OTHER AGENCIES

GSA | OPM | SMITHSONIAN

General Services Administration

GSA made significant progress in several areas. GSA successfully replaced its core accounting system to improve the management of funds. GSA is now focusing its efforts to move other financial systems into one agency-wide system. GSA also successfully converted 398 jobs (or five percent overall) during 2002, and is expected to convert 15 percent of its commercial inventory by the end of 2003. GSA’s major challenges in improving its status on these initiatives include: purchasing IT systems that work for the entire agency, rather than parts of it; improving management and execution of its human capital strategy; and developing long-range performance goals and the budgets needed to achieve those goals.

Office of Personnel Management

OPM is making good progress towards meeting each of the initiative’s standards for success. It is reorganizing its workforce to better help federal agencies put effective human resource management practices into effect that, in turn, will improve agency performance. Last year OPM competitively sourced 82 full-time job slots, and has plans to contract or compete another 202 in 2003. OPM received a clean audit on its 2001 consolidated financial statement, and used its new COTS financial management system to close its accounts within the same year. OPM leads five e-Gov initiatives, including consolidation of federal civilian payroll service providers from 22 to four. A new web site, www.GoLearn.gov, is one of the world’s most active online training sites, with over 35 million hits to date and 20,000 registered users. OPM is developing a zero-based budget and an annual performance plan that adjusts to the goals of the reorganization. It also has kicked off a project to create an agency-wide program evaluation and performance measurement program.

Smithsonian Institution

While the Smithsonian Institution is making some progress in addressing the President’s Management Agenda, it still has a long way to go before its status ratings will improve. The Smithsonian has produced successful business cases for all of its IT projects, but must address the 22 material weaknesses discovered in its IT security system. The Smithsonian also began to implement a new financial management system designed to improve its management information and decision-making abilities. The first components of this system were introduced in October 2002, with overall completion scheduled for spring 2005 The Smithsonian also has committed to competing positions for facilities, custodial, and grounds maintenance at its newest aviation and space artifacts museum, the Udvar Hazy Center at Dulles Airport. Finally, the Smithsonian 2004 Budget submission marks the Institution’s first attempt at having budget and performance measures complement one another. The Smithsonian will work to ensure that full budgetary costs are charged to all mission activities in upcoming budgets.

Program Assessments

Eleven program assessments were conducted for programs in smaller agencies, including the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Corporation for National and Community Service, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The budgets for these programs range from $59 million to $53 billion.

As with other programs, much of the effort in completing ratings involved developing informative, useful performance measures. For instance, OPM’s Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance (FEGLI) and Retirement programs are well-administered benefit programs and both use annual performance measures to improve service delivery and increase efficiency. However neither program has any long-term measures that relate to identifying and evaluating the role these benefits play in helping the government, as an employer, attract and keep a high-quality workforce. A similar lack of long-term outcome goals was identified in five GSA programs and in others that follow.