“We have improved effectiveness at the federal government’s second largest department with a governance system adapted in part from business,” said Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. Leo S. Mackay Jr. “The focus is on performance management, conducted by accountable managers and executives against concrete objectives using relevant data. Effort counts only if it produces the desired result.”
The President’s Management Agenda is a strategy for improving the management and performance of the federal government. The Office of Management and Budget recently gave VA “green lights,” indicating successful progress in implementing all five categories of the President’s Management Agenda. On the “Results.gov” Web site, Mackay discusses how VA is finding solutions to two of the primary management challenges facing the department.
The first challenge discussed is the need for VA to better identify changes in the distribution of America’s veterans population so that resources can be placed where they are needed most. This is especially true for the department’s health care resources, as VA is the nation’s largest integrated health care system.
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” says Mackay. By determining where VA's health care services are needed most, the department is identifying gaps or redundancies between current supply and future demand and developing plans to realign its assets to meet the needs of America’s veterans in the 21st century.
According to Mackay, the second challenge is “finding ways to convert VA’s under-performing properties into productive assets yielding the highest and best return to the government and to veterans.”
VA’s solution is to make under-performing properties available for long-term lease through cooperative arrangements with public or private entities compatible with VA missions. Through such “enhanced-use leasing,” the lessee can manage the property, receiving revenue either from VA’s use of the property, lease of excess space, or both. VA receives facilities, space, services, monetary payments or other “in-kind” considerations free or at reduced cost, which results in significant cost savings when compared to new construction or traditional leasing.
The full text and a streaming video of Mackay’s discussion of VA’s performance during the first year of the President’s Management Agenda can be found on the Internet at http://www.results.gov/agenda/.
