Dave McClure

is a guest columnist and the Managing Vice President for Gartner’s Government Research Team. He is based in Arlington, Virginia, and can be reached at david.mcclure@gartner.com.

Governments are in a "transparency coma." Thanks to the federal stimulus, states and localities are being asked to compile huge volumes of data — on finances, risks and, eventually, results — much of which is in addition to the reporting they're already doing for traditional oversight of budgeting, grants and contracting.

The Obama Administration is pushing for near real-time reporting and transparency via frequent posting of status and results on publicly available Web sites. There is also a constant reminder from GAO, inspectors general and state auditors that armies of auditors funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are "at the door," ready to test financial controls, review contracting processes and assess outcomes. Consequently, public managers are struggling with a "be-careful-but-be-fast" syndrome.

This coma can be dangerous. Too often in the government, compliance reporting and oversight requirements end up driving performance management. ARRA reporting should be viewed as standard compliance output information from an agency's regular performance management reporting, not something separate and distinct from it. Public managers have a real opportunity to think about how to make the ARRA exercise beneficial by using the data they are gathering and the lessons they are learning to build a foundation for improved management of their missions.

In a sense, the ARRA is creating real-time case studies of performance management on steroids. Financial, operational and strategic views need to be brought together to enhance real-time implementation and to measure social, economic and desired public policy impacts. As such, this may be one of the largest data-management experiments that government has ever conducted. The requirement for expedient spending is driving this challenge, and it is just the first test of using public visibility as a tool to bring more precision and rigor to results-based governance.

The goal of transparency isn't just to provide accountability. As the president's January
memorandum and the April 3 Implementation Guidance from OMB Director Peter Orszog emphasizes, transparency is a means to a desirable end — guaranteeing that long-term public benefits are realized via stimulus spending. Those benefits include job creation or retention, economic recovery, government efficiency and improved service delivery.

Clearly, this requires focus on outcomes and results — but those outcomes must relate to the general policy and program outcomes within each agency's mission. Succeeding with the ARRA requires the same thing as successful performance management — true managerial transparency, which is a clear line of sight from goals to programs to funding recipients to beneficial projects and back again. Performance data should be rolled up from day-to-day or operational to tactical or strategic outcomes.

Since the early 1990s, the federal government has become more focused on strategic-level outcomes and results, but has often missed tangible opportunities at the operational level. The focus is on goals, but the endgame is putting the assets, activities and processes in place to ensure that they can be achieved through program operations.

Much of the ARRA results tracking in the first 12 to 18 months will be tangible, day-to-day data: the amount of military housing built, the number of community health centers built, the number of Pell grants saved and the number of park facilities refurbished.

But tougher outcome questions will follow shortly. For example, did we put the health center in the right place to deliver services to those who need them most? Is the military housing energy-efficient? And public or social goals may be brought to the forefront more explicitly. For example, increases in Pell grants might increase educational opportunities, but the quality of that education will be a separate performance matter.

The magnitude and transparency of the stimulus requirements are numbing to federal agencies, and to state and local governments. The impact of longer-term grant dollars can get lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. In the long term, it is not just a question of whether the money was disbursed without fraud or abuse. The question will be whether the money was used efficiently and effectively to create jobs, stimulate the economy and deliver intended benefits.

Agencies must work to disperse the ARRA money out while concurrently creating a huge store of lessons learned from the current crisis to be translated to ongoing performance management needs. In short, the ARRA is an opportunity for ramping up government-wide performance management efforts. No matter how temporary the benefits from the spending infusion may be, the consequence of renewed performance management and transparency will be longer-lasting.

We have no shortage in government of processes for ensuring accountability and controls over spending and its results. And when shortcomings are found, we can quickly address them through legislation and executive branch guidance. That is not the central challenge. To escape the transparency coma, governments need to utilize and analyze the information they collect to manage for better outcomes and improved performance in the long run.