Comparison of Federal Performance Plans: HHS vs. DOJ

Browsing through several different Federal agency performance reports online there are some clear leaders in terms of quality of measures and others that have some challenges. In municipal performance reporting, police departments have often led the way in statistical performance data, largely because crime information is well-defined and one of the most monitored by citizens. Social service agencies typically lag behind their public safety counterparts with respect to municipal performance metrics. At the Federal level, it appears that the opposite is true.

The HHS Administration for Children and Families website has the agency performance reports going back to 2000. A look at the HHS ACF 2008 performance report shows some decent measures (many are outcome-oriented, a break from the output-focused measures of many agencies) that have been created by ACF as well as what looks like honest reporting of those measures. I assume honest reporting based on the fact that the agency has met less of its targets over the last several years. The measures appear well thought out and given the honest reporting of missed targets, the data appears to be reliable. Additionally, the reports get shorter each year since 2000. That's probably a good thing with respect to the public actually reading the document, and the agency focusing more intensely an a narrow set of measures and goals. If you can't explain a measure on a cocktail napkin, it's less likely to be reported and recorded accurately over time.

On the other side of the public spectrum is the DOJ Performance and Accountability Report for 2008. The report is a combination of both performance and financial data and comes just under the whopping-300 page mark. The parts that focus on performance metrics are lacking in a number of ways. Most are output-oriented and don't inform management or the public as to the effectiveness of the agency (One of the measures, "Terrorist Acts Committed by Foreign Nationals Against U.S. Interests", is zero in most years with 2001 the notable exception and would almost certainly be known without needing to be included in the performance report. The measure is neither informative nor a helpful management tool). While the municipal law enforcement agencies have made great strides in performance reporting, the Federal level agencies seem to just be getting their feet under them. One reason may be because of the difficulty in attributing crime and arrest rates to a Federal agency whose jurisdiction is the entire country. Most responsibilities of the agency are shared with state and local jurisdictions, yet the DOJ has little or no control over those agencies. Regardless, there are almost certainly some performance measures that the DOJ could come up with that are more worthwhile. If not, how can their effectiveness truly be measured? A good start would be to narrow the report into something more digestible that might actually be used in agency management.