Last Updated:

Of note on the management front this past Quarter:

• Six agencies declined in the status of their Competitive Sourcing efforts, reflecting continued pressure from labor unions on Congress to curtail the focus on greater program effectiveness.
• The Departments of Labor and State declined in status in two areas, causing them to lose their all-green status.
• The Social Security Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency became the two highest rated PMA agencies, with four green status scores apiece.
• Commerce, EPA, SBA and the Smithsonian did everything they said they would do in the quarter, giving them each 5 green progress ratings. The other agencies missed key deliverables.
• We began to hold relevant agencies accountable for their work on the Credit Management and Health Information Initiatives.
• Agencies generally remained firmly committed to the Faith Based, Real Property, and Improper Payments Initiatives, as evidenced by the preponderance of green progress ratings.

So we have to increase the volume and quality of our efforts to educate Congress and agency leadership about the value of Competitive Sourcing: it's the best way for agencies to find the most effective way to serve the American people and to free-up $6+ billion to support high priority programs.

Most importantly, though, as mentioned in my report last quarter, we have to make sure we use our improved management abilities to actually make the government work better. We need to:

• emphasize greater agency and program effectiveness, versus compliance with the PMA goals,
• actually and aggressively use financial and performance information to manage better,
• hold bureaus and field organizations more accountable for performance,
• tie awards and management salary increases more closely to program performance, and
• be even more transparent about agency/bureau/program/field performance to better drive accountability for performance.

The President's charge to Federal agencies is to make sure all our green and yellow accomplishments convert to greater government effectiveness for FY07 and 08 and beyond.

Clay Johnson, Deputy Director for Management at OMB