APG, said that a significant part of 
his work involved providing information to the public through press 
releases and working with consumer and community groups to make them 
aware of the changes coming with regard to electronic transactions. 
Treasury officials provided us with examples of press releases and 
other public communications, as well as a list of the Fiscal Assistant 
Secretary's meetings with advocacy groups and other stakeholders 
related to the goal. The fiscal year 2015 President's budget 
highlighted progress made under this goal, noting that increased 
electronic transactions had helped the government get money to 
beneficiaries and into the economy faster, and reduced costs 
associated with collections.[Footnote 28] 

Several of the goal leaders we interviewed told us that using 
performance information was a central part of managing their goals. 
Our prior work has shown that effective quarterly performance reviews 
(QPR), at which agencies are to review APG performance, require 
leadership to come together to review performance information and 
progress toward results.[Footnote 29] Additionally, our 2013 federal 
managers survey found a positive relationship between managers' 
familiarity with agencies' QPRs and their perceptions of their 
leadership's demonstrated commitment to using performance information. 
[Footnote 30] Goal leaders we interviewed reported using performance 
information to support decision making, monitor performance, and 
report progress. For example, the Department of Labor's (DOL) 
Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health, who was also 
one of the two goal leaders for DOL's Reduce Worker Fatalities APG, 
reported that the agency used worker fatality data in a number of 
industries to target enforcement and educational efforts aimed at 
reducing the number of future deaths. DOL reported on Performance.gov 
that fatality rates for the three sectors on which the APG is based 
had either declined or stayed the same from fiscal years 2012 through 
2013.[Footnote 31] In addition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) 
within the Department of the Interior (Interior) had been collecting 
data on crime before the Reduce Violent Crime in Indian Communities 
goal was designated an APG. But, officials told us that the APG 
designation led to an increased focus on data use. For example, 
officials developed crime rate profiles identifying locations where 
crimes were historically committed, including information on times of 
day and days of week, and used that information to shift police 
assignments and target proactive measures. According to information 
reported by Interior on Performance.gov, BIA, working with tribes, met 
most of its violent crime rate targets in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 
for five of the six communities originally targeted under the APG. 
[Footnote 32] 

Goal Leaders Report Varied Effects from Goal Leader Designation, but 
Identified Benefits in Conjunction with Other Related GPRAMA 
Requirements: 

A majority of the goal leaders we interviewed said the goal leader 
designation had positive effects on goal progress and achievement. 
Goal leaders and other officials identified one or more benefits that 
derived from the designation, frequently saying that it provided 
greater visibility for the goal, facilitated coordination, heightened 
focus on the goal, or improved access to resources. For example, a 
deputy goal leader at the Federal Railroad Administration, part of 
DOT, said that goal leader and deputy goal leader designations are 
valuable in the context of competing priorities at the department. He 
said that the designation and related requirements elevate the goal, 
provide additional structure, and communicate the department's 
commitment to it. DOT reported on Performance.gov that the agency 
initiated construction on five passenger rail corridors and 37 
individual projects during fiscal years 2012 and 2013 for the deputy 
goal leader's Advance the Development of Passenger Rail in the United 
States APG.[Footnote 33] Additionally, the Assistant Secretary for 
Elementary and Secondary Education, who is the goal leader for two of 
the Department of Education's (Education) APGs-Demonstrate Progress in 
Turning Around the Nation's Lowest-Performing Schools and Improve 
Outcomes for all Children from Birth through Third Grade-said that her 
designation as goal leader has caused her to think more about the 
goals and how they relate to other aspects of the department's work 
and to think more strategically across the whole Office of Elementary 
and Secondary Education. According to data reported by Education on 
Performance.gov, under the APG targeting the lowest-performing schools 
(489 schools receiving Education's School Improvement Grants), those 
schools demonstrated at least 10 percent increases in reading or math 
scores during fiscal years 2012 and 2013.[Footnote 34] Education also 
reported that under the APG focusing on improved outcomes, 24 states 
implemented plans to collect and report disaggregated data on children 
entering public school kindergarten as part of a comprehensive 
assessment system.[Footnote 35] 

About a third of the goal leaders we interviewed told us that the goal 
leader designation did not affect goal achievement. In several cases, 
goal leaders noted the difficulty they had differentiating their role 
as goal leader from the work they would otherwise be doing as part of 
their other roles. For example, the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development's (HUD) Acting Assistant Secretary of the Office of 
Community Planning and Development, who was one of the goal leaders 
for the agency's Reducing Homelessness APG, told us that the goal 
leader designation was more a description of his continuing role 
leading agency efforts on homelessness rather than a significant 
change in responsibility or position. In addition, some APGs continued 
work begun under other, prior agency goals, and in some cases 
represent issues that have been agency priorities for years. For 
example, several of the agency priorities represented by the APGs in 
our sample had also been reflected in agency high priority performance 
goals, which were in place prior to GPRAMA's enactment.[Footnote 36] 
Several goal leaders cited the close correspondence between the APG 
focus and agency mission as a reason that the designation of goal 
leaders made little difference in how the agency carried out its work 
in support of the goal. For example, the Acting Director of the U.S. 
Patent and Trademark Office, who was also the goal leader for the 
Department of Commerce's Advance Commercialization of New Technologies 
by Reducing Patent Application Pendency and Backlog APG, told us that 
the goal leader designation did not have a significant effect because 
the APG is a firmly-established part of her agency's mission. 
According to information reported by the Department of Commerce on 
Performance.gov, the agency reduced pendency for first and final 
actions and reduced its patent backlog during fiscal years 2012 and 
2013.[Footnote 37] 

Several goal leaders we interviewed noted that it is difficult to 
distinguish the impact of the goal leader designation from that of 
other related GPRAMA requirements, such as designating the goal as a 
priority and holding QPRs. For example, benefits that goal leaders 
attributed to the APG designation include making the goal a higher 
priority and giving it greater focus. The Associate Administrator for 
the Health Resources and Services Administration's Bureau of Primary 
Health Care, who is also the goal leader for the Department of Health 
and Human Services' (HHS) Increase the Number of Health Centers 
Certified as Patient Centered Medical Homes APG, said that the agency 
priority goal designation gave it additional importance and leverage 
in the context of the department's competing priorities, and helped to 
facilitate communication and create momentum in working with health 
centers. HHS reported on Performance.gov that the percentage of health 
centers earning certification as Patient Centered Medical Homes had 
increased from 4 percent in the first quarter of fiscal year 2012 to 
33 percent by the end of fiscal year 2013.[Footnote 38] Goal leaders 
also attributed benefits to QPRs, including that they provided 
opportunities to exchange information with other goal leaders and get 
feedback directly from agency leaders, as well as institutionalizing 
the collection and use of performance data. The Deputy Secretary of 
Interior, who was also the goal leader for the department's Enable 
Capability to Increase the Available Water Supply in the Western 
States through Conservation Related Programs to Ensure Adequate and 
Safe Water Supplies APG, said that the quarterly meetings are valuable 
because they allow Interior's six goal leaders to look for 
interrelationships among their APGs and think about ways each goal 
leader could contribute to other Interior goals.[Footnote 39] He said 
that they help foster an interdisciplinary approach to setting and 
achieving Interior's goals. According to data reported by Interior on 
Performance.gov, it funded water conservation projects that enabled 
nearly 250,000 acre feet of water savings during fiscal years 2012 and 
2013.[Footnote 40] 

Deputy Goal Leaders Were Designated for Most, but Not All, Priority 
Goals: 

OMB guidance directs agencies to identify a deputy goal leader to 
support each goal leader, and agencies naming a political appointee as 
a goal leader are encouraged to name a career senior executive as the 
deputy. Twenty-eight of the 46 goal leaders we interviewed were in 
career positions and 18 were political appointees. OMB staff told us 
that this guidance is in place for several reasons. Primarily, it is 
due to the importance of having a person in place who is close to the 
work being done on APGs and who can spend the time needed to implement 
and follow up on related tasks. OMB staff said that the agency sees 
the deputy goal leader as the person who can perform the important 
function of connecting APG leadership and strategy with actual 
implementation. OMB also directed agencies to appoint deputy goal 
leaders because the position may help provide continuity in the event 
that the goal leader leaves the agency, and also provides a point of 
contact for OMB, particularly in situations in which the designated 
goal leader is very highly placed in the agency. OMB staff told us 
that OMB does not monitor whether agencies formally designate deputies 
or systematically collect information, including contact information, 
on them. Instead, staff said that they identify and use deputy goal 
leaders as points of contact when they find it necessary. 

Deputy goal leaders for the APGs in our sample supported day-to-day 
goal management and provided continuity during times of transition. 
Most (35 of 46) of the goal leaders we interviewed had deputy goal 
leaders.[Footnote 41] These goal leaders and their deputies most 
commonly characterized deputies' roles as involving day-to-day 
management of the goal or managing data collection, analysis, and 
presentation for QPRs and other purposes. In some cases deputies also 
participated in budget management, and developing goals or strategies. 
Deputies also played a role during goal leader transitions. For 
example, the Department of Justice's (DOJ) National Coordinator for 
Child Exploitation, Prevention and Interdiction, who also leads the 
agency's Protect Those Most in Need of Help--With Special Emphasis on 
Child Exploitation and Civil Rights APG, explained that her deputy 
goal leader had provided useful support when she started in the goal 
leader position, especially in terms of helping her to understand APG 
performance measures and how they fit into her work. Additionally, two 
of the goal leaders we interviewed had originally been deputy goal 
leaders, and had taken on the goal leader role when the previous goal 
leader left the position. Our analysis of APGs found that there had 
been somewhat higher rates of turnover among goal leaders than 
deputies between the time the APGs were published in February 2012 and 
completed at the end of September 2013. Of the 47 APGs in our sample, 
20 (slightly more than 40 percent) had a change in goal leader during 
this time period. Of the 37 APGs that had deputy goal leaders 
assigned, 11 (31 percent) had a change in deputy goal leader over this 
time period. 

Although most of the goal leaders we interviewed had formal deputy 
goal leaders in place, 11 of the 46 (24 percent) did not. Those goal 
leaders who did not have deputy goal leaders generally reported that 
they had other staff who fulfilled similar roles. For example, none of 
the goal leaders at HUD have deputy goal leaders, but the Director of 
HUD's Performance Management Division told us that an analyst from the 
agency's Office of Strategic Planning and Management is assigned to 
each APG. The analyst ensures that APGs comply with GPRAMA 
requirements. Although other agency staff may fulfill many of the 
roles that a deputy goal leader would, officially designating a deputy 
goal leader would be consistent with OMB's view that deputies serve a 
key role in implementing APGs. In addition, this designation is 
especially important if there is additional turnover in the goal 
leader position in the future. 

Performance Plans of Goal Leaders and Deputy Goal Leaders Generally 
Did Not Fully Reflect Priority Goals: 

Our prior work has found that high-performing organizations recognize 
that their performance management systems are strategic tools to help 
them manage and achieve organizational goals. We also found that an 
explicit alignment of activities with broader results is one of the 
features of effective performance management systems.[Footnote 42] 
Such an alignment helps individuals see the connection between their 
daily activities and organizational goals and encourages them to focus 
on their roles and responsibilities.[Footnote 43] Consistent with our 
prior work, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which provides 
policy direction and leadership in performance management, has noted 
that performance plans have the ability to focus employees' efforts on 
achieving organizational goals, and has supported alignment of all 
employee performance plans with organizational goals. In the context 
of Senior Executive Service (SES) performance management, OPM has 
emphasized the importance of alignment in regulations establishing 
criteria for certifying that agency SES appraisal systems make 
meaningful distinctions in performance. These criteria include, among 
other things, that performance expectations for individual senior 
employees derive from and clearly link to the agency's mission, 
strategic goals, and program and policy objectives, and that they 
reflect expected agency and organizational outcomes and performance 
targets or metrics.[Footnote 44] To determine how closely goal 
leaders' and deputy goal leaders' performance plans linked to their 
APGs, we analyzed these officials' performance plans, where 
applicable. The 12 goal leaders we interviewed who were Senate-
confirmed presidential appointees did not have performance plans, as 
they were not required.[Footnote 45] The seven agency heads in our 
sample were all Senate-confirmed presidential appointees. In addition, 
two goal leaders had plans that did not reflect their goal leader 
roles because they were new to their positions or serving in them 
temporarily, so we excluded these plans from our analysis. In all, we 
obtained and analyzed 32 goal leader performance plans. We obtained 
performance plans from all 38 deputy goal leaders for the APGs in our 
sample, but excluded three from our analysis because the officials 
were new to the position and their performance plans had not been 
updated to reflect it.[Footnote 46] In all, we analyzed 35 deputy goal 
leader performance plans. 

