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formance management, and the state has consistently received an A- grade for its performance management efforts across three GPP surveys, the only state to do so. The GAO, the National Performance Review, and others have pointed to Virginia as an exemplar that the federal government could learn from. By the time Virginia legislated performance management in House Bill 1065 in 2000, it was, unlike Alabama or Vermont, codifying existing practices of performance reporting rather than seeking to initiate new policies. H.B. 1065 does not describe the nature of the reporting requirements for agencies, but it gives discretion to the Department of Planning and Budget to determine what performance information is to be reported with the budget.The Department of Planning and Budget has been fulfilling this role since 1995, at various times requiring issue analysis, environmental scanning, discussion of customer service needs, linkage of performance targets to budget requests, and activity-based costing. H.B.1065 was followed by more comprehensive legislation in 2003, H.B. 2097, known as the Virginia Government Performance and Results Act, which further formalized the process by mandating that each agency develop a strategic plan that included goals and objectives on a three-year basis. Governor Gilmore (1998–2002) also developed a statewide strategic plan intended to provide guiding principles for agency goal-setting and operations. This was followed by Governor Warner’s (2002–6) Roadmap for Virginia’s Future. Virginia has developed a performance management system that claims to link strategic planning, performance measurement, evaluation, and performance budgeting . Budget analysts are called on to assess performance information in terms of resource allocation, management decision making, and program improvement. Publicly available performance information is everywhere: in the budget, the governor ’s statewide plans, annual statewide performance reports, agency strategic plans, and in the case of the Virginia DOC, subagency strategic plans. The Department of Planning and Budget has developed a web-based central database for such information, whose information has been assessed and audited by one or more of three central agencies with oversight for performance management. Performance Management Adoption in Vermont The state of Vermont did not have a performance management system as comprehensive as Virginia, but it did have greater experience than Alabama. At the statewide level, legislators in 1994 adjusted the appropriations process to require that budget submissions contain a strategic plan for each state agency and department , including a statement of mission and goals, a description of indicators used to measure outputs and outcomes, identification of the groups of people served by programs, and the strategies for meeting the needs of the agency or program. Partial Adoption of Performance Management Reforms 51 Unlike the other states surveyed, there was no single statewide strategic plan in Vermont. Governor Howard Dean (1991–2003) was not a strong supporter of formal statewide planning, preferring to promote policy goals through his policy staff and weekly cabinet meetings, and his successor Jim Douglas proved little different .The most formal statement of the governor’s goals appeared in the budget.The main vehicle for producing performance information came from the five overarching agencies and subordinate departments through their statutory reporting requirements as part of the budget, although the legislation did not lead to systematic use of performance information in resource allocation. Staff at the Department of Finance and Management were all too aware of the political nature of decision making, even at department-level budget preparation decisions, where budgeteers allocate resources based on their expectations of the reactions of other budgeteers at Finance and Management and the legislative branch. However, the Department of Finance and Management pursued performance management anyway. According to one department official, this was “because it makes sense,” it was how resources should be allocated, and the Department of Finance and Management had a responsibility to make that aspiration as close to a reality as possible. The Department of Finance and Management has also emphasized the possibility of using performance information for managerial decisions, with performance information becoming part of the decision-making culture of agencies. However, efforts to prompt agency-level managerial uses have been limited. The main vehicle for trying to ingrain performance information into departmental culture and management decisions remains the statutory requirement to report such information in budget submissions. It is not surprising, according to one Department of Finance and Management employee, that many departments “don’t treat it as a management tool. They treat it as an exercise they do once a year in their budget.” Matching the...

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