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Professor John Gilmour's Report: "Implementing OMB's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART): Meeting the Challenges of Integrating Budget and Performance"
This report examines a federal performance budgeting
initiative, the Performance Assessment Rating Tool, or PART, that was
launched five years ago by the Office of Management and Budget.
The report, published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government,
examines PART from a practical standpoint: How have federal agencies
dealt with the requirements of PART? What strategies have they employed
to be successful? What challenges do they face? His report highlights
four challenges that confront both agencies and OMB as they work to
complete assessments of all 1,000 programs and describes approaches
that agencies are taking to meet these challenges. The first challenge
is for departments and agencies to organize for success. The second
challenge of using PART is communicating accomplishments. The third is
the challenge of developing suitable measures, and the fourth challenge
is linking performance to outcomes.
Related Article:
PART success, PART failure
More programs can measure results, but improvement rare
John Gilmour is the Associate Director of the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy. He teaches The Political Environment and Budget Policy-Making in the Fall and Assessing Outcomes in Government Programs in the Spring.