According to our assessment of goal leaders' performance plans, 
agencies are not fully using performance plans as a tool to align APGs 
and goal leader expectations, or make goal leaders accountable for 
progress on and achievement of APGs. The 32 goal leader performance 
plans we analyzed reflected responsibility for goal outcomes to a 
varying extent. They covered a range of responsibilities, but many did 
not reference the APG at all, and few of them explicitly held goal 
leaders responsible for goal outcomes. Specifically, less than half 
(12 of 32) of the plans specified that the official was responsible 
for the APG, and 1 of the 32 linked goal leaders' performance 
standards to goal outcomes. Some goal leaders said that although their 
plans did not include specific references to their APGs, 
responsibility was implied because the APG was covered under broader 
responsibilities. We found that this was the case in almost half (14 
of 32) of the plans we analyzed. Figures 2 and 3 show excerpts from 
two goal leaders' performance plans. The performance plan in figure 2 
clearly links performance standards to specific APG outcomes, while 
the performance plan in figure 3 has a weaker connection to the two 
APGs under the goal leader's responsibility. For example, the 
performance plan does not specifically mention the APG or any of its 
performance measures. 

Figure 2: Goal Leader's Performance Plan with Clear Link to Goal: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustration] 

Department of Homeland Security APG: 

Agency Priority Goal: 
Improve the efficiency of the process to detain and remove criminal 
aliens from the U.S. 

Performance Measure: Average length of stay in detention of all 
convicted aliens prior to removal from the U.S/target is 35 days; 
Performance link: clear link to: 
Performance Standards from Goal Leader's Plan: Reduce the average 
length of stay in detention of all convicted criminal aliens to 
removal from the United States to 35 days (GPRA), allowing ICE to 
detain a greater number of criminal aliens within the detention beds 
funded by the FY13 congressional appropriation. 

Performance Measure: Number of convicted criminal aliens removed per 
fiscal year/target is 225,390; 
Performance link: clear link to: 
Performance Standards from Goal Leader's Plan: Ensure that 225,390 
convicted criminal aliens are removed in FY13 (GPRA) in order to 
directly increase public and community safety by preventing these 
convicted criminal aliens from being released back into United States 
communities. 

Performance Measure: Estimated average bed cost per day/target is $122; 
Performance link: clear link to: 
Performance Standards from Goal Leader's Plan: Maintain the estimated 
average bed cost per day at $122.00 for FY13 (HPPG), in order for the 
maximum amount of beds and services associated with the safe, secure 
and appropriate housing of ICE detainees to be funded across the 
country. 

Performance Measure: Percent of aliens arrested or charged who will be 
electronically screened through secure communities/target is 100 
percent; 
Performance link: clear link to: 
Performance Standards from Goal Leader's Plan: Increase to 100% the 
number of aliens arrested or charged who will be electronically 
screened through the Secure Communities Program in FY13 (GPRA), 
resulting in an increase in the identification of aliens that may be 
subject to removal using biometrics information and a decrease in the 
number of aliens arrested or charged able to escape detection and 
screening through the use of fraudulent biographical information. 

Source: GAO analysis of goal leader performance plans and information 
on Performance.gov. GAO-14-639. 

Note: The performance measures and targets are for fiscal year 2013. 
The goal leader's performance plan is also for fiscal year 2013. 

[End of figure] 

Figure 3: Goal Leader's Performance Plan with Weaker Link to Goal: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustration] 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Civil Works APGs: (Note: goal leader was 
responsible for both APGs): 

Agency Priority Goal: Help facilitate commercial navigation by 
providing safe, reliable, highly cost-effective, and environmentally-
sustainable waterborne transportation systems; 
Clear link to: 
Performance Measure: Limit annual lock closures due to mechanical 
failures of main lock chambers on high and moderate use waterways to 
no more than 46 for closures lasting more than 1 day and no more than 
26 for closures lasting more than 1 week.
Weaker link to: 
Performance Standards from Goal Leader's Plan: 
* Develops and implements an organizational vision that integrates key 
organizational and program goals, priorities, values, and other 
factors; 
* Implement U.S.Army Corps of Engineers Infrastructure Strategy. 
Champion plan for categorization of comprehensive portfolio inventory, 
develop definitive asset management schedule that continues 
advancement and implementation of asset management/maintenance 
management strategies across business lines, advance alternative 
financing concepts across the enterprise by continued analysis of 
existing authorities and options for alternative financing. 

Agency Priority Goal: Improve the current operating performance and 
asset reliability of Hydropower plants in support of Executive Order 
13514; 
Clear link to: 
Performance Measure: The Corps, Department of Energy Power Marketing 
Administrations (PMAs), and PMA preference customers will Implement 
sub-agreements which will provide funds to accomplish major 
maintenance and/or major rehabilitation on existing power plants. 
Weaker link to: 
Performance Standards from Goal Leader's Plan: 
* Establish Corps leadership role in National water resources with key 
stakeholders. Maintain and enhance relationships with key 
stakeholders, with particular emphasis on navigation, hydropower, 
recreation and regulatory. Engage stakeholders in policy development; 
* Provide technical oversight and supports Program Integration 
Division for the Operation and Engineers (O&M) and Regulatory budgets 
development and execution for all business lines impacting the O&M and 
Regulatory appropriations. 

Source: GAO analysis of goal leader performance plans and information 
on Performance.gov. GAO-14-639. 

Note: The performance measures and targets are for fiscal year 2013. 
The goal leader's performance plan is also for fiscal year 2013. 

[End of figure] 

Our analysis of deputies' performance plans showed that they also 
reflected responsibility for APGs to a varying extent. In general, the 
35 deputy goal leader performance plans we reviewed did not establish 
a strong connection to APGs and did not make deputies accountable for 
goal outcomes. Our analysis found that 15 of 35 plans named the 
officials as the deputy goal leader or explicitly made them 
responsible for the APG and 1 of 35 linked deputies' performance 
standards to goal outcomes. Some officials noted that although 
deputies' performance plans did not specifically mention APGs, they 
did include responsibility for activities that supported the goal. We 
found this to be the case for nearly half of the performance plans we 
reviewed. Specifically, 14 deputies' plans identified them as 
responsible for activities that could contribute to the goal, but did 
not reference the goal, goal outcomes, or broader areas of activity 
that could subsume the goal. For example, the performance plan for one 
of the deputy goal leaders on OPM's Ensure High Quality Federal 
Employees APG specifies that she is responsible for improving and 
implementing guidance related to the Pathways Program, a streamlined 
process for hiring new federal employees. 

Agencies that use performance plans that lack a strong linkage to APG 
outcomes may be missing opportunities to promote accountability. 
Although APGs may fall under goal leaders' broader responsibilities, 
specifically including the APG and its outcomes in goal leaders' and 
deputies' performance plans would help ensure that they are evaluated 
on and held accountable for goal progress. Our prior work makes clear 
the importance of tying performance standards to agency goals and 
making leadership accountable for goal outcomes. This is especially 
important, since APGs are to reflect the highest priorities of the 
agency. 

Quarterly Performance Reviews and Informal Mechanisms Serve as 
Additional Accountability Mechanisms: 

While not all deputy and goal leader performance plans had clearly 
stated relationships to APGs, goal leaders we interviewed identified 
other mechanisms that they felt held them accountable for progress on 
APGs. These include personal reputation, accountability to agency and 
other leadership, and QPR meetings.[Footnote 47] For example, the 
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, who 
is goal leader for two APGs (Reduce Worker Fatalities and Develop a 
Model Safety and Return-to-Work Program), told us that the interest of 
Congress and DOL's Inspector General, in their respective oversight 
roles, both operate to hold him accountable. In addition, the Federal 
Railroad Administrator, who is the goal leader for the Department of 
Transportation's (DOT) Advance the Development of Passenger Rail in 
the United States APG, told us that the agency's regulatory review 
meetings, which the agency also uses to meet the GPRAMA requirement 
that agencies review priority goal progress at least quarterly, act as 
an additional accountability mechanism. He said that the Deputy 
Secretary and other agency officials place considerable importance on 
these meetings and that it was personally important to him that he 
perform well at them, including being able to respond to all 
questions. While these other mechanisms offer additional 
accountability, our previous work has shown that performance plans 
offer particular benefits. For example, performance plans can allow 
performance managers to (1) document that performance standards align 
with agency goals; (2) hold employees accountable for achieving 
specific and measurable results; and (3) make clear distinctions in 
performance. 

Goal Leaders Collaborate with a Diverse Array of Organizations and Use 
Different Types of Programs to Drive Progress on Their Agencies' APGs, 
but Continue to Miss Opportunities for Further Collaboration: 

Goal Leaders Collaborate with a Diverse Array of Organizations on Goal 
Progress: 

Many of the meaningful results that the federal government seeks to 
achieve require the coordinated efforts of more than one federal 
agency, level of government, or sector. OMB's guidance states that 
goal leaders should be authorized to coordinate across an agency or 
program to achieve progress on a goal. Our recent work on interagency 
collaboration identified leadership competencies related to 
collaborating effectively, including the ability to work well with 
others, build and maintain relationships, and communicate openly with 
a range of stakeholders.[Footnote 48] 

The goal leaders we interviewed reported many examples of 
collaborating with other entities to drive progress on their APGs. 
Table 2 provides some examples of how goal leaders reported 
collaborating with a diverse array of entities. 

Table 2: Examples of External Entities with Which Goal Leaders 
Reported Collaborating: 

Types of entities: Other federal agencies; 
Goal Leader Examples: A Department of Labor goal leader, who is the 
Acting Director of the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, 
reported that he created an interagency council--the Return to Work 
Council--to assist his office in developing strategies that federal 
agencies may utilize to increase the successful return to work of 
federal employees who suffered workplace injuries. 

Types of entities: State and local governments; 
Goal Leader Examples: A Department of Education goal leader, who is 
the Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, 
described how her office is working with several states to improve the 
data that are collected on early learning and development programs for 
young children and on elementary and secondary schools. 

Types of entities: Non-governmental organizations; 
Goal Leader Examples: A State Department goal leader, who was at the 
time the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, reported that 
his agency gives grants to non-governmental organizations in the 
Middle East and North Africa that are seeking to promote democracy in 
that region. 

Types of entities: Industry groups; 
Goal Leader Examples: A DOT goal leader, who is the Federal Aviation 
Administration's Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, serves 
as the government co-chair for a joint government/industry group--the 
Commercial Aviation Safety Team--that seeks to identify and mitigate 
safety risks for commercial aviation. The industry members of this 
group include aircraft manufacturers, labor unions, associations that 
represent airlines, and others. 

Types of entities: Foreign governments; 
Goal Leader Examples: A Department of Energy goal leader, who is the 
Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, explained 
the importance of negotiating agreements with foreign governments to 
achieve her agency's priority goal of securing vulnerable nuclear 
materials. 

Sources: GAO analysis of interviews with goal leaders, information as 
reported on Performance.gov, and documentation agency officials 
provided. GAO-14-639. 

[End of table] 

Some Goal Leaders Reported That Relevant Contributors to Their APGs 
Are Not Included in Their Agencies' Quarterly Performance Reviews: 

OMB guidance and leading practices for conducting quarterly 
performance reviews (QPR) note the importance of agencies including 
all relevant contributors to APGs in these reviews.[Footnote 49] As 
shown below, we have made a prior related recommendation. 

Text box: 

GAO Has Previously Recommended That OMB and the PIC Help Agencies 
Include External Contributors in Quarterly Performance Reviews. 

In February 2013, we made the following recommendation. OMB staff 
agreed with our recommendation. As of June 2014, OMB and Performance 
Improvement Council (PIC) staff reported that agencies continue to 
work to implement this recommendation through a PIC working group that 
is intended to help agencies share best practices for conducting QPRs, 
but did not have a specific timeframe in place for full implementation: 

To better leverage agency quarterly performance reviews as a mechanism 
to manage performance toward agency priority and other agency-level 
performance goals, the Director of OMB--working with the PIC and other 
relevant groups--should identify and share promising practices to help 
agencies extend their QPRs to include, as relevant, representatives 
from outside organizations that contribute to achieving their agency 
performance goals. 

