Public Sector Governance and Accountability Series: Budgeting and ...

164 Anwar Shah and Chunli Shen
BOX 5.4 The U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Program
Assessment Rating Tool
The Office of Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool
(PART) has four criteria:
Program purpose and design (weight 20 percent)—Assesses whether a program’s
purpose is clear and whether it is well designed to achieve its objectives
Strategic planning (weight 10 percent)—Weighs whether the agency establishes
valid annual and long-term goals for its programs
Program management (weight 20 percent)—Rates the management of an
agency’s program, including financial oversight and program improvement
efforts
Program results (weight 50 percent)—Focuses on results that programs can
report with accuracy and consistency.
The distribution of program ratings under PART can be summarized as follows:
Number of programs assessed: 793
Percentage rated effective: 15 percent
Percentage rated moderately effective: 29 percent
Percentage rated adequate: 28 percent
Percentage rated ineffective: 4 percent
Percentage for which results were not demonstrated: 24 percent.
Source: OMB Web site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/about.html.
observers agree that the GPRA failed to make performance a significant factor
in budget decision making. An indication of this failure is Congress’s limited
use of the performance information it receives.
In conclusion, what has been achieved in the U.S. federal government is
a key element of a performance budgeting system—definition and quantification
of outputs and outcomes for each program or agency. However, the
process of creating a performance management system is still in its infancy
(Blöndal, Kraan, and Ruffner 2003). Performance information is added to
the budget documentation, but it is not actually used by budgetary actors in
deliberating and in making decisions. Thus, the current budgeting practice
in the U.S. federal government is more accurately called a PRB system.
The U.S. experience provides lessons for countries that are attempting
to reform their budgeting systems. First, reforms take time, and administration
initiatives (such as PPBS and maybe PART) need legislative buy-in so
that they outlast current political climates. Second, simply telling people to