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Monday, June 12, 2006

e-Rulemaking and PART Get Dinged

Ah, but check out the House Appropriations Committee's report to accompany the Transportation/Treasury approps bill, which was just reported out on Friday.

The Appropriations Committee is just not happy with the garbage that the White House is foisting on it from PART. An Approps Committee spokesman took a milder tone recently with the Federal Times, saying of PART, “It’s nice to get a cute little number . . . but PART tends to be an excuse to cut Congress’ priorities.” The committee report isn't quite so relaxed:

For years, the Committee has directed departments and agencies to improve the budget justification document quality and presentation by including relevant and specific budget information. While the Committee has seen some improvement in a few submissions, most justifications continue to be filled with references to the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), drowning in pleonasm, and yet still devoid of useful information. The Committee strongly encourages the administration to use a meaningful system of evaluation to justify proposed program funding levels, as long as the basis for the evaluations will also be shared with the Committee. The Committee finds little use for a budget justification which does not reveal specific details of the measurable indicators and standards used to evaluate a program’s performance, relevance, or adherence to underlying authorization statute. Further, the Committee has little patience for secretaries and administrators who cannot explain the rationale behind a program’s funding level other than ‘‘the PART score,’’ ‘‘getting to green,’’ or ‘‘this is what OMB provided.’’ The Committee welcomes the input from the agencies, and is very interested in the methodologies used by the administration to fund various program priorities.

Whew.

Meanwhile, the committee continued to chastise OMB for what it considered raiding other funds impermissibly to support its weak e-gov initiatives:

The Committee continues to express serious concerns about the continued forced implementation of this initiative on departments and agencies. Many aspects of this initiative are fundamentally flawed, contradict underlying program statutory requirements and have stifled innovation by forcing conformity to an arbitrary government standard. Therefore, the Committee continues to include a government-wide general provision that precludes the use of funds for the ‘‘e-Gov’’ initiative prior to consultation with the Committee on Appropriations. The Committee urges OMB to work directly with the individual subcommittees in advance so that approved initiatives can move forward without disruption.

(Kudos to Government Computer News for catching this!)

Posted by Robert Shull