Source: GAO, Managing for Results: Data-Driven Performance Reviews 
Show Promise But Agencies Should Explore How to Involve Other Relevant 
Agencies, GAO-13-228 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 27, 2013). 

[End of text box] 

However, some goal leaders we interviewed reported that APG 
contributors from other federal agencies, and even different 
components within the same federal agency, were not included in these 
reviews. The goal leader for the Department of the Interior's 
(Interior) Reduce Violent Crime in Indian Communities APG-the 
Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs-reported that he and his staff 
work with the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the goal, but that DOJ 
officials are not part of Interior's QPRs.[Footnote 50] Interior 
officials explained that they meet with DOJ officials in other 
settings. In another example, the Department of Labor (DOL) has 
designated two officials-the Assistant Secretary for Occupational 
Safety and Health and the Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and 
Health-as co-goal leaders for the Reduce Worker Fatalities APG. The 
Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health told us that he and the 
Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health have separate 
QPRs with the Deputy Secretary to discuss progress on their joint APG. 
In commenting on a draft of this report, DOL officials noted that this 
is because the Mine Safety and Health Administration covers only 
mining and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration covers 
other industries, and that the two programs have separate outcome 
metrics for the APG reported on Performance.gov. However, the 
Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health told us that 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials do not attend 
the reviews of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. OMB guidance 
and our prior work state that agencies should, as appropriate, include 
relevant personnel within and outside the agency who contribute to the 
accomplishment of each APG.[Footnote 51] 

Our interviews with goal leaders did, however, identify one case in 
which a goal leader reported that external contributors to the goal 
attended the agency's QPR meeting. Two Department of Housing and Urban 
Development (HUD) goal leaders who share responsibility for the 
Reducing Homelessness APG, which includes reducing homelessness among 
veterans, reported collaborating with officials from the U.S. 
Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Department of Veterans 
Affairs, which also has an APG focused on reducing veterans' 
homelessness. HUD officials told us that every 6 months officials from 
the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Department of 
Veterans Affairs attend HUD's QPRs.[Footnote 52] In our previous work 
on data-driven performance reviews, OMB officials cited this example 
of two agencies that had been using the QPRs to collaborate on their 
APGs.[Footnote 53] 

In cases where relevant personnel were not included in QPRs, the goal 
leaders we interviewed emphasized that their agencies use other means 
to collaborate with external contributors to their APGs. However, 
leading practices for conducting QPRs underscore the value of agencies 
extending their QPRs to include, as relevant, external contributors. 
We observed that these reviews have the benefit of bringing together 
the leadership and all the key players to solve problems. Moreover, 
when key players are excluded from QPRs, agencies will need to rely on 
potentially duplicative parallel coordination mechanisms.[Footnote 54] 
Thus, we continue to believe our prior recommendation has merit, and 
that OMB and PIC efforts to work with agencies to fully address it 
would strengthen these QPRs. 

Goal Leaders Recognized the Contributions Different Types of Programs 
Made to Their APGs, but There Are Limited Mechanisms for Sharing 
Information Across Agencies: 

GPRAMA requires the agency head and chief operating officer, with the 
support of the performance improvement officer, to assess whether 
relevant organizations, program activities, regulations, policies, and 
other activities are contributing as planned to the agency's APGs, and 
to identify these contributing programs for publication on 
Performance.gov.[Footnote 55] Our previous work has identified more 
specific examples of different program types the federal government 
uses to achieve many of its goals: direct services, government 
contracts, grants, regulations, research and development, and tax 
expenditures.[Footnote 56] Table 3 provides more specific definitions 
of these program types and also provides examples from our interviews 
of how goal leaders reported different program types contributed to 
their APGs.[Footnote 57] 

Table 3: Examples Goal Leaders Provided of How Different Program Types 
Contribute to Their APGs: 

Program type: Direct services; 
Program type definition: Delivery of a good or service by government 
employees that can be measured, for example, through an agency's 
customer service efforts; 
Examples from the goal leaders we interviewed: The Department of 
Commerce goal leader for the APG to reduce patent application pendency 
and backlog, who is the Acting Director of the U.S. Patent and 
Trademark Office, described the strategies her office is using to aim 
to process patent applications in a timely manner. The goal leader 
also reported that her office solicits and receives feedback from its 
customers, such as through an advisory committee that represents the 
users of its services. 

Program type: Government contracts; 
Program type definition: A business arrangement between a government 
agency and a private entity in which the private entity promises, 
generally in exchange for money, to deliver certain products or 
services to the government agency; 
Examples from the goal leaders we interviewed: The National Aeronautics 
and Space Administration goal leader for the APG to advance the 
development of the next generation human space flight system, who is 
the Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator of the Exploration Systems 
Division, told us that his goal relies on the work of several major 
commercial companies to build the space systems with the majority of 
his program's funds going to these contracts. 

Program type: Grants; 
Program type definition: A payment in cash or in kind from a federal 
government agency to a recipient organization (governmental or 
nongovernmental) for a specified purpose (of support or stimulation) 
that is authorized by law; 
Examples from the goal leaders we interviewed: The Department of 
Commerce goal leader for the APG to expand broadband service, who is 
the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and 
Information, told us that grants are an important part of his goal. 
His office awarded grants to all the states to fund the construction 
and upgrade of broadband networks and related technologies. 

Program type: Regulations; 
Program type definition: The means by which government agencies 
establish legally binding requirements (codified in the Code of 
Federal Regulations) and typically require a desired action or 
prohibit certain actions by regulated parties; 
Examples from the goal leaders we interviewed: The Department of 
Health and Human Services goal leader for the APG to reduce foodborne 
illness, who is the Food and Drug Administration's Deputy Director for 
Regulatory Affairs at the Center for Food Safety and Applied 
Nutrition, told us that one of her agency's primary strategies for 
achieving its goal is to ensure that egg producers comply with a rule 
intended to reduce salmonella contamination in eggs. 

Program type: Research and development; 
Program type definition: Efforts intended to increase knowledge or to 
apply existing knowledge in new ways. These efforts are most often 
performed in support of the unique mission of the funding agencies and 
address specific concerns such as national defense, health, safety, 
the environment, and energy security, among other purposes; 
Examples from the goal leaders we interviewed: The Department of 
Energy deputy goal leader for the APG to make solar energy as cheap as 
traditional sources of electricity, who is the Director of the Solar 
Energy Technologies Office, reported working closely with the 
Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which he 
described as focusing on advancing high-potential, high-impact energy 
technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. 

Sources: GAO analysis, goal leader interviews, and information as 
reported on Performance.gov. GAO-14-639. 

[End of table] 

GPRAMA requires that agencies do more than simply identify the 
different program types that contribute to an APG. An agency must also 
assess whether each relevant program type is contributing as planned 
to the APG. This requirement is important because our previous work 
has identified long-standing difficulties agencies have faced in 
measuring performance across various program types.[Footnote 58] For 
example, in prior work, we have found that some grant-making agencies 
have faced difficulties in validating and verifying the data grant 
recipients report and establishing performance measures.[Footnote 59] 
As shown below, we have made a prior related recommendation. 

Text box: 

GAO Has Previously Recommended That OMB and the PIC Help Agencies 
Share Information Related to Measuring Program Types: 

In June 2013, we made the following recommendation. As of June 2014, 
OMB and PIC staff reported taking initial steps to implement this 
recommendation through action plans they are developing for certain 
cross-agency priority goals, including those focused on customer 
service and strategic sourcing. OMB staff did not have a specific time 
frame in place for fully implementing the recommendation. 

"Given the common, long-standing difficulties agencies continue to 
face in measuring the performance of various types of federal programs 
and activities--contracts, direct services, grants, regulations, 
research and development, and tax expenditures--we... recommend the 
Director of OMB work with the PIC to develop a detailed approach to 
examine these difficulties across agencies, including identifying and 
sharing any promising practices from agencies that have overcome 
difficulties in measuring the performance of these program types. This 
approach should include goals, planned actions, and deliverables along 
with specific time frames for their completion, as well as the 
identification of the parties responsible for each action and 
deliverable." 

Source: GAO, Managing for Results: Executive Branch Should More Fully 
Implement the GPRA Modernization Act to Address Pressing Governance 
Challenges, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-518] 
(Washington, D.C.: June 26, 2013). 

[End of text box] 

Our discussions with goal leaders identified some examples of specific 
analyses agencies had done to assess the contributions a particular 
program type made to APGs. For example, Interior's Deputy Secretary 
reported that the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) is requiring 
specific information from grant applicants on how to quantify the 
benefits, such as water savings, if the federal government selects a 
particular project to receive funding under Interior's Increase the 
Available Water Supply in the Western States APG.[Footnote 60] 
Reclamation then uses the estimates grant applicants provide to 
measure progress towards its APG, as described in the text box below. 

Text box: 

How Interior is Analyzing the Contributions a Grant Made to its APG: 

An irrigation district in Montana requested $103,000 in federal grant 
money for a project the district estimated would save 4,158 acre feet 
of water each year. Interior says a team of Reclamation employees 
assessed the district's water savings estimate and decided the project 
would receive federal funding. After a financial assistance agreement 
was executed, Interior officials then reported the 4,158 acre feet of 
estimated water savings towards the department's overall goal of 
saving a cumulative total of 350,000 acre feet of water by the end of 
fiscal year 2011.[A] The Interior report adds that Reclamation 
employees are seeking to validate the estimates for certain projects 
by taking measurements before construction begins and then again after 
construction to measure actual water savings. 

Source: WaterSMART: A Three Year Progress Report, Department of the 
Interior (Washington, D.C.: October 2012). 

[A] For the APG for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, Interior measures 
cumulative water savings since 2009, so this project contributed to 
the APG. 

[End of text box] 

However, other goal leaders we interviewed reported that their 
agencies are either not analyzing the contributions different program 
types are making or, in other cases, continue to face challenges in 
measuring the performance of different program types. For example, HUD 
officials we interviewed told us that grants contribute to the 
Preserve Affordable Rental Housing APG, but that grants have not been 
a significant part of HUD's conversations about goal progress. 
[Footnote 61] The information HUD provided on Performance.gov 
indicated that grants are used in combination with other programs, 
such as vouchers and tax expenditures, to provide rental assistance. 
[Footnote 62] However, the performance indicators HUD identified on 
Performance.gov measured the total number of families served by 
different HUD programs. These indicators did not break out the number 
of families served through grants, thereby making it more difficult to 
analyze the contributions grants made to the APG. In other cases, goal 
leaders described challenges they have faced in measuring the 
performance of certain types of programs. For example, the Federal 
Aviation Administration's (FAA) Associate Administrator for Aviation 
Safety observed that it is difficult to know for certain whether a 
particular regulation prevented an aviation accident from occurring in 
regards to DOT's Reduce Risk of Aviation Accidents APG. She emphasized 
that there has been a lot of progress made in improving aviation 
safety and pointed to data that show a very low risk of passenger 
fatalities on commercial air carriers. However, she considered it hard 
to measure the precise effect a particular regulation or safety 
initiative had on the outcome that has been identified for this APG. 

We discussed with several goal leaders the extent to which they have 
shared information with officials in other agencies working with 
similar types of programs, such as grants and regulations, on common 
challenges in measuring the performance of these types of programs. 
Overall, our discussions did not identify any government-wide working 
groups that would allow officials from different agencies to share 
this sort of information, but a small number of goal leaders 
interviewed identified some more limited mechanisms for sharing this 
information: 

* FAA's deputy goal leader for DOT's Reduce Risk of Aviation Accidents 
APG told us that he also sits on the department's Safety Council, 
which provides a forum for FAA officials to share their regulatory 
experience with other DOT agencies, including the Federal Transit 
Administration-which has less experience with regulations. The DOT 
deputy goal leader reported that the benefits of attending the Safety 
Council meetings are learning from and sharing experiences between and 
among departmental agencies and being able to apply this information 
to the agency priority goal. DOT officials noted that the Safety 
Council is limited to DOT agencies and does not include other federal 
agencies with regulatory responsibilities. 

