OMB Launches Opening Salvo on Performance Overhaul

OMB Director Peter Orszag released a memo [1] to the heads of executive departments and agencies this morning announcing a new initiative in the FY 2011 budget process that seeks to bring increased emphasis and resources for program evaluation within agencies. The memo has three separate goals:

1) Posting more information about federal evaluations online: OMB will begin working this fall with federal agencies to expand access to information about program evaluations.

2) Inter-agency Evaluations Working Group: OMB is also going to re-constitute an inter-agency working group of evaluations experts from the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, and the Council of Economic Advisers.

3) Voluntary FY2011 Evaluation Initiative: The third aspect of the memo is a voluntary program that invites interested agencies to submit additional information along with their FY 2011 budget materials to win additional funding for high-priority evaluation activities.

I have posted a more thorough summary and additional thoughts [2] I have on the memo, but overall this memo is not a comprehensive plan to replace the PART. It does, however, seem to lay the groundwork for that process. Orszag gives a little more insight about the scope and goals of this initiative in a blog post [3] that describes how this initiative will be used by OMB down the road:

This is a first step. The agencies participating in this initial effort will serve as demonstration projects through which we can test approaches to improve program effectiveness and efficiency, share best practices, and further improve performance. After assessing this initiative in FY2011, the Administration will be better positioned to implement government-wide evaluation metrics.

Additional Reading:
WP Federal Eye: OMB Wants More Data on Government's Performance [4]
OMBlog: Valuing Evaluation [3]
OMB Memo: Increased Emphasis on Program Evaluations [1] (.pdf)