2009 PRT Changes

1. The Program Review Tool (PRT) has been renamed to the Policy Review Tool.

2. Mandates and best practices are worded as statements vs. questions. For each statement, you will be asked to answer the following questions:

  • Do you have a documented agency policy enforcing this mandate?
  • Do you ensure your employees are aware of the mandate?
  • Do you verify adherence with the mandate, e.g., via performance measures?
  • How familiar are you with this mandate?
  • What is the biggest challenge to adherence?

The first three questions address the scoring criteria. Respondents are asked to provide narrative and evidence supporting their answers. The familiarity and challenge questions provide additional information about applicability and challenges in your agency. Separately addressing each of these questions allows the evaluation of each mandate and best practice independently and in an aggregated manner.

3. Best practice questions will not be scored. Information provided by your agency will be reported on an aggregated basis to identify ways to positively influence adoption or identify implementation obstacles government wide.

4. Multiple agency users can access the PRT for a given policy area, upon approval of the agency. Allowing multiple users into the PRT enables various individuals to respond to different mandate and best practices for a given policy area. To prevent inadvertent overwriting of data, you will be alerted if another agency user is working in the system in the same policy area.

5. The evaluation scoring has been changed. In addition to providing written agency policy (as required last year), agencies are now required to provide written procedures as well. Also, the communication (previously "awareness") and verification criteria now specify such activities on an annual basis.  Also, the scoring matrix has changed. Please visit www.gsa.gov/cpescoring for additional details.

6. The 2008 “GSA Feedback” section has been incorporated into the submission process for 2009. Agencies will be asked to provide feedback with their initial and final responses in the PRT. During the initial evaluation phase, feedback questions ask about satisfaction with the Office of Travel, Transportation and Asset Management’s (MT) policy function. Prior to final agency submission, the questions relate directly to your experience with the Center for Policy Evaluation and the PRT. Unlike responses to the mandate and best practice questions, agency approval is not required for the feedback responses. However, both the agency user and approver will be required to respond to both sets of questions prior to submitting the PRT.

7. Some policy areas contain a new section to capture information of benefit to agencies and for government wide use.

8. Users can now access the report tab in the PRT to compare themselves on a number of government wide criteria. Instructions are provided in the PRT.

Last Reviewed 2/1/2009