Bush orders agencies to appoint 'performance improvement officers' (11/14/07) -- www.GovernmentExecutive.com

Some agencies think that the plans to score well on the PMA is a strategy in itself. While other agencies think that having a budget is a portfolio strategy (i.e. rollup of many OMB 300s), and some agencies use Enterprise Architectures (and transition plans) as their strategy. (I name no names for a reason).

Nonetheless, setting strategic direction is not just a one time or annual exercise. There is the ongoin monitoring, governing, and the associated course corrections that come with understanding the feedback recieved from performance measurement systems. Hopefully, this first step of appointing performance improvement officers will come with a more standard approach to monitoring and measuring performance on a project, program, department and agency level.

FROM GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE:
President Bush has issued an executive order requiring heads of federal agencies to set clear annual goals, lay out specific plans for achieving them, and designate "performance improvement officers" to assess progress toward meeting the goals and report on it to the public. With the order, issued Tuesday and detailed at a press briefing today, the Bush administration hopes to establish a lasting legacy for its management improvement agenda.

The performance improvement officers will be required to oversee agencies' "strategic plans, annual performance plans and annual performance reports as required by law," the order states. The officers also will review the goals of agency programs to determine if they are "sufficiently aggressive toward full achievement of the purposes of the program," and "realistic in light of authority and resources assigned to the specified agency personnel."

"The goal is greater effectiveness during this administration and beyond," said Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget.
Robert Shea, OMB's associate director for management, said the position of performance improvement officer could be assigned to a career employee in order to establish continuity through the next administration, although a final decision has not been made. If a political appointee is named to the role, Shea said, there must be a career official in place that is capable of carrying on the initiative during the next administration.

The full article can be read here: Bush orders agencies to appoint 'performance improvement officers' (11/14/07) -- www.GovernmentExecutive.com