During the past three years, OMB Watch has sought to increase the participation of nonprofit groups in the implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). On July 3, OMB Watch submitted comments to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on the recently issued Program Assessment Ratings Tool (PART) arising from the first meeting of the Performance Measurement Advisory Council.

PART is the latest development in the President’s “Management Agenda,” which, according to OMB, builds on the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) and previous efforts to identify program goals and performance measures and to link them with the budget process.” Though still in a trial phase, OMB plans to use the finalized version of the PART to, among other things, “inform budget decisions by helping to diagnose the source of program success or failure and by providing directional information on how a program is performing.”