What Have We Learned From the U.S. Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA)?
Author InfoLaurence E. Lynn, Jr. Abstract The U.S. Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) was enacted to promote strategic planning and performance management in the U.S. Federal Government. This act and its effects to date are considered in three contexts: (1) of recurring efforts by U.S. political leadership to improve government administration, (2) of recent administrative reforms, collectively termed the New Public Management (NPM), that have been adopted in many countries, and (3) of the possibilities for performance-based management and politics from a theoretical perspective. GPRA is unusual among American administrative reforms in that it is an initiative of Congress, not the executive branch. As such, it requires Congressional participation in executive agency planning. Results to date suggest that the processes and reports required by GPRA have not yet become essential to budgetary or policy politics. (Complementary efforts by the Clinton administration to reinvent Ame
