Assessing Performance

Obama is proposing changes in the PART (Program Assessment Rating Tool) system for assessing performance according to this Government Executive piece .And this OMB document. Although the words are okay, I reiterate my feeling: the only way for this sort of thing to be really effective is to get Congress to buy in. For example, Obama proposed cutting a number of programs, based partly on their PART scores. But I haven't heard any Democrats or Republicans agree that was a good basis for decisionmaking. It's the appropriators in Congress who have hold of the money, meaning the hearts and minds of the bureaucrats will follow them, not Obama.