Performance ratings take a dive in Foggy Bottom
Hey State Department employees, how did your bureau perform last year? Probably not as well as it did the year before, according to a newly released financial report on the agency. The 100-plus page document, the annual Agency Financial Report, is meant to give a snapshot of how all financial aspects of the State Department ...
Hey State Department employees, how did your bureau perform last year? Probably not as well as it did the year before, according to a newly released financial report on the agency.
Hey State Department employees, how did your bureau perform last year? Probably not as well as it did the year before, according to a newly released financial report on the agency.
The 100-plus page document, the annual Agency Financial Report, is meant to give a snapshot of how all financial aspects of the State Department are faring, but includes an interesting aside. Only 63 percent of employees’ performance ratings in fiscal 2009 were deemed to be "on or above target" and 38 percent were judged "below target or improved but not yet met." Ouch.
That’s down from a 69 percent positive performance rating in fiscal 2008 and 86 percent in fiscal 2007.
But wait. The numbers don’t tell the whole story. Apparently, the measures for grading performance changed somewhat for 2009, meaning that the numbers don’t represent a genuine apples-to-apples comparison.
"Marked by increasing rigor and intensive engagement at multiple levels of the organization, the process for developing and selecting performance indicators changed significantly in FY 2009," the report states. (Is the implication here that the previous administration wasn’t "rigorous" in measuring performance?)
The indicators were changed to be "more outcome-oriented" and focused on "replacing qualitative with quantitative indicators when appropriate," according to the report. Also, "When possible, these indicators were designed to show quantitatively the Department’s progress on achieving its strategic goals and priorities."
The report argues that you shouldn’t read too much into the comparison between last year’s numbers and the years prior, given how much the process of measuring changed. What’s more, the new, lower performance numbers don’t include foreign assistance programs because that data didn’t come in early enough to be included in the report.
That said, the report does claim to matter in one very concrete sense: "Budgetary effects from performance management at the Department are most evident in building budget justifications; making decisions about the allocation, management, and monitoring of resources; reducing duplicative services; and increasing program cost-savings," it reads.
State Department readers, help us out on this one. Is the new performance system fair? How did your bureau do?
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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