How Performance.gov Started

Building upon the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, the GPRA Modernization Act (GPRAMA) was signed in 2010 by President Obama as a mandate for federal agencies to publish on a public website information including, but not limited to:

GAO Headquarters, courtesy of Ron Cogswell via Flickr.

• A four-year agency strategic plan
• Yearly goals and priority objectives
• Important milestones, both yearly and quarterly, for use as performance indicators
• Major challenges to achieving performance goals
• Performance metrics, and descriptions guaranteeing the accuracy of said metrics

On top of these agency-specific requirements, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was tasked with publishing a government-wide federal performance plan establishing government performance goals, performance indicators, and cross-agency priority goals, along with creating a central website for all this information to be accessed by the public.

Collaborating with the Government Services Administration and the newly-formed Performance Improvement Council, OMB created Performance.gov as a one-stop-shop where OMB and partner agencies would easily be able to publish their GPRAMA mandated information, and where the American public would just as easily be able to access “a website intended to serve as the public window to the federal government’s goals and performance.” The actual maintenance and operations of the site are handled through the contractor eKuber Ventures Inc.

According to a new Government Accountability Office report, Performance.gov hasn’t opened that window wide enough to the public, and it has failed to meet the GPRAMA requirements for public reporting.

A New GAO Review

Starting in 2013, GAO began an initial report on the progress of OMB and Performance.gov. Beyond that, GPRAMA includes a provision for GAO to periodically audit the performance of Performance.gov. With an initial 2013 audit published, which included recommendations for better web accessibility, GAO went back to the Performance.gov program in 2016 for a follow-up review.

GAO found 3 major problems with the Performance.gov operation:

• The website continues to have the same usability and accessibility problems outlined in the 2013 report
• The website is not properly reporting agency cross-agency priorities, breaking GPRAMA reporting requirements
• Most importantly, Performance.gov, tasked with gathering and reporting the strategic goals of the federal government, does not have its own strategic plan for implementing this important function

Prior to publishing the report, GAO provided a copy to OMB, who is in full agreement with the recommendations. While Performance.gov is hopefully revamped to meet these recommendations, current cross-agency priority goals listed include strengthening cybersecurity and using smarter IT delivery methods for better service an management.

In-line with these goals, CGI Federal Inc. announced an award by GAO of a $7.2 million, 5-year contract for the migration of GAO financial management, budgeting and procurement transaction processing, implementation, and operations software to cloud services.

Other federal agencies have utilized CGI services for cloud migration, including the Departments of Justice and State. Understanding that cloud migration may play a big role in the IT modernization and consolidation goals shared across the federal government, this will surely provide many major contracting opportunities in the future.

To study past contracting opportunities and keep track of similar solicitations in the future, use a government market intelligence tool like EZGovOpps. You’ll also have access to a custom profile set-up, allowing for automatic solicitation updates, custom analyst updates for large-scale GWACS and IDIQs and access to all the deep analytical tools available only at EZGovOpps, all right at your fingertips.

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