Requiring Bureaucracies to Perform: What Have We Learned From the U.S. Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA)?

The U.S. Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) was enacted to promote strategic planning and performance management in the U.S. Federal Government. This act and its effects to date are considered in three contexts: (1) of recurring efforts by U.S. political leadership to improve government administration, (2) of recent administrative reforms, collectively termed the New Public Management (NPM), that have been adopted in many countries, and (3) of the possibilities for performance-based management and politics from a theoretical perspective. GPRA is unusual among American administrative reforms in that it is an initiative of Congress, not the executive branch. As such, it requires Congressional participation in executive agency planning. Results to date suggest that the processes and reports required by GPRA have not yet become essential to budgetary or policy politics. (Complementary efforts by the Clinton administration to reinvent American government, especially its NPM-like Performance Based Organization initiative, are likewise having little impact on government operations.) Ironically, in the light of its focus on performance, the Result Act’s principal effect appears to be a heightened emphasis on procedural compliance by agency administrators and enhanced opportunities for micro-management of federal operations by legislators and their staffs.