A controversial bill that would require yet more burdensome analysis of regulatory and other government programs has resurfaced after passing the House but stalling in the Senate during the 108th Congress. Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA) reintroduced the Program Assessment and Results Act (the �PAR Act� or �PARA�), which would authorize the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to assess the performance of all federal programs at least every five years � or even more frequently for some programs, at OMB�s discretion. Packaged in the notionally uncontroversial principle that budgeting decisions should be informed by performance appraisals, the PAR Act would effectively endorse OMB�s existing performance review program, make those controversial assessments a permanent fixture in government policy, and contribute to corporate special interests� campaign to reduce regulation through paralysis by analysis. From GPRA to PART to PAR The PAR Act is the latest in a long line of efforts to impose government performance measures. The two most relevant to PARA are the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) and OMB�s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). About GPRA Under GPRA, agencies have been setting performance goals and gauging their success at meeting those goals for a decade. A bipartisan effort to improve government performance as well as public perception of government performance, GPRA requires federal agencies to work with OMB and Congress to create strategic plans with long-term goals, develop annual indicators to determine whether goals were being reached, and provide annual performance reports on the results achieved. There is a gap between the real and the ideal in GPRA. Aside from voluminous reports, there is no obvious sign of GPRA�s actual usefulness. In most agencies GPRA appears to have become primarily a compliance activity and nothing more. GPRA has done very little to improve the public perception of government performance, since public awareness of GPRA is almost non-existent and even Congress has shown limited interest in GPRA, even though it is designed to ultimately lead to �performance budgeting,� with performance assessments being used as a basis for authorization and appropriation funding levels. About PART PART is a duplicative executive branch initiative layered on top of GPRA. In fact, according to a recent GAO report, in some cases PART has eclipsed GPRA � even though GPRA is required by law, and PART is merely an executive branch policy. Created by this administration, PART is a review system aimed at determining performance at the level of individual programs, in contrast to GPRA�s agency-wide focus. The PART consists of six questionnaires designed for different government activities � competitive grant programs, block/formula grant programs, regulatory-based programs, capital assets and service acquisition programs, credit programs, research and development programs, and direct federal programs. Essentially, it consists of �yes� and �no� questions, although in the �results� section of the tool there are some additional gradations. As with cost-benefit analysis and risk assessments, the PART is yet another complicated and highly technical tool in which potentially controversial political judgments are embedded in faux-objective formulae. With 10 percent of the total score depending on cost-effectiveness and improved �efficiencies,� the PART may be yet another vehicle for pushing the agencies to treat industry compliance costs as an equal counterweight to the public interest. And Now. . . PARA Platts� bill would amend GPRA and essentially subsume the PART. PARA would require OMB to work with agency heads �to the maximum extent practicable� to select which programs will be subjected to performance reviews in a given year and conduct the reviews. PARA requires all programs to be reviewed at least once every five years, although OMB and the agencies can determine �higher priorit[ies],� �special circumstances,� observed improvements, or other factors warranting more frequent reviews for selected programs. The OMB director would be authorized to produce criteria for selecting programs and guidance for conducting reviews. H.R. 185 does improve slightly upon its predecessor in the 108th Congress by requiring OMB to announce, 90 days in advance of the release of PARA reports, a list of programs picked for review and the criteria to be used in conducting the reviews. OMB would be required to provide for some sort of notice and comment for the program list and the review criteria. Other provisions would address performance reviews that depend upon classified information and classify the reviews as �inherently governmental functions� that cannot be contracted to the private sector. Problems With PARA Although the PART would almost certainly disappear with the end of the current administration, the PAR Act would effectively make PART a permanent fixture on the government landscape. Although PARA never mentions PART, the likely effect of PARA would be that PART would be subsumed under PARA, which has no sunset provision. The PAR Act would at least assert some congressional authority over the existing practice of PART reviews, which are not currently authorized by any statute. Even so, that authority is only a formality, because the bill supplies no substantive standards against which to hold OMB accountable or to restrain the exercise of OMB�s discretion. The new version of PARA addresses several of the concerns of the Democratic opposition in the 108th Congress, among them a notice-and-comment provision, incorporating agencies themselves in the performance reviews, and a specific provision for handling confidential information. A larger problem remains: that PARA would add to the many analytical burdens that divert increasingly limited resources to �navel gazing� instead of real action to meet public needs. As these burdens � detailed in this law review commentary � are multiplied, regulatory policy runs into the problem of paralysis by analysis. If ensuring the effectiveness of and need for government programs actually were a priority, then these analyses would build in self-checks that stop to review the analyses themselves and assess their actual usefulness. This problem is replicated in PARA, which assumes that performance measurement and related management decisions are inherently valuable enterprises that need never be reviewed for their consequences for the public interest. Finally, PARA � which is part of a larger trend in the direction of imposing corporate-style outcome- and performance-based management techniques in the public and nonprofit sectors � perpetuates the myth of the perfectly efficient corporate machine. As news reports accumulate revealing accounting scandals, suppression of science and false advertising of harmful products, graft, insider trading, obscene CEO pay-outs unrelated to corporate performance, and board/executive collusions, corporate special interests have been toppling from their undeserved heights. It should be clear by now that the corporate sector is driven by values that are fundamentally incompatible with the values which should govern policy makers charged with serving the public interest. The PAR Act does have a worthwhile goal � improving government � but it threatens to confound its own goal.