* Social Security Administration (SSA) officials who were responsible 
for the Reduce Supplemental Security Income Overpayments APG told us 
they had participated in a now-inactive PIC working group on benefits 
processing during the tenure of an earlier goal leader. The Benefits 
Processing working group focused on promoting consistency in agencies' 
benefits processing, but OMB staff had previously told us that this 
group no longer regularly meets because it had completed its tasks. 
[Footnote 63] The SSA officials we interviewed indicated that this 
group had been helpful. 

We continue to believe our prior recommendation has merit, and that 
OMB and PIC actions to fully address it would provide a more 
comprehensive assessment of how various types of programs contribute 
to agency goals. 

Goal Leaders Have Focused Less Attention on Identifying Relevant Tax 
Expenditures: 

Since 2012, OMB guidance has directed agencies to identify as 
appropriate the tax expenditures that contribute to their APGs and 
report this information for publication on Performance.gov.[Footnote 
64] This is important because tax expenditures represent a significant 
federal investment. Based on Department of the Treasury (Treasury) 
estimates for fiscal year 2013, the federal government had forgone 
approximately $1.1 trillion in tax revenue through 169 tax 
expenditures, an amount which approaches the size of federal 
discretionary spending. The tax revenue that the government forgoes is 
viewed by many analysts as spending channeled through the tax system. 
[Footnote 65] Since 1994, we have recommended greater scrutiny of tax 
expenditures, as periodic reviews could help determine how well 
specific tax expenditures work to achieve their goals and how their 
benefits and costs compare to those of spending programs with similar 
goals. In 2005, we recommended that OMB, in consultation with 
Treasury, more fully incorporate tax expenditures into federal 
performance management.[Footnote 66] Since then, OMB guidance has 
shown some progress in addressing how agencies should incorporate tax 
expenditures in strategic plans and annual performance plans and 
reports. OMB addressed this recommendation by updating its guidance in 
2012 to require agencies to identify appropriate tax expenditures, as 
described above. OMB also reported in its 2013 update to this guidance 
that it will work with Treasury to align tax expenditure information 
with the APGs.[Footnote 67] However, our 2013 review of the extent to 
which agencies implemented certain requirements related to the APGs 
indicated that OMB and agencies may be missing opportunities to 
identify tax expenditures that contribute to APGs. In our 2013 report 
on APGs, we found that only one agency had identified two relevant tax 
expenditures for one of its APGs. As shown below, we made a 
recommendation to address this issue. 

Text box: 

GAO Has Previously Recommended That OMB Ensure Agencies Identify Tax 
Expenditures That Contribute to Agency Priority Goals: 

In April 2013, we made the following recommendation. OMB staff agreed 
with our recommendation and said in June 2014 that they are working to 
implement the recommendation, for example, by engaging with staff at 
the Department of the Treasury. As of June 2014, OMB staff did not 
have a specific time frame for fully addressing the recommendation. 

"As OMB works with agencies to enhance Performance.gov to include 
additional information about APGs, we recommend that the Director of 
OMB ensure that agencies adhere to OMB's guidance for website updates 
by providing complete information about the organizations, program 
activities, regulations, tax expenditures, policies, and other 
activities--both within and external to the agency--that contribute to 
each APG." 

Source: GAO, Managing for Results: Agencies Should More Fully Develop 
Priority Goals under the GPRA Modernization Act, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-174] (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 19, 
2013). 

[End of text box] 

Our review of the information agencies provided on Performance.gov and 
our discussions with goal leaders indicated that agencies and goal 
leaders continue to provide Congress and the public with limited 
information about the contributions of tax expenditures on 
Performance.gov. Specifically, we found that five APGs in our sample 
had related tax expenditures based on our prior work. However, for a 
variety of reasons, only the two discussed below identified relevant 
tax expenditures on Performance.gov: 

* HUD identified tax credits that subsidize the building and 
rehabilitation of rental housing as contributing programs to the 
Preserve Affordable Rental Housing APG.[Footnote 68] 

* Although the Department of Energy did not identify them as 
contributing programs, the department mentioned two tax expenditures 
in its discussion of how it measured performance of the Make Solar 
Energy as Cheap as Traditional Sources of Electricity APG.[Footnote 69] 

For a third APG, HUD did not identify relevant tax expenditures as 
contributing to its Prevent Foreclosures APG on Performance.gov. But, 
one of the APG's goal leaders acknowledged the relevance of a tax 
expenditure and told us that the agency had worked to support its 
extension. Specifically, HUD's Deputy Assistant Secretary for the 
Office of Single Family Housing noted that borrowers could potentially 
owe taxes if HUD's efforts resulted in their receiving a reduction in 
the principal on their mortgage.[Footnote 70] Our previous work noted 
that Congress enacted a tax expenditure in 2007 that allowed taxpayers 
to generally exclude from taxable income forgiven mortgage debt to 
assist taxpayers facing foreclosure.[Footnote 71] HUD officials 
reported that their agency had consulted with Treasury to suggest that 
this tax expenditure be extended by Congress. 

We have previously found that tax expenditures relate to other APGs in 
our sample. However, for these APGs, agencies chose measures to assess 
goal progress and achievement that did not involve tax expenditures. 
As a result, agencies did not include information on tax expenditures 
related to the APGs on Performance.gov. 

* The Department of Education Improve Students' Ability to Afford and 
Complete College APG: We have previously described the importance of 
tax expenditures for helping students and families pay for college. 
[Footnote 72] However, the deputy goal leader, who is the Chief of 
Staff in the Office of the Undersecretary of Education, told us that 
tax expenditures were not a factor in his agency's strategy to 
implement this goal, which was primarily to develop a web-based 
college scorecard that is intended to help users learn about a 
specific college's affordability and value.[Footnote 73] The deputy 
goal leader explained that Congress specified in statute a specific 
formula for his agency to use to calculate the average net price of 
attending a particular college, which does not include tax 
expenditures that may reduce the net price many students pay.[Footnote 
74] 

* The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Reduce Greenhouse Gas 
Emissions from Cars and Trucks APG: EPA officials told us that some 
tax incentives relate to the APG's broader goal of reducing greenhouse 
gas emissions. We have previously reported on tax incentives that may 
affect greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, including those 
for plug-in electric-drive motor vehicles and for biodiesel fuel. 
[Footnote 75] However, the strategy that EPA developed for this goal 
focused on implementing greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars 
and trucks. For example, the APG's performance measures included the 
number of tests EPA conducted to confirm the validity of 
manufacturers' greenhouse gas emission test results. EPA officials 
explained that, therefore, tax incentives were not central to this 
APG's progress and achievement. 

We continue to believe our prior recommendation that OMB ensure 
agencies identify relevant tax expenditures on Performance.gov has 
merit, and that OMB actions to fully address it would provide a more 
comprehensive assessment of how tax expenditures contribute to agency 
goals. 

Goal Leaders Identified Some Common Challenges and Practices in Goal 
Management, but Share This Information to a Limited Extent: 

Goal Leaders Identified Some Common Challenges and Practices in 
Managing Goals, but Have Limited Exchange of Information with Other 
Goal Leaders: 

Goal leaders we interviewed identified several common challenges in 
managing APGs. The most commonly-cited challenge was constrained 
resources, including those resulting from spending reductions under 
sequestration.[Footnote 76] A little more than one-third (16 of 46) of 
the goal leaders we interviewed cited resource constraints as a 
challenge in managing their goals.[Footnote 77] For example, the 
Department of the Interior's (Interior) Assistant Secretary for 
Policy, Management and Budget, who was the goal leader for the Support 
Youth Employment APG, told us that sequestration had affected progress 
on her APG.[Footnote 78] The sequester cuts took effect in March of 
2013, the same time that Interior bureaus were planning youth hiring 
for the summer. The goal leader told us that as a result, Interior 
bureaus' youth hiring was lower than expected. This is consistent with 
our prior work, in which we found that Interior officials said that a 
hiring freeze instituted in response to sequestration had adversely 
affected the department's ability to achieve this APG.[Footnote 79] 
According to information Interior reported on Performance.gov, the 
department's youth hiring in fiscal year 2013 was nearly 20 percent 
lower than prior year levels, and it did not achieve this APG. 
Additionally, the Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear 
Nonproliferation, who was the goal leader for the Department of 
Energy's Make Significant Progress Toward Securing the Most Vulnerable 
Nuclear Materials Worldwide within Four Years APG, told us that budget 
uncertainties complicate goal-setting. Although GPRAMA states that 
APGs should have ambitious targets, the goal leader told us that these 
uncertainties may provide an incentive for agencies to set goal 
targets lower than they otherwise would. Other commonly-cited 
challenges included difficulty identifying meaningful measures of goal 
progress and issues with data, such as problems with consistency and 
availability.[Footnote 80] 

Goal leaders we interviewed also identified common practices that they 
said were helpful in managing APGs. Some of these were related to 
GPRAMA requirements. For example, more than a quarter (14 of 46) of 
goal leaders identified practices related to measuring goal progress, 
such as assigning responsibility for meeting milestones, as helpful in 
managing APGs.[Footnote 81] GPRAMA states that APGs are to have 
clearly defined quarterly milestones and balanced performance measures 
for assessing goal progress.[Footnote 82] Goal leaders emphasized the 
importance of not only developing measures but developing ones that 
are meaningful and reliable indicators of goal progress. For example, 
the Chief Operating Officer at the Office of Personnel Management 
(OPM), who led the agency's Ensure High Quality Federal Employees APG, 
said that she had worked to make sure the agency used appropriate and 
consistent measures to track goal progress.[Footnote 83] Other 
commonly-cited practices include several related to coordination 
across an agency or program, which OMB guidance specifies that goal 
leaders should have the authority to do. Goal leaders noted effective 
methods of coordination such as reaching out to agency field staff, 
employee unions, and non-federal entities. Goal leaders also 
identified practices that stem from the GPRAMA requirement that 
agencies review APG progress quarterly. As noted earlier, goal leaders 
cited benefits from quarterly performance review (QPR) meetings, which 
they said have promoted coordination, accountability, and attention to 
goal progress, and have provided opportunities to get feedback 
directly from agency leaders. 

Goal leaders reported that they share information on APG challenges 
and practices for managing their goals, although information sharing 
outside of their agencies is generally limited to officials with whom 
they are already working. They reported several examples of sharing 
information within their agencies, most frequently through agency 
meetings, such as QPRs. For example, the Director of the National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) International Space 
Station Division, who is the goal leader for the agency's Sustain 
Operations and Full Utilization of the International Space Station 
APG, told us that the agency's baseline performance review meetings, 
through which the agency holds QPRs, have facilitated his sharing of 
lessons learned with another NASA goal leader whose APG also involves 
human space flight. Goal leaders also provided some examples of 
sharing information with officials outside of their agencies. In these 
cases, most examples involved sharing information with officials with 
whom they work on issues related to their APGs. These include members 
of interagency councils and committees focused on issues related to 
their APGs, and officials from agencies doing work related to the APG. 
For example, the Associate Administrator of the Small Business 
Administration's Office of Government Contracting and Business 
Development, who is the goal leader for the agency's Increase Small 
Business Participation in Government Contracting APG, told us that he 
shares information with officials from other agencies involved in 
small business contracting through interagency groups such as the 
White House Small Business Procurement Group. 

The PIC Has Focused Its Efforts on PIOs, but Has Additional 
Opportunities to Engage Goal Leaders: 

The Performance Improvement Council's (PIC) duties, which are detailed 
in GPRAMA and OMB guidance, include facilitating among agencies the 
exchange of practices that have led to performance improvements, and 
developing tips, tools, training, and other capacity-building 
mechanisms to strengthen agency performance management and facilitate 
cross-agency learning and cooperation. As specified by GPRAMA, the PIC 
is chaired by OMB's Deputy Director for Management and composed of the 
performance improvement officers (PIO) from the 24 Chief Financial 
Officers Act agencies, as well as any other PIOs and individuals 
identified by OMB. Our prior work found that the PIC holds two types 
of meetings--a "principals only" meeting open only to PIOs and a 
broader meeting open to PIOs and other agency staff. In addition, the 
PIC sponsors working groups focused on issues related to 
implementation of GPRAMA, such as internal agency reviews.[Footnote 
84] The PIC also conducts government-wide training on specific topics, 
such as strategic planning. 

