From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: A Closer Look at Data-Driven Performance Reviews

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Chris Mihm, Managing
Director, Strategic Issues

Related GAO Work: GAO-13-228: Managing for Results: Data-Driven
Performance Reviews Show Promise but Agencies Should Explore How to
Involve Other Relevant Agencies

Released: February 2013

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[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news
and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's
February 2013. The Government Performance and Results Act Modernization
Act of 2010 included a provision for agency leaders to conduct
quarterly data-driven performance reviews. A team led by Chris Mihm,
managing director of GAO's Strategic Issues team, recently reviewed the
implementation and impact of these reviews. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat
down with Chris to learn more.

 [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] How do data-driven performance reviews differ from
what's been used for reviewing performance in the past?

 [ Chris Mihm: ] Well one of the big pieces of news is that while it's
new at the federal level, it's not new at other levels of government.
Actually the whole model of the data-driven reviews builds off of
something called the STAT reviews that were done in the beginning with
something called COMPSTAT in New York in the mid-1990s. It grew from
there into being used in the police office--police department in New
York City--to other law enforcement agencies, to other programs around
the country. Grew into then state STAT in Maryland, in the state of
Washington and so what this is, is taking that basic approach of using
data to pinpoint improvement opportunities, putting in place
improvement strategies, and then following up on those in a very
rigorous way. It's bringing that approach to the federal level and
that's what's new.

 [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team identified a few leading practices that
can help yield successful reviews of this type. Can you talk a little
bit about these practices?

 [ Chris Mihm: ] Sure. The basic idea behind the STAT reviews is that
it's a leadership strategy in which you get the personal involvement of
the head of the agency or the head of the organization to actually sit
down with his or her senior managers and look for opportunities to
improve performance. And what we identified then was based on the
literature, experience at local levels, at state levels, certainly the
experiences that we're already beginning to see at the federal levels,
a set of practices that we have seen that our most directly involved
with successful performance review meetings like the quarterly reviews.
And they are things like making sure that the top people attend the
meetings, making sure other key people are there, making sure that we
have the data that we need and that it's disaggregated in such a way
that we can pinpoint improvement opportunities, making sure that
there's rigorous follow-up, and to make sure that we've actually taken
the actions that we're committed to in those meetings. And then finally
and you know, perhaps most importantly is making sure that these
meetings are regularly scheduled and that they're actually held. Too
often in the past especially at the federal level, performance data
would be reported once a year or twice a year. It would go into a paper
document that nobody would ever read. What these are about is let's get
regularly scheduled meetings. Let's make sure that the key players are
present and let's follow up and make sure that corrective actions are
taken.

 [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And what impact did you find that these reviews
are having at the agencies that you looked at?

 [ Chris Mihm: ] Not surprisingly that given the experience at state
and local levels, we're certainly seeing that it is having some impact
at the federal levels and in fact, one of the key things that we wanted
to ask about is this model scalable? That is it can work at a local
level where there's a pretty direct connection between an activity you
may undertake and then a change in results. And so if you put more cops
on the--where you have crime, you can end up reducing crime. The
approach that they used in New York was called cops on dots. You know,
what we wanted to see in this case, dots being where the crime was.
What we wanted to see in this case was is it scalable up to the federal
level where you have much more indirect connection between federal
programs and the outcomes that are ultimately achieved? And indeed,
we've been able to see it. We took some time looking at the STAT
meetings that were taking place over at Treasury, over at SBA and
Department of Energy. We actually attended the ones, several of them
over at Treasury. Found them to just be fascinating discussions that
were taking place between the Deputy Secretary and his leadership team
including people in the agencies and they were looking for and finding
opportunities to improve performance across the Treasury agencies.

 [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] GAO is making a recommendation in this report;
it's related to collaboration among agencies. Can you explain this?

 [ Chris Mihm: ] Yeah, one of the things that's missing at the federal
level or that we've seen thus far is using these STAT meetings to get
all the relevant players together and talk about how their individual
initiatives are at least intended to combine and work together in such
a way to contribute to an outcome. We've seen that when you look at
models at the state level where a governor will convene her or his
entire management team and program team if it's looking at, you know,
for example, children at risk or homelessness or something like
that--getting together all the programs that contribute to that. We
don't do that yet at the federal level. We think that's a real missed
opportunity here, because what it requires then is a parallel structure
to be put in place to ensure collaboration takes place. You don't need
that. You know, let's use the STAT meetings the way that they have been
used at the state and local and even regional level. One of the great
models on this is what they have in the state of Maryland. It's a broad
thing called Base STAT that brings together a variety of different
state programs to look at the health of the Chesapeake Bay. That's
exactly the type of cross-cutting and collaborative approach that is
needed and how those STAT meetings can be used to foster that
collaboration.

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