Performance Management Sticks Around

The idea of using performance measurement as a tool to manage government is still a delicate enough creature that its survival in the transition to a new administration has been uncertain from the beginning. Its long-term prospects remain uncertain. We will know that performance measurement has been institutionalized when incoming Cabinet secretaries and agency political appointees have material on performance measurement included in briefing books as a matter of course. Even though performance measurement has been part of government for 15 years — created under the Government Performance and Results Act and persisting under two presidents and into the first term of a third — we’re not there yet.