The performance plan should describe (1) annual performance goals and measures, (2) the strategies and resources to achieve those goals, and (3) procedures to verify and validate reported performance. While the plan reflects the mission statement and strategic goals in NASA’s strategic plan and provides clear links between strategic goals and the annual performance goals and measures, it does not clearly associate the plan’s performance goals and measures with program activities in the budget. In order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the importance of the goals and performance measures chosen for its crosscutting processes, it would have been helpful for the plan to acknowledge the agency’s major management challenges and associated corrective actions. NASA’s performance plan contains a table that allocates NASA’s $13.5 billion fiscal year 1999 budget request among its four enterprises and several other consolidated budget accounts. NASA’s Performance Plan Does Not Fully Discuss How the Agency’s Strategies and Resources Will Help Achieve Its Goals

The performance plan does not fully discuss how the agency’s strategies and resources will help achieve its goals. Connecting Resources to Strategies

NASA’s performance plan partially discusses the resources it will use to achieve the performance goals. Internal assessments will be conducted by agency management councils throughout the year and semi-annually by the Senior Management Council. Even though the areas we identified in our report as lacking specificity may be addressed in NASA’s strategic plan, budget justification and other documents, we maintain that the performance plan could be more useful by better linking performance goals and measures to program activities in the budget; more fully explaining procedures for verifying and validating performance data and recognizing the limitations that affect the credibility of data that will be used to measure performance; and by acknowledging major management challenges and associated corrective actions. Including these areas in the plan would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the importance of NASA’s goals and performance measures, making it more useful for purposes of the Results Act. Comments From the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The following are GAO’s comments on NASA’s letter dated April 24, 1998. In discussing the strengths of NASA’s performance plan, our report recognizes that the plan provided good linkage between strategic goals and the goals in the performance plan and that performance measures were generally objective, quantifiable, and useful for assessing progress. However, our report also clearly states that NASA’s plan could provide a clearer picture of intended performance across the agency and does not fully portray how NASA’s strategies and resources will help it achieve the plan’s performance goals. 2. 3. 6.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) performance plan for fiscal year (FY) 1999, focusing on: (1) NASA's goals and objectives, including how the agency plans to measure its progress toward achieving these goals and objectives; (2) the agency's strategies and resources needed to achieve its goals; and (3) the availability and reliability of data necessary to achieve progress.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) NASA's FY 1999 performance plan could provide a clearer picture of intended performance across the agency, does not fully portray how NASA's strategies and resources will help it achieve the plan's performance goals, and partially provides confidence that the information NASA will use to assess performance will be accurate, complete, and credible; (2) among its strengths, NASA's performance plan reflects the mission statement and goals in its strategic plan and provides good linkage between these strategic goals and the plan's performance goals and targets; (3) it incorporates performance measures that are generally objective, quantifiable, and useful for assessing progress toward the plan's performance objectives; and provides for annual external assessments by its Advisory Council and semi-annual internal assessments by its Senior Management Council to validate progress toward meeting the agency's goals and objectives; (4) to make the plan more useful for purposes of the Government Performance and Results Act, NASA's performance plan should: (a) better link performance goals and measures to the program activities in NASA's budget; (b) more fully explain NASA's procedures for verifying and validating performance data by recognizing the limitations that affect the credibility of data that will be used to measure performance; and (c) acknowledge NASA's major management challenges and associated corrective actions in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the importance of the goals and performance measures chosen for its internal crosscutting processes; (5) some of the concerns GAO has regarding NASA's performance plan are similar to its observations on NASA's strategic plan issued on September 30, 1997; and (6) for example, NASA's strategic plan did not contain evidence that NASA had coordinated the plan with those agencies whose programs and activities complement NASA's and did not discuss the human, capital, and information resources needed to achieve the goals and objectives in the plan.