Recovery Act

Most of the news media focused on the size of the budget and which agencies gained or lost. However, the budget also included an overview of the Obama Administration’s management initiatives, as well.

The overall emphasis of these initiatives is on achieving defined mission-oriented results. It de-emphasizes (but still addresses) improvements to mission-support functions and the reporting of performance information.

A Profile of Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy, Director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Profile of Inés R. Triay, Assistant Secretary, Environmental Management at the U.S. Department of Energy

During the Cold War, the U.S. nuclear stockpile reached more than 30,000 nuclear weapons. Research and production of these weapons resulted in large volumes of nuclear waste—some of the most dangerous materials known to mankind—posing significant environmental risks and challenges. “The U.S. Department of Energy has under its purview the Environmental Management program, which is responsible for cleaning up the legacy of the Cold War,” says Dr.

Senator Mark Warner chaired another hearing of his Taskforce on Government Performance, on “Data-Driven Performance: Using Technology to Deliver Results.”

The Obama Administration’s chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, testified. Here are some interesting excerpts from his statement:

The Center is pleased to announce the publication of its Fall/Winter 2009 issue of The Business of Government magazine. This issue focuses on a range of public management issues facing us today. Whether it’s the federal government’s response to the recent financial crisis, the H1N1 flu, or its movement towards greater transparency and accountability, we’ve gathered thoughtful perspectives from some of the leading practitioners and academics in the field.

I attended the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Senior Budget Officials December 1-2 performance and results network meeting on measuring and evaluating countries' stimulus programs. The countries making presentations at this meeting were: Australia, Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and United Kingdom.

I was struck by several things.

The fuss surrounding the release of the first full report on the use of Recovery Act money last week reminded me of an experience I had in 1980 while working for a congressional oversight committee. We had received an annual report with program data for FY 1977 that I thought was quite useful. I then asked the agency for the FY 1978 and 1979 reports since I thought they would be useful as well. The response was “we just released the 1977 report, the others won’t be available for another two years.”

Recovery Act guidance from OMB requires agencies to identify the risk associated with each program and develop a plan of action to reduce such risks. After all, if a program gets 3,100 % increase in funding, like the home weatherization program did, there must be some risk involved!

There were lots of complaints that the initial Recovery.Gov website was not very helpful. That’s changed. The newly-refreshed website now has lots of new ways of finding and looking at information that is due to pour in next month when the first quarterly reports are due from about 90,000 sources.

Government Executive’s NextGov reporter, Aliya Sternstein provides a good review:

There’s a great lead article by Elise Castelli in this week’s Federal Times, “Feds to Empower ‘Citizen IGs’ to Watch Stimulus Spending.” This is a real experiment in the ultimate use of crowdsourcing – providing the data on spending via recovery.gov and letting on-the-ground citizens to help interpret and make sense of it in their communities.