The Results Act requires a strategic plan that includes six elements: (1) a comprehensive agency mission statement, (2) long-term goals and objectives for the major functions and operations of the agency, (3) approaches or strategies to achieve goals and objectives and the various resources needed to do so, (4) a discussion of the relationship between long-term goals/objectives and annual performance goals, (5) an identification of key external factors beyond agency control that could significantly affect achievement of strategic goals, and (6) a description of how program evaluations were used to establish or revise strategic goals and a schedule for future program evaluations. Although OMB’s July draft included elements addressing its mission, goals and objectives, strategies, and key external factors affecting its goals, we suggested that these elements could be enhanced to better reflect the purposes of the Results Act and to more explicitly discuss how OMB will achieve its governmentwide management responsibilities. OMB’s September plan addresses the six required elements of the Results Act. At the same time, enhancements could make the plan more useful to OMB and the Congress in assessing OMB’s progress in meeting its goals. However, OMB’s plan could more specifically address how OMB intends to work with agencies to resolve long-standing management problems and high-risk issues with governmentwide implications. Such efforts are noteworthy because some of OMB’s activities, such as developing the President’s budget or coordinating the administration’s legislative program, present challenges for defining quantifiable performance measures and implementation schedules. OMB’s discussion of program evaluation could provide more information about how evaluations were used in developing its plan and how evaluations will be used to assess OMB’s and federal agencies’ capacity and progress in achieving the purposes of the Results Act. As we noted in our review of the July draft plan, evaluations are especially critical for providing a source of information for the Congress and others to ensure the validity and reasonableness of OMB’s goals and strategies and to identify factors likely to affect the results of programs and initiatives. In summary, OMB has made significant improvements in its strategic plan.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed how well the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) strategic plan addresses the Government Performance and Results Act's requirements and some of the challenges remaining for OMB to address in future planning efforts.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) since its July 1997 draft, OMB has made changes to the plan based on its continuing planning efforts, congressional consultations, and comments from others; (2) overall, OMB's September 1997 plan addresses all required elements of the Results Act and reflects several of the enhancements GAO suggested in its review of the July draft; (3) specific improvements include: (a) goals and objectives that show a clearer results-orientation; (b) more clearly defined strategies for achieving these goals and objectives; and (c) an increased recognition of some of the crosscutting issues OMB needs to address; (4) however, additional enhancements to several of the plan's required elements and a fuller discussion of major management challenges confronting the federal government could help make the plan more useful to the Congress and OMB; (5) for example, the plan could provide a more explicit discussion of OMB's strategies on such subjects as information technology, high-risk issues, overlap among federal missions and programs, and strengthening program evaluation; (6) OMB's strategic plan indicates that the agency will use its annual performance plan, the governmentwide performance plan, other functional management plans, and the President's Budget to provide additional information about how it plans to address some of these and other critical management issues; (7) GAO will continue to review OMB's plans and proposals as additional detail concerning objectives, time frames, and priorities is established; and (8) GAO's intention is to apply an integrated perspective in looking at these plans, consistent with the intent of the Results Act, to ensure that OMB achieves the results expected by its statutory authorities.