Strategic human capital management is a high risk area that threatens the federal government's ability to effectively serve Americans. An essential element to developing and managing the human capital needed to achieve organizational results is the link between individual performance and organizational goals. Performance management systems provide one way to make this link. Governments and agencies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have used their performance management systems to connect employee performance with organizational success to help foster a results-oriented organizational culture. Creating such a culture is one cornerstone identified in GAO's model of strategic human capital management. GAO initiated this study to identify how selected agencies are strategically using their performance management systems. GAO talked with key human capital decision makers from each country including national audit offices, central management and human capital agencies, and line agencies, as well as representatives of employee associations.

Executive performance mgmt. systems link individual performance to organizational goals. In Oct. 2000, the OPM amended regulations to require agencies to link senior exec. performance (SEP) with organizational goals; to appraise SEP by balancing organizational results with customer satisfaction, employee perspective, and other areas; and to use performance results as a basis for pay, awards, and other personnel decisions. Agencies were to establish these performance mgmt. systems by their 2001 SEP appraisal cycles. This report studied the BLM's, FHA's, IRS's, and VA's use of balanced expectations to manage SEP in order to identify initial approaches that may be helpful to other agencies in holding SEP accountable for results.

Proposals for reform have dotted the federal management landscape in the United States for more than 50 years. Yet these efforts by public management professionals have frequently failed to produce lasting results. In her new book, Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions, renowned public administration scholar Beryl A. Radin reveals what may lie behind the failure of so many efforts at government management reform. To spur new thinking about this problem, Radin examines three basic sets of contradictions between the strategies of the reformers and the reality of the US federal system: contradictions in the shared powers structure, contradictions in values, and contradictions between politics and administration. She then explores six types of reform efforts and the core beliefs that guided them. The six reform areas are contracting out, personnel policy, agency reorganization, budgeting, federalism policies and procedures, and performance management. The book shows how too often these prescriptions for reform have tried to apply techniques from the private sector or a parliamentary system that do not transfer well to the structure of the US federal system and its democratic and political traditions. Mindful of the ineffectiveness of a “one-size-fits–all� approach, Radin does not propose a single path for reform, but calls instead for a truly honest assessment of past efforts as today’s reformers design a new conceptual and strategic roadmap for the future.

Results-Oriented Cultures: Insights for U.S. Agencies from Other Countries' Performance Management Initiatives