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Idea#424

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Strategic Planning and Budgeting »

Create performance measures that help the public consider resource allocation decisions

Why Is This Idea Important?: When citizens better understand the intended purpose of federal spending, they are better equipped to compare trade-offs between funding proposals and engage in the process of governing--making difficult choices democratically, rather than leaving it to beleaguered elected officials who feel compelled to spend irresponsibly for political survival, or special interests who wield influence for narrow monetary gain. However, one difficulty with performance metrics is that federal departments tend to choose numbers that are difficult to decipher, or goals that lack ambition. For example, one of The Department of Transportation's performance metrics for traffic congestion is "Percent of total annual urban-area travel time occurring in congested condition," and the Department's goal is 27.1%. I don't know how this is measured exactly, I do know that the Department reports this number as falling in recent years, which does not match my personal experience, nor the experience of most fellow citizens stuck in traffic that is bad and getting worse. So how then can we as citizens, provide insight on whether related programs deserve more or less funding, when the metrics chosen for us are abstract, and seemingly designed to obfuscate rather than inform? I believe engaging citizens in resource allocation decisions, reflecting their informed consideration of the likelihood of certain programs achieving well-defined objectives, is essential to creating a federal government that meets its citizens needs without borrowing so irresponsibly against its future. But if success metrics are going to contribute to this, Washington's interpretation of what those metrics are and what they deliver must be reexamined. The centerpiece of all performance measures should be engaging citizens in decision-making rather than informing them of "progress" that rarely jives with actual experience.

Federal Departments' strategic goals and performance measures are often too difficult to interpret. We should fix this. Citizens who wish to provide guidance to their elected officials about spending priorities struggle to understand the basic objectives of programs and their actual progress. The tendency for performance measures to be vague, and goals perpetually met, is easily understood in the context of the federal budgeting process, where every Department wants to grow or at least maintain its budgets and staff, and where accurate performance measures come with fear of budget cuts if performance falls. It may also explain why these measures are buried in lengthy budget documents and ExpectMore.gov contains only a few programs and no overarching structure to understand how the rated programs fit into the broader budget.

But if we want to make difficult choices about spending, we need new communications about performance, web 2.0 if that's we want to call it, which clearly link spending to strategic goals and help citizens make those difficult choices. This may require some new technology or data, but really, it requires a sea change in the way our government views its people. Are we a capricious and irresponsible bunch, susceptible to messaging and rose-tinted statistics, easily managed with proper polling and sufficient advertising? Or are we a resource for guidance and direction, offering the wisdom of crowds, government of the people by the people as our founders called it, to the difficult question of how best to cut spending while actually improving benefits to the public?

Submitted by ryan.tuggle 2 years ago

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Comments (2)

  1. rcastello said:

    «..., it requires a sea change in the way our government views its people. Are we a capricious and irresponsible bunch, susceptible to messaging and rose-tinted statistics, easily managed with proper polling and sufficient advertising? Or are we a resource for guidance and direction, offering the wisdom of crowds, government of the people by the people as our founders called it, to the difficult question of how best to cut spending while actually improving benefits to the public?»

    That's the very central question. The people in open process (open information, open dialog, open goals, open values...) would know what it is the best path.

    2 years ago
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  2. Debra Bryant said:

    http://CAFR1.com and http://TaxRetirement.com

    2 years ago
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