How Performance Budgeting Can Help

CA Nikita | Last updated: 02 October 2007

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21st Century Challenges: How Performance Budgeting Can
Help
GAO-07-1194T September 20, 2007

As part of its work to improve the management and
performance of the federal government, GAO monitors
progress and continuing challenges in using
performance information to inform budgetary choices
(performance budgeting). In light of the nation's
long-term fiscal imbalance and other 21st century
challenges, we have reported that the Government
Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) and
performance budgeting can support needed reexamination
of what the federal government does, how it does it,
and who does it. GAO remains committed to working with
Congress and the Administration to help address these
important and complex issues.

Reexamining the base of all major existing federal
spending and tax programs, policies, and activities by
reviewing their results and testing their continued
relevance and relative priority for our changing
society is an important step in the process of
assuring fiscal responsibility and facilitating
national renewal. Reexamination can arm decision
makers with better information on both individual
program results and entire portfolios of programs and
tools-- encompassing a wide range of discretionary,
entitlement, tax, and regulatory
approaches--addressing common goals. GPRA provided a
foundation for strengthening government performance
and accountability. The President's Management Agenda
and the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)--OMB's
framework for assessing federal program
performance--continue to build on GPRA's foundation.
Properly done, these and future efforts--along with a
set of Key National Indicators (KNI)--could provide a
strong basis to support the needed review,
reassessment, and reprioritization process. Moving
forward, for performance budgeting and program reviews
to hold appeal beyond the executive branch and
actually have an impact on legislation, congressional
buy-in on what to measure and how to present this
information is critical. In addition, tax expenditures
result in forgone revenue that in some years has
approximated the size of total discretionary spending.
Yet relatively little is known about the effectiveness
of these provisions, which are often aimed at policy
goals similar to those of federal spending programs.
To date, PART has generally not been applied to tax
expenditures. GAO continues to urge as a next step a
more comprehensive and consistent approach to
evaluating all programs relevant to common goals. This
would require assessing the performance of all
programs related to a particular goal--including tax
expenditures--using a common framework