Although our previous work found that agency PIOs reported that the 
PIC was helpful in facilitating the exchange of successful practices 
among agencies, goal leaders we interviewed generally did not report 
significant direct contact with the PIC.[Footnote 85] Only one of the 
goal leaders we interviewed, who also serves as her agency's PIO, 
reported that she attends PIC meetings. The deputy goal leaders for 
the goals in our sample likewise did not report significant direct 
interaction with the PIC. Only one deputy goal leader reported 
participating in the PIC as a member of several of its working groups. 

OMB and PIC staff explained that the PIC interacts with agency PIOs 
and deputy PIOs as their primary points of contact, so staff generally 
do not reach out directly to agency priority goal leaders. OMB and PIC 
staff said that they see the PIO as the key official in managing 
agency performance, and focus on PIOs and their staff because of the 
importance of equipping them with the capability to provide support 
within their agencies on a variety of issues. Additionally, they focus 
on the PIO rather than other officials to avoid undercutting the PIO's 
relevance. In line with this, several goal leaders we interviewed 
noted that interactions with the PIC are handled by other offices 
within their agencies, such as performance offices. They rely on these 
staff to pass along relevant information. For example, the Chief of 
NASA's Strategic Planning and Performance Management Branch explained 
that either she or the agency's PIO attends PIC meetings, and then 
shares relevant information with goal leaders and others within the 
agency. NASA officials provided us with copies of a monthly newsletter 
that the agency uses to distribute information internally on 
performance management. The August 2013 newsletter included 
information on the latest version of OMB's Circular A-11, and on 
upcoming deadlines for activities related to the agency's APGs, 
performance plans, and other products. 

Although the PIC has focused to date on working with PIOs to share 
information with agencies, OMB and PIC staff identified several 
examples of information sharing with goal leaders. OMB and PIC staff 
provided us with examples of products the PIC developed for goal 
leaders, including a guide to best practices for setting milestones, a 
priority goal setting guide, and a priority goal evaluation tool, 
designed to help agencies set APGs and drive discussion around them. 
Additionally, they said that they held meetings with agency PIOs 
shortly after the APGs for 2012 and 2013 were set, and that these 
meetings included goal leaders. Agenda items included a discussion of 
agencies' performance management approaches and selected APGs. 
Additionally, the PIC provided us with copies of agendas from PIC 
meetings, including a January 2012 meeting at which there was a goal 
leader panel. A former goal leader of one of the APGs in our sample 
told us that she participated in the panel and provided a copy of her 
talking points, which focused on her experience working on previous 
agency goals and factors she identified for success. PIC staff also 
told us that they invited goal leaders to a recent meeting they held 
in February 2014 focused on implementing successful strategic reviews. 

Although the PIC has developed products and information aimed at goal 
leaders, it may be missing opportunities to facilitate greater 
information sharing among them. As described earlier in this report, 
goal leaders we interviewed have encountered common challenges in 
managing APGs, and also identified practices that may be useful to 
other goal leaders and deputy goal leaders. Additionally, goal leaders 
of APGs of similar program types may be interested in sharing 
information. For example, several of the APGs in our sample relied on 
program types such as grants, contracts, regulations, and research and 
development. Although goal leaders reported sharing information within 
their agencies and with outside officials working on issues related to 
their goals, they and their deputy goal leaders lacked the means to 
identify and share information with other goal leaders who are facing 
similar challenges or interested in similar topics. The deputy goal 
leader for DOT's Advance the Development of Passenger Rail in the 
United States APG told us that he would find it useful to discuss 
common issues with others working on APGs, in particular related to 
performance measures. As highlighted earlier, our prior work has found 
that agencies have experienced common issues in measuring various 
types of programs, and recommended that the Director of OMB work with 
the PIC to develop a detailed approach to examine these difficulties, 
including identifying and sharing any promising practices.[Footnote 
86] Such an approach could also include direct outreach by OMB and the 
PIC to goal leaders and deputy goal leaders. 

Conclusions: 

Senior agency officials' commitment to and accountability for 
improving performance are important factors in determining the success 
of performance and management improvement initiatives. GPRAMA's 
provision that agencies assign responsibility for achieving APGs--
which reflect agencies' highest priorities--to goal leaders is a 
powerful mechanism for promoting greater involvement and 
accountability in performance management. Although goal leaders we 
interviewed cited several positive effects of the goal leader 
designation and related GPRAMA requirements, there are areas where 
goal leader effectiveness could be improved. These lessons learned may 
also be relevant for leaders of other high-level goals, such as agency 
strategic objectives and government-wide cross-agency priority goals. 

First, a number of the goal leaders we interviewed did not have deputy 
goal leaders, although OMB guidance states that they should. OMB staff 
also stated that the deputy performs the important function of 
connecting goal strategy with goal implementation. Additionally, a 
little more than 40 percent of the APGs in our sample had changes in 
goal leaders between February 2012 and September 2013. This level of 
turnover may be higher as the current presidential administration 
nears an end and goal leaders who are political appointees leave their 
positions. Officially designating a deputy goal leader provides clear 
responsibility and accountability for goal achievement, and as shown 
already, deputies can help provide continuity during times of goal 
leader transition. 

Another missed opportunity in implementing the goal leader role is to 
fully utilize performance plans as an accountability mechanism for 
both goal leaders and their deputies. Performance plans are a tool for 
ensuring that officials are evaluated on and held accountable for 
defined outcomes, but the majority of the performance plans we 
reviewed did not fully reflect responsibility for APGs. Although other 
mechanisms, such as QPRs, also promote accountability, agencies that 
do not clearly link goal leader and deputy performance plans with APGs 
may be missing opportunities to ensure that goal leaders and deputies 
are held accountable for goal progress. Because APGs by definition 
reflect the highest priorities of each agency, accountability is 
especially important. 

Goal leaders also identified several common challenges and practices 
related to managing APGs, but may be missing opportunities to share 
this information with their peers across government. We found that 
they have shared this information to some extent within their agencies 
and with officials from outside agencies who are working on similar 
issues. However, they lacked a means through which to identify others 
facing similar challenges or interested in similar topics. One such 
missed opportunity concerns sharing information among goal leaders 
about how to measure the performance of similar types of programs, 
such as grants, that multiple agencies use to drive progress on their 
APGs. Similarly, our review indicates that there are different views 
among goal leaders and agencies on how to implement OMB's requirement 
that they identify and make public information about tax expenditures 
that contribute to APGs. The PIC, which is charged with facilitating 
the exchange of information among agencies, could play a greater role 
in fostering information sharing on these issues and others among goal 
leaders and deputy goal leaders to help improve agency performance. 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

To ensure goal leader and deputy goal leader accountability, we 
recommend that the Director of OMB work with agencies to take the 
following two actions: 

* Appoint a deputy goal leader to support each agency priority goal 
leader. 

* Ensure that agency priority goal leader and deputy goal leader 
performance plans demonstrate a clear connection with agency priority 
goals. 

To better promote the sharing of information among goal leaders and 
their deputies, we recommend that the Director of OMB work with the 
PIC to further involve agency priority goal leaders and their deputies 
in sharing information on common challenges and practices related to 
agency priority goal management. 

Agency Comments: 

We provided a draft of this report to the Director of the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB) and to the 24 agencies that developed 
agency priority goals (APG) for 2012 and 2013. A full list of these 
agencies is shown in appendix I. OMB staff provided us with oral 
comments and generally agreed with our findings, conclusions, and 
recommendations. OMB staff, as well as officials from the Department 
of Health and Human Services, National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration, and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) also provided 
technical comments, which we incorporated, as appropriate. 

On July 1, 2014 our liaison from the Department of Labor's (DOL) 
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy e-mailed us a summary of 
DOL officials' comments on the draft report. DOL officials disagreed 
with some of the findings, conclusions, and recommendations in our 
draft report. We discuss their specific comments and our evaluation of 
them below: 

* DOL officials raised concerns about our characterization of the 
department's quarterly performance reviews (QPR) for the Reduce Worker 
Fatalities APG, which is jointly led by two goal leaders, each from a 
different DOL component agency. DOL officials stated that our report 
implies that DOL's practice of conducting separate reviews of safety 
and health agencies is a barrier to coordination of efforts to achieve 
the shared APG. In response, we made changes to the draft report to 
include the DOL officials' views on the purposes of their separate 
reviews. Regardless of the formats of agencies' performance reviews, 
however, both OMB guidance and our prior work emphasize the importance 
of including relevant contributors to APGs in these reviews. 

* DOL officials stated that they believe our report gives the 
incorrect impressions that 1) organizing QPRs by components is a 
shortcoming, and 2) the sole purpose of QPRs is to manage APGs. As we 
previously explained, we do not take issue with DOL holding QPRs by 
component, and agree with DOL officials that this format is not a 
shortcoming. We also agree that QPRs may focus on broader issues than 
APGs. For both of these issues, what is important is that QPRs include 
relevant APG contributors. 

* DOL officials commented on our discussion of including external 
parties in QPRs. They stated that they have other sufficient ways of 
collaborating with outside contributors. They do not believe it would 
be beneficial to include stakeholders with very specific concerns in a 
detailed policy and operations review of all agency component 
performance management issues in these reviews. In response, we 
clarified in the report that both OMB guidance and our prior work 
emphasized including relevant external goal contributors in these 
performance reviews. 

* DOL officials stated that they consider figure 1, which lists goal 
leader competencies identified by OPM, to be misleading because it 
implies that the goal leader position is new. They suggested that we 
remove the figure. They referenced our finding that some officials 
were already serving in a similar role before becoming goal leaders. 
While this is true, the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 established the 
goal leader position in law and assigned specific responsibilities to 
goal leaders. Figure 1 depicts the goal leader competencies described 
in OPM's January 2012 memorandum for chief human capital officers. So, 
we retained this figure in the report. 

* DOL officials raised concerns about whether the report includes 
sufficient evidence to support our conclusion that additional OMB and 
Performance Improvement Council (PIC) outreach to goal leaders and 
deputies would improve goal management. As we stated in the report, 
while we acknowledged that the PIC has already conducted some limited 
outreach to agency goal leaders, we found that goal leaders and their 
deputies could benefit from additional information sharing facilitated 
by the PIC. OMB staff agreed with our recommendation related to this 
finding, so we did not make any changes to the report to address this 
concern. 

* Finally, DOL officials recommended removing or revising our 
recommendation that OMB ensure that agencies have deputy goal leaders 
in place because they felt it implies that the designation of a deputy 
drives goal achievement. Our recommendation is based on several 
factors, including OMB guidance requiring agencies to assign deputy 
goal leaders, and OMB staff's view that deputies perform the important 
function of connecting APG leadership and strategy with 
implementation, as discussed in our report. Furthermore, OMB staff 
agreed with this recommendation, so we did not make any changes to the 
report to address this concern. 

The following agencies had no comments on the draft report: Department 
of Agriculture, Army Corps of Engineers - Civil Works, Department of 
Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department 
of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, General Services 
Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Housing 
and Urban Development, Department of the Interior, Department of 
Justice, National Science Foundation, Small Business Administration, 
Social Security Administration, Department of State, Department of 
Transportation, Department of the Treasury, U.S. Agency for 
International Development, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The 
written response from the Social Security Administration is reproduced 
in appendix III. 

We are sending copies of this report to the Director of OMB as well as 
appropriate congressional committees and other interested parties. In 
addition, this report is available at no charge on the GAO website at 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/]. 

If you or your staff members have any questions about this report, 
please contact me at (202) 512-6806 or mihmj@gao.gov. Contact points 
for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be 
found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made key 
contributions to this report are listed in appendix IV. 

Signed by: 

J. Christopher Mihm: 
Managing Director, Strategic Issues: 

List of Congressional Addressees: 

The Honorable Thomas R. Carper: 
Chairman: 
The Honorable Tom Coburn, M.D.
Ranking Member: 
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: 
United States Senate: 

The Honorable Mark R. Warner: 
Chairman: 
Task Force on Government Performance: 
Committee on the Budget: 
United States Senate: 

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings: 
Ranking Member: 
Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform: 
House of Representatives: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: GAO Sample of Agency Priority Goals for 2012-2013: 

Agency/Goal: Department of Agriculture: Assist rural communities build 
and maintain prosperity through increased agricultural exports; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Darci Vetter, Deputy 
Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services. 

