Federal agencies do not lack a framework for connecting strategy to results. It is written into law and policy, with defined goals, review cycles, and accountable roles. Yet GAO continues to report areas across government that are vulnerable to waste and mismanagement, and its criteria for resolving them read less like policy requirements than like an operating model. This synthesis sets the framework beside the evidence.
The framework that already exists
Under the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 and the federal performance framework described on Performance.gov, agencies work within a defined structure:
- Strategic plans, updated and revised every four years, set long-term objectives.
- Agency priority goals, a small set selected every two years, target near-term results within about 24 months.
- Quarterly data-driven reviews assess performance, identify barriers to progress, and adjust implementation.
- Annual strategic reviews synthesize performance information and other evidence to inform budget, legislative, and management decisions.
- Named roles, including a Chief Operating Officer and a Performance Improvement Officer, carry accountability for the system.
In other words, the federal framework already asks for most of the chain from priorities to evidence to decisions.
What the evidence shows
GAO's survey of 4,395 federal managers, reported in GAO-17-775 (September 2017), found that use of performance information in decision making had declined since 2007. The share of managers using performance information to eliminate duplicative programs fell from 44 percent in 2013 to 33 percent in 2017. The same report found a notable exception: managers familiar with the quarterly data-driven reviews for agency priority goals reported that those reviews helped drive progress toward goals.
The survey is several years old, and practices have changed since. The pattern it describes is still instructive: structured reviews that connect measures to decisions were associated with progress, and they covered only part of the work.
GAO's High-Risk List, updated in February 2025, includes 38 areas. GAO assesses each against five criteria for removal:
| GAO criterion | Operating mechanism it depends on |
|---|---|
| Leadership commitment | Named owners at each level, with decisions made and recorded in a regular forum. |
| Capacity | People and resources assigned to the corrective work, visible across competing initiatives. |
| Action plan | A plan that defines the root cause, the solution, and the sequence, with an owner for each action. |
| Monitoring | Measures with definitions, sources, and independent validation of whether corrective actions are working. |
| Demonstrated progress | Evidence reviewed against the intended outcome, not against activity completed. |
The criteria are GAO's. The mapping to operating mechanisms is ours, and it is offered as an interpretation.
Implications for program offices
- Extend the review discipline below the priority goals. The quarterly review model that GAO found effective can be applied at program and portfolio level.
- Connect measures to drivers and owners. A measure reviewed without a named owner and a known driver produces discussion rather than decisions.
- Record decisions, not only status. A decision log is the simplest evidence of leadership commitment and the easiest to audit.
- Treat corrective action plans as operating plans. Root cause, sequence, owners, and measures belong in the same document and the same review.
Sources
- GAO, Managing for Results: Further Progress Made in Implementing the GPRA Modernization Act, GAO-17-775, September 2017.
- GAO, High-Risk List and 2025 update, February 2025.
- Performance.gov, Performance Framework.
- GPRA Modernization Act of 2010, Public Law 111-352.