Agency Scorecards

Good intentions and good beginnings are not the measure of success. What matters in the end is completion: performance and results. Not just making promises, but making good on promises.

In order to ensure accountability for performance and results, the Administration is using an Executive Branch Management Scorecard. The Administration will use this scorecard to track how well departments and agencies are executing the management initiatives, and where they stand at a given point in time against the overall standards for success.

The scorecard employs a simple "traffic light" grading system common today in well-run businesses: green for success, yellow for mixed results, and red for unsatisfactory. Scores are based on five standards for success defined by the President’s Management Council and discussed with experts throughout government and academe, including individual fellows from the National Academy of Public Administration.

The standards for financial management, for example, were reviewed by the Secretary of the Treasury, the Comptroller General, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Under each of the five standards, an agency is "green" if it meets all of the standards for success, "yellow" if it has achieved some but not all of the criteria, and "red" if it has even one of any number of serious flaws. For example, in financial management, an agency is "red" if its books are in such poor condition that auditors cannot express an opinion on the agency's financial statements.

The initial scorecard shows a lot of poor scores, reflecting the state of the government this Administration inherited. This was to be expected since, as the President indicated when selecting the Management Agenda items, the areas are "targeted to address the most apparent deficiencies where the opportunity to improve performance is the greatest." The marks that really matter will be those that record improvement, or lack of it, from these starting points.

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