Agency/Goal: Army Corps of Engineers - Civil Works: Help facilitate 
commercial navigation by providing safe, reliable, highly cost-
effective, and environmentally-sustainable waterborne transportation 
systems; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: James R. Hannon, Chief, 
Operations and Regulatory Community of Practice. 

Agency/Goal: Army Corps of Engineers - Civil Works: Improve the 
current operating performance and asset reliability of hydropower 
plants in support of Executive Order 13514; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: James R. Hannon, Chief, 
Operations and Regulatory Community of Practice. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Commerce: Advance commercialization of new 
technologies by reducing patent application pendency and backlog; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Teresa Rea, Acting Under 
Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Acting Director of 
the United States Patent and Trademark Office. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Commerce: Expand broadband service to 
communities; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Lawrence Strickling, 
Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Defense: Improve energy performance; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Joseph Sikes, Director, 
Science and Technology for Installations and Environment; 
(Note: At the time of our interview, Mr. Sikes was Director, 
Facilities Energy and Privatization.). 

Agency/Goal: Department of Defense (DOD): Reform DOD's acquisition 
process; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Nancy Spruill, Director 
of Acquisition Resources and Analysis. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Education: Improve outcomes for all 
children from birth through third grade; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Deborah S. Delisle, 
Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Education: Demonstrate progress in turning 
around the nation's lowest-performing schools; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Deborah S. Delisle, 
Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Education: Improve students' ability to 
afford and complete college; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Martha Kanter, Under 
Secretary of Education. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Energy: Make significant progress toward 
securing the most vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide within 4 
years; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Anne Harrington (key 
leader), Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation; 
Bruce Held, Acting Under Secretary for Nuclear Security. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Energy: Reduce the cost of batteries for 
electric drive vehicles to help increase the market for plug-in hybrids 
and all-electric vehicles and thereby reduce petroleum use and 
greenhouse gas emissions; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Kathleen Hogan, Deputy 
Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Energy: Make solar energy as cheap as 
traditional sources of electricity; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Steven Chalk, Deputy 
Assistant Secretary for Renewable Energy. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Energy: Prioritization of scientific 
facilities to ensure optimal benefit from Federal investments; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Patricia Dehmer, Acting 
Director, Office of Science; Deputy Director for Science Programs. 

Agency/Goal: Environmental Protection Agency: Clean up contaminated 
sites and make them ready for use; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Barry Breen, Principal 
Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency 
Response. 

Agency/Goal: Environmental Protection Agency: Reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions from cars and trucks; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Elizabeth A. Shaw, 
Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Air and Radiation. 

Agency/Goal: General Services Administration: Manage customer agency 
real estate portfolio needs in a cost-effective and environmentally 
sustainable manner; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Dorothy Robyn, 
Commissioner, Public Buildings Service. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Health and Human Services: Reduce foodborne 
illness in the population; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Roberta Wagner, Deputy 
Director for Regulatory Affairs, Center for Food Safety and Applied 
Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Health and Human Services: Increase the 
number of health centers certified as patient centered medical homes; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Jim Macrae, Associate 
Administrator, Bureau of Primary Health Care, Health Resources and 
Services Administration. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Health and Human Services: Improve health 
care through meaningful use of health information technology; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Judy Murphy, Deputy 
National Coordinator for Programs and Policy, Office of the National 
Coordinator for Health IT. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Homeland Security: Improve the efficiency 
of the process to detain and remove criminal aliens from the United 
States; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Thomas Homan, Executive 
Associate Director, Enforcement and Removal Operations. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Housing and Urban Development: Reducing 
homelessness; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Jennifer Ho, Senior 
Advisor to the Secretary; Mark Johnston, Acting Assistant Secretary, 
Office of Community Planning and Development. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Housing and Urban Development: Preserve 
affordable rental housing; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Position vacant at the 
time of our interviews (we met instead with the performance 
improvement officer and deputy performance improvement officer). 

Agency/Goal: Department of Housing and Urban Development: Prevent 
foreclosures; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Charles Coulter, Deputy 
Asst. Secretary for the Office of Single Family Housing, Office of 
Housing; Ivery Himes, Director, Office of Single Family Asset 
Management. 

Agency/Goal: Department of the Interior: Build the next generation of 
conservation and community leaders by supporting youth employment at 
the Department of the Interior; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Rhea Suh, Assistant 
Secretary, Policy, Management, and Budget. 

Agency/Goal: Department of the Interior: Reduce violent crime in 
Indian communities; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Kevin Washburn, 
Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. 

Agency/Goal: Department of the Interior: Enable capability to increase 
the available water supply in the western states through conservation 
related programs to ensure adequate and safe water supplies; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Mike Connor, Deputy 
Secretary; (note: at the time of our interview, Mr. Connor's title was 
Commissioner of Reclamation). 

Agency/Goal: Department of Justice: Protect those most in need of help 
- with special emphasis on child exploitation and civil rights; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Anne Gannon, National 
Coordinator for Child Exploitation, Prevention and Interdiction, Office 
of the Deputy Attorney General. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Justice: Reduce gang violence; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Position vacant at the 
time of our interview (we met instead with the deputy goal leader). 

Agency/Goal: Department of Labor : Create a model safety and return-
to-work program; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: David Michaels, 
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and 
Health; Gary Steinberg, Acting Director, Office of Workers' 
Compensation Programs. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Labor: Reduce worker fatalities; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: David Michaels, Assistant 
Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health; Joseph Main, 
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health. 

Agency/Goal: National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Sustain 
operations and full utilization of the International Space Station; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Sam Scimemi, Director, 
International Space Station Division. 

Agency/Goal: National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Develop 
the nation's next generation human space flight system to allow for 
travel beyond low earth orbit; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: William Hill, Assistant 
Deputy Associate Administrator, Exploration Systems Division. 

Agency/Goal: National Science Foundation (NSF): Increase opportunities 
for research and education through public access to high-value digital 
products of NSF-funded research; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Alan Blatecky, Director, 
Office of Cyberinfrastructure. 

Agency/Goal: Office of Personnel Management: Reduce federal retirement 
processing time; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Kenneth Zawodny, Jr., 
Associate Director, Retirement Services. 

Agency/Goal: Office of Personnel Management: Ensure high quality 
federal employees; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Angela Bailey, Chief 
Operating Officer; (note: at the time of our interview, Ms. Bailey's 
title was Associate Director of Employee Services). 

Agency/Goal: Small Business Administration: Increase small business 
participation in government contracting; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: John Shoraka, Associate 
Administrator, Office of Government Contracting and Business 
Development. 

Agency/Goal: Small Business Administration: Process disaster 
assistance applications efficiently; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: James E. Rivera, 
Associate Administrator, Office of Disaster Assistance. 

Agency/Goal: Social Security Administration: Reduce supplemental 
security income overpayments; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: David Foster, Assistant 
Deputy Commissioner, Office of Quality Performance. 

Agency/Goal: Department of State/U.S. Agency for International 
Development: Democracy, human rights, and good governance; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Ambassador Michael Kozak, 
Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, State Department; Sarah 
Mendelson, Deputy Assistant Administrator; Democracy, Conflict, and 
Humanitarian Assistance, USAID. 

Agency/Goal: Department of State/U.S. Agency for International 
Development: Procurement reform; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Elizabeth Warfield, 
Local Solutions Coordinator, USAID. 

Agency/Goal: Department of State/U.S. Agency for International 
Development: Economic statecraft; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Jose W. Fernandez, Asst 
Secretary, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, State Department. 

Agency/Goal: Department of State/U.S. Agency for International 
Development: Food security; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Beth Dunford, Deputy 
Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Food Security, USAID. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Transportation: Reduce risk of aviation 
accidents; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Michael P. Huerta, 
Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration; Margaret 
Gilligan, Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, Federal Aviation 
Administration. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Transportation: Advance the development of 
passenger rail in the United States; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Joseph Szabo, Federal 
Railroad Administrator. 

Agency/Goal: Department of the Treasury: Increase electronic 
transactions with the public to improve service, prevent fraud, and 
reduce costs; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Richard L. Gregg, Fiscal 
Assistant Secretary. 

Agency/Goal: Department of Veterans Affairs: Assist in housing 24,400 
(12,200 per year) additional homeless veterans and reduce the number of 
homeless veterans to 35,000 in 2013, to be measured in the January 2014 
point-In-time homelessness count; 
Goal Leader(s) at the time of GAO interviews: Lisa M. Pape, Director, 
Veterans Health Administration Homeless Programs; (Note: At the time 
of our interview, Ms. Pape's title was "National Director, Veterans 
Health Administration Homeless Programs"). 

Source: GAO analysis of information provided by agencies and on 
Performance.gov. GAO-14-639. 

[End of table] 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: Objectives, Scope and Methodology: 

The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA) requires GAO to review the 
act's implementation. This report is part of a series of reviews 
planned around the requirement. The objectives of this report are to: 
(1) evaluate the roles and responsibilities of agency priority goal 
leaders in managing goal progress and the extent to which they are 
held accountable for achievement of priority goals; (2) review the 
extent to which priority goal leaders collaborate with other programs 
and agencies that contribute to the achievement of the priority goals; 
and (3) describe any challenges and practices identified by priority 
goal leaders in managing goals, and evaluate the extent to which they 
exchange this information with other priority goal leaders. 

To achieve our objectives, we focused our review on the goal leaders 
for a random sample of agency priority goals (APG) for 2012 and 2013. 
There were 103 APGs for 2012 and 2013, across 24 agencies.[Footnote 
87] The number of APGs per agency ranged from two to eight. The sample 
we selected included nearly half (47) of these APGs.[Footnote 88] We 
chose our sample to ensure that it included at least one goal from 
each of the 24 agencies and approximately half of the total number of 
APGs per agency. Although our sample represented a significant portion 
of APGs and goal leaders, we did not generalize information to the 
population of APGs or goal leaders. Appendix I includes a list of the 
APGs in our sample and the associated goal leaders we interviewed. 

To inform our work on all three objectives, we reviewed GPRAMA and 
related Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance, along with our 
prior work on performance management roles, APGs, and interagency 
collaboration.[Footnote 89] We also reviewed information on APGs and 
goal leaders published on Performance.gov, a government-wide 
performance website.[Footnote 90] We used information from 
Performance.gov throughout the engagement, but all references to data 
from Performance.gov in this report are as of May 23, 2014, the date 
we most recently downloaded information from the website. To assess 
the reliability of APG information available through Performance.gov, 
we collected information from agencies and reviewed relevant 
documentation and our prior work. We concluded that information from 
the website was sufficiently reliable for the purpose of drawing our 
sample of APGs and providing contextual information on APGs. We did 
not evaluate agency data on goal progress to determine if APG progress 
they described to us and on Performance.gov was accurate. But, we did 
ask agency officials to verify information on goal progress we report 
from Performance.gov. 

We conducted semistructured interviews with the goal leaders for 43 of 
the 47 APGs in our sample, for a total of 46 goal leaders. The number 
of goal leaders does not equal the number of goals because some goals 
had more than one leader, while some goal leaders were responsible for 
more than one goal in our sample. In most cases where there was more 
than one goal leader, we interviewed all goal leaders. The one 
exception was for a goal for which the agency had identified two goal 
leaders, but noted that one was the primary goal leader. In that case, 
we only interviewed that official. The goal leaders for the other four 
APGs in our sample had either left their agencies or were about to 
leave at the time of our interviews. For these goals, we interviewed 
other agency officials who were knowledgeable about the goals, such as 
deputy goal leaders and performance management staff. Two of the 
departing goal leaders provided us with written responses to our 
questions. We also interviewed Performance Improvement Council (PIC) 
and OMB staff. 

