Thursday, May 29, 2008

Making Government Work--Credit to Bush

I stumbled across this site yesterday. I think I've criticized the Bush administration before for their efforts at e-government and improving management, but this is a creditable effort as applied to a program I know. The problem is persuading everyone along the line to agree on these evaluations. For example, the evaluation of the direct payment program questions the design of the program. But it was just reauthorized in the farm bill. I very much doubt that the American Corn Growers Association or the House or Senate Ag committees took much note of the evaluation. If the people with the money don't pay attention, then it's not likely the big shot bureaucrats are going to pay attention.

I'm not sure the extent to which the Secretary's office or OMB paid attention to the evaluations. If they did, it's good. If not, the only gains are in forcing bureaucrats to look at themselves--perhaps useful.

As a side note, one item that did hit the media was the issue of erroneous payments. It's good to see the latest erroneous payment figure is .37 percent (that's 37 hundredths of one percent). Of course, no one's going to put that on TV.

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