Labor, once at the back of the pack, becomes the first agency to go all-green
Hate it or love it, the President’s Management Agenda is changing the way the government works.
Don’t think so? Check out the Labor Department or the Energy or State departments. They, according to long-time federal experts, were among the most mismanaged agencies in all of government four years ago. Now, they are among the shining stars of the Bush administration’s five-point improvement plan.
Labor became an example of success in the mid-year PMA scorecard, which the Office of Management and Budget released earlier this month. It’s the first agency to earn green scores in all five PMA areas—budget and performance integration, competitive sourcing, e-government, financial performance and human capital. This is the third full year in which the administration has issued evaluations.
“A lot of this agenda was cleaning up the chronic management programs that have been on the high-risk list for years,” said Jonathan Breul, former senior adviser to OMB’s deputy director for management and currently a senior fellow at IBM’s Center for the Business of Government. “Before the PMA, Labor, State, Energy and even Interior were not known for their good management or program performance.”
But through the PMA, these and other agencies have focused on long-neglected management issues. Along with Labor’s success, State and Energy earned four greens and one yellow, and Interior has one green, three yellows and one red.
“We’ve seen the improvements in our every-day processes,” said Bruce Carnes, Energy associate deputy secretary. “I’ve been here for five years, and the day-to-day change has been incremental. But if you step back and look at where we were and where we are now, I get a better sense of what we have achieved.”
Tough questions
The PMA—even with the grade-school simplicity of its red, yellow and green scoring system, and the controversy over pushing agencies to compete federal jobs with the private sector under OMB Circular A-76—has forced agencies to answer tough questions.
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