To address our first objective, we obtained and analyzed documentation 
from goal leaders related to their roles and responsibilities, such as 
records showing how they track and communicate goal progress. We also 
obtained individual performance plans from all goal leaders and deputy 
goal leaders who had relevant plans--32 goal leaders and 35 deputy 
goal leaders--and analyzed them to understand how they are used to 
hold officials accountable for goal progress.[Footnote 91] We focused 
our analysis on how closely expectations in the plans were aligned to 
the APG for which the officials were responsible. Specifically, we 
evaluated (1) whether the plans specify that officials are responsible 
for the APG; (2) whether performance standards are linked to APG 
outcomes; (3) if the plans include broad responsibilities for an 
office or mission area under which the APG is likely to fall; and (4) 
if they hold officials responsible for one or more activities that 
could contribute to progress on the APG. To assess goal leader and 
deputy goal leader performance plans, we reviewed our prior work on 
individual and organizational performance.[Footnote 92] We also 
reviewed our prior work on data-driven performance reviews (also 
referred to as quarterly performance reviews) as part of our 
examination of accountability mechanisms for goal achievement and goal 
leaders' collaboration.[Footnote 93] We also reviewed Office of 
Personnel Management (OPM) guidance and regulations on performance 
management, although we recognize that not all of the performance 
plans we reviewed were within the coverage of OPM guidance and 
regulations. To further address this objective, we also included 
questions in our interviews with goal leaders about their roles and 
responsibilities, deputy goal leader roles and responsibilities, 
accountability for goal achievement, and their assessments of the 
effects of the goal leader designation. We also included related 
questions in our interview with OMB and PIC staff. 

To address our second objective, we obtained and analyzed 
documentation from goal leaders related to collaboration, such as 
minutes and agenda of meetings during 2012 and 2013 at which APGs were 
discussed, and records of agency analysis of different program types 
that contribute to APGs, such as grants. To determine how agencies are 
identifying and analyzing the contribution of tax expenditures to 
their APGs, we identified five APGs in our sample that have a close 
connection to tax expenditures.[Footnote 94] For this subset of APGs, 
we included questions during our interviews with goal leaders and 
their staff about agencies' consideration of tax expenditures. We also 
asked goal leaders about how they coordinate within and outside of 
their agencies, and how they identify and analyze the contributions of 
different program types. We asked related questions in our interview 
with OMB and PIC staff. 

To address our third objective, we obtained and analyzed examples of 
ways in which goal leaders shared information, such as talking points 
used at presentations and copies of e-mail between agencies and OMB 
and the PIC. We included questions in our interviews with goal leaders 
about what they consider to be promising practices and lessons learned 
in managing APGs, and the extent to which they and deputy goal leaders 
share this type of information within and outside of their agencies. 
We also asked OMB and PIC staff about actions the PIC has taken to 
reach out to and facilitate information exchange among goal leaders. 

We conducted our work from June 2013 to July 2014 in accordance with 
generally accepted government audit standards. Those standards require 
that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate 
evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and 
conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the 
evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and 
conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

[End of section] 

Appendix III: Comments from the Social Security Administration: 

Social Security: 
Office of the Commissioner: 
Social Security Administration: 
Baltimore, MD 21235-0001: 

June 27, 2014: 

Mr. J. Christopher Mihm: 
Managing Director, Strategic Issues: 
United States Government Accountability Office: 
441 G Street, NW: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

Dear Mr. Mihm: 

Thank you for the opportunity to review the draft report, "Managing 
For Results: Enhanced Goal Leader Accountability and Collaboration 
Could Further Improve Agency Performance" (GAO-14-639). We agree with 
the report. 

If you have any questions, please contact me at (410) 966-9014. Your 
staff may contact Gary S. Hatcher, our Senior Advisor for Records 
Management and Audit Liaison Staff, at (410) 965-0680. 

Sincerely, 

Signed by: 

Katherine Thornton: 
Deputy Chief of Staff: 

[End of section] 

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

GAO Contact: 

J. Christopher Mihm, (202) 512-6806 or mihmj@gao.gov. 

Staff Acknowledgments: 

In addition to the contact named above, Sarah Veale, Assistant 
Director, and Kathleen Padulchick, Analyst-in-Charge, supervised the 
development of this report. Jenny Chanley, Karin Fangman, Erik 
Kjeldgaard, Michael O'Neill, and Cynthia Saunders made significant 
contributions to all aspects of this report. 

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] GAO, Managing for Results: GPRA Modernization Act Implementation 
Provides Important Opportunities to Address Government Challenges, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-617T] (Washington, 
D.C.: May 10, 2011). 

[2] Pub. L. No. 111-352, 124 Stat. 3866 (Jan. 4, 2011). GPRAMA updated 
GPRA, Pub. L. No. 103-62, 107 Stat. 285 (Aug. 3, 1993). 

[3] Certain agencies, as determined by the Office of Management and 
Budget, are required to develop APGs every 2 years. 

[4] GAO, Managing for Results: Executive Branch Should More Fully 
Implement the GPRA Modernization Act to Address Pressing Governance 
Challenges, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-518] 
(Washington, D.C.: June 26, 2013) summarizes our work to date on the 
implementation of the act. 

[5] The Department of Defense has published limited information about 
its APG to improve cybersecurity, due to the sensitive nature of the 
goal. According to Performance.gov, progress updates for this goal 
will be internal to the government. Because we used publicly available 
information, we excluded this goal from our sample. 

[6] The number of goal leaders and deputy goal leaders responsible for 
the goals in our sample does not match the number of APGs because some 
goals had more than one goal leader or deputy goal leader assigned, 
while other goal leaders and deputies had responsibility for more than 
one APG in our sample. Twelve goal leaders we interviewed who were 
Senate-confirmed presidential appointees did not have performance 
plans, as they were not required. Senate-confirmed presidential 
appointees are not in the Senior Executive Service (SES) and therefore 
not under the SES performance management system. See 5 C.F.R. § 
430.302(a) and 5 U.S.C. § 3132(a)(2). Additionally, two goal leaders 
had plans that did not reflect their goal leader roles because they 
were new to their positions or serving in them temporarily. All of the 
38 deputy goal leaders for the goals in our sample had performance 
plans, though we excluded 3 deputies' plans from consideration because 
they were new to the position at the time of our interviews and their 
plans had not been updated to reflect their roles as deputies. 

[7] See GAO, Managing for Results: Agencies Have Elevated Performance 
Management Leadership Roles, but Additional Training is Needed, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-356] (Washington, D.C.: 
Apr. 16, 2013); Managing for Results: Agencies Should More Fully 
Develop Priority Goals under the GPRA Modernization Act, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-174] (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 19, 
2013); and Managing for Results: Implementation Approaches Used to 
Enhance Collaboration in Interagency Groups, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-220] (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 14, 
2014). 

[8] See GAO, Results-Oriented Cultures: Creating a Clear Linkage 
between Individual Performance and Organizational Success, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-488] (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 14, 
2003). As a part of this report, we identified key practices for 
effective performance management that create a clear linkage between 
individual performance and organizational success. We identified these 
practices by reviewing, among other things, experiences of public 
sector organizations in the United States and abroad. See the report's 
scope and methodology for additional details. 

[9] See GAO, Managing for Results: Data-Driven Performance Reviews 
Show Promise But Agencies Should Explore How to Involve Other Relevant 
Agencies, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-228] 
(Washington, D.C.: Feb. 27, 2013). Our prior work identified several 
leading practices for conducting quarterly performance reviews. We 
identified these practices through a review of relevant academic and 
policy literature and with input from practitioners at the local, 
state, and federal levels. See the report's scope and methodology for 
additional details. 

[10] Our 2013 report on the Performance.gov website examined the 
extent to which the website incorporates leading practices for the 
development of federal websites. See GAO, Managing for Results: 
Leading Practices Should Guide the Continued Development of 
Performance.gov, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-517] 
(Washington, D.C.: June 6, 2013). 

[11] The number of goal leaders does not equal the number of goals 
because some goals had more than one leader, while some goal leaders 
were responsible for more than one goal in our sample. In most cases 
where there was more than one goal leader, we interviewed all goal 
leaders. We were not able to interview the goal leaders for four of 
the APGs in our sample because the goal leaders had either left their 
agencies or were about to leave at the time of our interviews. For 
these goals, we interviewed other agency officials who were 
knowledgeable about the goals. In addition, two of the departing goal 
leaders were able to provide us with written responses to our 
questions. 

[12] GPRAMA states that the 24 agencies identified in the Chief 
Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990, as amended (31 U.S.C. § 901(b)), 
are required to develop APGs, unless OMB determines otherwise. The 24 
agencies that developed APGs for 2012 and 2013 varied slightly from 
the CFO Act agencies. OMB did not require the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission to develop these goals; but it did direct the U.S. Army 
Corps of Engineers - Civil Works program to develop priority goals. 
The agencies with APGs for 2012 and 2013 were: the Departments of 
Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human 
Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, the 
Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, the Treasury, and 
Veterans Affairs, as well as the U.S. Agency for International 
Development, Environmental Protection Agency, General Services 
Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 
National Science Foundation, Office of Personnel Management, Small 
Business Administration, Social Security Administration, and U.S. Army 
Corps of Engineers - Civil Works. 

[13] 31 U.S.C. § 1120(b)(1). 

[14] 31 U.S.C. § 1122(b). 

[15] In 2009, prior to the enactment of GPRAMA, OMB required agencies 
to identify high priority performance goals that, among other things, 
were achievable within 12 to 24 months and were highly valued by the 
public or reflecting achievement of agency missions. Progress on these 
goals was not publicly reported. Several of the APGs were a 
continuation of these earlier high priority performance goals. 

[16] A similar position existed at some agencies prior to GPRAMA, as 
earlier OMB guidance had encouraged agencies to identify officials who 
were responsible for high priority performance goals. 

[17] See Office of Personnel Management, Memorandum for Chief Human 
Capital Officers: Government Performance and Results Act Modernization 
Act of 2010 Functional Competencies (Jan. 3, 2012). 

[18] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-220]. 

[19] 31 U.S.C. § 1122(b). 

[20] OMB Circular No. A-11, at § 210.12. Tax expenditures are 
reductions in a taxpayer's tax liability that are the result of 
special exemptions and exclusions from taxation, deductions, credits, 
deferrals of tax liability, or preferential tax rates. These 
preferences can have the same effects as government spending programs; 
hence the name tax expenditures. 

[21] Agency performance improvement officers have various duties, 
including advising the agency head and chief operating officer on goal-
setting and measurement, and reviewing progress toward agency priority 
goals. GPRAMA established this role in law and specified that it 
should be filled by a senior executive at each agency. 

[22] We previously reported on the role of the PIC in facilitating the 
exchange of best practices and improving agency program management and 
performance. See GAO, Managing for Results: Agencies Have Elevated 
Performance Management Leadership Roles, but Additional Training is 
Needed, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-356] 
(Washington, D.C.: Apr. 16, 2013). 

[23] OMB Circular No. A-11, at § 270.8. 

[24] 31 U.S.C. § 1115(a)(3). 

[25] GAO, Government Performance: GPRA Modernization Act Provides 
Opportunities to Help Address Fiscal, Performance, and Management 
Challenges, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-466T] 
(Washington, D.C., Mar. 16, 2011). 

[26] For more information, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/DOT/349]. 

[27] For more information, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/SBA/395]. 

[28] See OMB, Fiscal Year 2015 Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the 
U.S. Government (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 10, 2014), and [hyperlink, 
http://archive-goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/TREAS/335]. 

[29] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-228]. In this 
report we identified several leading practices for conducting QPRs 
through a review of relevant academic and policy literature, and with 
input from practitioners at the local, state, and federal levels. 

[30] See [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-518] and GAO, 
2013 Federal Managers Survey on Organizational Performance and 
Management Issues, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-519SP] (Washington, D.C., June 
2013). 

[31] For more information, see [hyperlink, [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/DOL/345]. 

[32] Interior reported on Performance.gov that it discontinued 
implementation of the APG at the sixth community targeted under the 
goal. Interior reported that the community had been unable to meet 
goal objectives or provide any support to the initiative. For more 
information on the goal, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/DOI/381]. 

[33] For more information, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/DOT/351]. 

[34] For more information, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/ED/354]. 

[35] For more information, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/ED/352]. 

[36] In 2009, OMB required agencies to identify high priority 
performance goals. 

[37] For more information, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/DOC/338]. 

[38] For more information, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/HHS/373]. 

[39] At the time of our interview, the Deputy Secretary was the 
Commissioner of Reclamation at Interior. 

[40] For more information, see [hyperlink, http://archive-
goals.Performance.gov/goal_detail/DOI/382]. 

