Government Performance and Results Act: Overview of Associated Provisions in the 106th Congress

Publication Date: December 2002

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Government

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Abstract:

The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (P. L. 103-62, known as GPRA, or the Results Act) established a new framework for performance management and budgeting in federal agencies. In complying with GPRA, agencies must set goals, devise performance measures, and assess results achieved. This report identifies and analyzes provisions in public laws and committee reports from the 106th Congress (1999-2000) relating to GPRA and its implementation, including comparisons to similar provisions in the 104th and 105th Congresses. The purpose of these studies is to review ways in which Congress and its committees engage in oversight of GPRA, and, more generally, monitor implementation efforts by the executive branch agencies.

Online databases were used to identify language of potential interest in committee reports and in the public laws from the 106th Congress. The resulting electronic files were examined and pruned, with the remaining relevant excerpts captured for further analysis.* This approach covered specific citations to GPRA, as well as provisions that are or might be deemed associated with GPRA, such as performance measures and strategic plans. The research identified 42 public laws from the 106th Congress containing statutory language relating to GPRA and performance measurement. Two of these laws were omnibus measures containing GPRA-associated provisions from 10 separate bills, arguably better counted as 10 items rather than two, for a total of 50 enacted measures from the 106th Congress with GPRA-related provisions. Previous CRS studies identified 14 public laws with performance-related provisions enacted during the 104th Congress, and 28 in the 105th. Although the rate of increase of 100% from the 104th to the 105th in the number of public laws with GPRA-associated provisions was not quite sustained, the rate of increase from the 105th to the 106th was significant at almost 79%.

In addition to statutes with GPRA-associated provisions, a search of committee reports identified 24 additional public laws from the 106th Congress that contained GPRA-associated passages in accompanying reports, compared with 17 laws so identified in the 105th. Thus a total of 74 laws enacted in the 106th Congress were determined to have GPRA-relevant provisions in statutory language or in committee report language, compared with a total of 45 public laws from the 105th Congress with GPRA-relevant provisions in statute or accompanying reports.

Congressional efforts to oversee GPRA implementation continued in the 107th Congress. Moreover, the inclusion of budget and performance integration as a key initiative in the President's Management Agenda arguably has increased attention to GPRA-related issues in the executive branch. This report, with its focus on the 106th Congress, will not be updated, but other CRS products on GPRA and performance management and budgeting will be revised and expanded as events warrant.