Conclusions

USDA’s fiscal year 2000 performance report and fiscal year 2002 performance plan have the potential for focusing the department’s missions, but these efforts are compromised in a number of areas. USDA’s goals and measures are too general to give insight into the actual achievements that USDA is striving to make. In particular, it is difficult to assess USDA’s progress when it uses unrealistic goals to achieve strategic outcomes and when it uses untimely data that has not been consistently verified. In two particular areas—strategic human capital management and information security—the process of measuring USDA’s performance could be improved by including goals and measures in USDA’s annual performance plan. Finally, USDA missed the opportunity to develop strategies and plans to respond to the major management challenges identified by the OIG.
What GAO Found

The Department of Agriculture's (USDA) fiscal year 2000 performance report and fiscal year 2002 performance plan have the potential for focusing the department's missions, but these efforts are compromised in several areas. USDA's goals and measures are too general to give insight into what USDA is actually trying to achieve. It is difficult to assess USDA's progress when it uses unrealistic goals to achieve strategic outcomes and when it uses untimely data that has not been consistently verified. In two areas--strategic human capital management and information security--progress in measuring USDA's performance has been frustrated by the lack of goals and measures for identified issues. Finally, by not sharing information about the major management challenges identified by its own Inspector General, USDA's agencies miss the opportunity to develop strategies and plans to respond to these issues.