[41] In addition, deputy goal leaders were assigned for three of the 
four APGs for which we did not interview goal leaders, due to the fact 
that goal leaders had left the position or were about to leave it at 
the time of our interviews. Two goal leaders told us that their 
deputies were "unofficial." We did not include these goal leaders in 
the number of goal leaders with deputies. 

[42] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-488]. We also note 
in [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-518] that the Office 
of Personnel Management and OMB have continued to reinforce the 
importance of this alignment in improvements in SES performance 
management. See GAO, Managing for Results: Executive Branch Should 
More Fully Implement the GPRA Modernization Act to Address Pressing 
Governance Challenges, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-518] (Washington, D.C.: June 26, 
2013). 

[43] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-488]. 

[44] Agencies meeting these and other criteria (as certified by OPM, 
with OMB concurrence) are allowed to apply a higher cap on 1) basic 
pay, and 2) aggregate compensation for SES members. 5 C.F.R. § 430.401. 

[45] Senate-confirmed presidential appointees are not in the SES and 
therefore not under the SES performance management system. 5 C.F.R. § 
430.302(a) and 5 U.S.C. § 3132(a)(2). 

[46] As mentioned previously, two goal leaders told us that their 
deputies were "unofficial." We did not include these deputies' 
performance plans in our analysis. 

[47] Using QPRs as an accountability mechanism is one of several 
leading practices we previously identified for conducting the reviews. 
We identified these practices through a review of relevant academic 
and policy literature and with input from practitioners at the local, 
state, and federal levels. See [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-228]. 

[48] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-220]. 

[49] OMB guidance states that agencies should, as appropriate, include 
relevant personnel, within and outside the agency, who contribute to 
the accomplishment of each APG. See OMB Circular No. A-11 at § 270.5. 
Additionally, leading practices for promoting quarterly performance 
reviews note the importance of having all relevant parties, including 
external contributors to the goal, participate in these reviews to 
solve problems and motivate performance improvement. See [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-228]. 

[50] Interior refers to its quarterly performance reviews as 
"Quarterly Status Reviews." 

[51] OMB Circular No. A-11 at §270.5 states: "the agency head and/or 
COO [chief operating officer] with the support of the PIO [performance 
improvement officer] and his/her office should include, as 
appropriate, relevant personnel within and outside the agency who 
contribute to the accomplishment of each Agency Priority Goal (or 
other priority)." 

[52] HUD refers to their QPRs as "HUDStat." 

[53] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-228]. 

[54] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-228]. 

[55] 31 U.S.C. § 1121(b)(3); and 31 U.S.C. § 1122(b)(3)(C). 
Performance.gov has a section for each APG listing the contributing 
programs agency officials identified. 

[56] See table 2 in [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-518]. Our 2013 report focused on 
these program types because agencies have reported difficulties in 
measuring performance for these program types. OMB has identified 
additional examples of program types, which are not shown in this 
table. See OMB Circular No. A-11 at § 280.11. 

[57] Tax expenditures are not discussed in the table below and will 
instead be discussed in a later section of this report. This is 
because the goal leaders we interviewed had different views on tax 
expenditures than the other program types described in the table. 

[58] For example, see GAO, Results-Oriented Government: GPRA Has 
Established a Solid Foundation for Achieving Greater Results, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-38] (Washington, D.C.: 
Mar. 10, 2004) and The Government Performance and Results Act: 1997 
Governmentwide Implementation Will be Uneven, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/GGD-97-109] (Washington, D.C.: June 2, 
1997). 

[59] Our June 2013 report on initial GPRAMA implementation provides 
illustrative examples of the difficulties agencies have faced in 
measuring performance for grants and other program types. For more 
information, see table 2 on pp. 54-58 of [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-518]. 

[60] At the time of our interview, the Deputy Secretary was the 
Commissioner of Reclamation at Interior. 

[61] The goal leader position for this APG was vacant during the time 
of our review. Instead, we interviewed HUD's Performance Improvement 
Officer (PIO) and the deputy PIO. 

[62] We have previously reported that HUD's Housing Choice Voucher 
(voucher) program pays subsidies to landlords to help households with 
very or extremely low incomes rent apartments or houses on the private 
market. See GAO, Housing Choice Vouchers: Options Exist to Increase 
Program Efficiencies, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-300] (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 19, 
2012). The connection between this APG and tax expenditures is 
discussed in the next section. 

[63] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-356]. 

[64] OMB Circular No. A-11, at § 210.10. 

[65] For more information, see GAO's Key Issues web page on tax 
expenditures, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/tax_expenditures/issue_summary]. 

[66] GAO, Government Performance and Accountability: Tax Expenditures 
Represent a Substantial Federal Commitment and Need to Be Reexamined, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-690] (Washington, D.C.: 
Sept. 23, 2005); and Tax Policy: Tax Expenditures Deserve More 
Scrutiny, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/GGD/AIMD-94-122] 
(Washington, D.C.: June 3, 1994). 

[67] OMB Circular No. A-11, at § 210.12 (2013). 

[68] See GAO, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits: Agencies Implemented 
Changes Enacted in 2008, but Project Data Collection Could Be 
Improved, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-66] 
(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 6, 2012); and Housing Assistance: 
Opportunities Exist to Increase Collaboration and Consider 
Consolidation, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-554] 
(Washington, D.C.: Aug. 16, 2012). 

[69] The two tax expenditures were 1) the energy investment credit, 
which provides tax credits for investments in solar property, and 2) 
accelerated depreciation recovery periods for specific energy 
property, which allows businesses to recover the costs of investments 
in renewable energy in 5 years through depreciation deductions. See 
GAO, Wind Energy: Additional Actions Could Help Ensure Effective Use 
of Federal Financial Support, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-136] (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 11, 
2013). This report discusses that a number of renewable energy 
technologies may benefit from the tax expenditure related to 
depreciation of specific energy property. 

[70] Our previous work provides more specific information about the 
actions HUD and other federal agencies are taking on foreclosure 
mitigation. See GAO, Foreclosure Mitigation: Agencies Could Improve 
Effectiveness of Federal Efforts with Additional Data Collection and 
Analysis, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-296] 
(Washington, D.C.: June 28, 2012). 

[71] For more specific information about this tax expenditure, see 
GAO, Tax Administration: Expanded Information Reporting Could Help IRS 
Address Compliance Challenges with Forgiven Mortgage Debt, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-997] (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 31, 
2010). 

[72] GAO, Higher Education: Improved Tax Information Could Help 
Families Pay for College, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-560] (Washington, D.C.: May 18, 
2012). 

[73] This scorecard is posted on the White House web page. It can be 
accessed at [hyperlink, 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education/college-
score-card]. 

[74] 20 U.S.C. § 1015a(a)(3). 

[75] "Plug-ins" refer to vehicles that can be plugged into an 
electrical outlet to charge the car's battery. For more information, 
see GAO, Federal Energy and Fleet Management: Plug-in Vehicles Offer 
Potential Benefits, but High Costs and Limited Information Could 
Hinder Integration into the Federal Fleet, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-493] (Washington, D.C.: June 9, 
2009); and Diesel Pollution: Fragmented Federal Programs That Reduce 
Mobile Source Emissions Could Be Improved, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-261] (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 7, 
2012). 

[76] We previously reported on agencies' preparation for and 
implementation of sequestration and its effects on agency operations, 
performance, and services to the public. See GAO, 2013 Sequestration: 
Agencies Reduced Some Services and Investments, While Taking Certain 
Actions to Mitigate Effects, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-244] (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 6, 
2014). 

[77] Goal leaders identified challenges in response to an open-ended 
question about the challenges they have faced as goal leaders. 

[78] The full title of the APG is "Build the next generation of 
conservation and community leaders by supporting youth employment at 
the Department of the Interior." 

[79] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-244]. 

[80] Our prior work has identified examples of agency challenges with 
metrics and data. For example, see GAO, Federal Information Security: 
Mixed Progress in Implementing Program Components; Improved Metrics 
Needed to Measure Effectiveness, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-776] (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 26, 
2013); and Federal Real Property: National Strategy and Better Data 
Needed to Improve Management of Excess and Underutilized Property, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-645] (Washington, D.C.: 
June 20, 2012). 

[81] Goal leaders identified practices in response to an open-ended 
question about what practices and lessons they have learned from their 
experiences as goal leaders. 

[82] 31 U.S.C. § 1120(b)(1)(E) and 31 USC § 1115(b)(6), respectively. 
§ 1115(b)(6) applies to all agency performance goals, of which APGs 
are a subset. 

[83] At the time of our interview, the goal leader's title was 
Associate Director of Employee Services. 

[84] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-356]. 

[85] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-356]. 

[86] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-518]. 

[87] GPRAMA states that the 24 agencies identified in the Chief 
Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990, as amended (31 U.S.C. § 901(b)), 
are required to develop APGs, unless OMB determines otherwise. The 24 
agencies that developed 2012 to 2013 APGs varied slightly from the CFO 
Act agencies. OMB did not require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to 
develop these goals, but it did direct the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 
- Civil Works program to develop priority goals. The agencies with 
APGs for 2012 and 2013 were: the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, 
Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland 
Security, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, Justice, Labor, 
State, Transportation, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as 
the U.S. Agency for International Development, Environmental 
Protection Agency, General Services Administration, National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, 
Office of Personnel Management, Small Business Administration, Social 
Security Administration, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - Civil 
Works. 

[88] We excluded from our sample a Department of Defense APG to 
improve cybersecurity compliance, due to the sensitive nature of the 
goal and the resulting limited published information available on it. 

[89] See GAO, Managing for Results: Agencies Have Elevated Performance 
Management Leadership Roles, but Additional Training is Needed, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-356] (Washington, D.C.: 
Apr. 16, 2013); Managing for Results: Agencies Should More Fully 
Develop Priority Goals under the GPRA Modernization Act, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-174] (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 19, 
2013); and Managing for Results: Implementation Approaches Used to 
Enhance Collaboration in Interagency Groups, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-220] (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 14, 
2014). 

[90] Our 2013 report on the Performance.gov website examined the 
extent to which the website incorporates leading practices for the 
development of federal websites. See GAO, Managing for Results: 
Leading Practices Should Guide the Continued Development of 
Performance.gov, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-517] 
(Washington, D.C.: June 6, 2013). 

[91] Some goal leaders and deputies either did not have performance 
plans or had ones that did not reflect their current positions. Twelve 
goal leaders we interviewed who were Senate-confirmed presidential 
appointees did not have performance plans, as they were not required. 
Senate-confirmed presidential appointees are not in the Senior 
Executive Service (SES) and therefore not under the SES performance 
management system. 5 C.F.R. § 430.302(a) and 5 U.S.C. § 3132(a)(2). 
Additionally, two goal leaders had plans that did not reflect their 
goal leader roles because they were new to their positions or serving 
in them temporarily. All of the 38 deputy goal leaders for the goals 
in our sample had performance plans, though we excluded three 
deputies' plans from consideration because they were new to the 
position at the time of our interview and their plans had not been 
updated to reflect their roles as deputy. 

[92] See GAO, Results-Oriented Cultures: Creating a Clear Linkage 
between Individual Performance and Organizational Success, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-488] (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 14, 
2003). As a part of this report, we identified key practices for 
effective performance management that create a clear linkage between 
individual performance and organizational success. We identified these 
practices by reviewing, among other things, experiences of public 
sector organizations in the U.S. and abroad. See the report's scope 
and methodology for additional details. 

[93] See GAO, Managing for Results: Data-Driven Performance Reviews 
Show Promise But Agencies Should Explore How to Involve Other Relevant 
Agencies, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-228] 
(Washington, D.C.: Feb. 27, 2013). Our prior work identified several 
leading practices for conducting quarterly performance reviews. We 
identified these practices through a review of relevant academic and 
policy literature and with input from practitioners at the local, 
state, and federal levels. See the report's scope and methodology for 
additional details. 

[94] The five APGs we identified as having a close connection to tax 
expenditures are: 1) the Department of Housing and Urban Development's 
(HUD) Preserve Affordable Rental Housing APG; 2) HUD's Prevent 
Foreclosures APG; 3) the Department of Energy's Make Solar Energy as 
Cheap as Traditional Sources of Electricity APG; 4) the Department of 
Education's Improve Students' Ability to Afford and Complete College 
APG; and 5) the Environmental Protection Agency's Reduce Greenhouse 
Gas Emissions for Cars and Trucks APG. 

[End of section] 

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