Create performance measures that help the public consider resource allocation decisions
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 ...more »
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?
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