Comparative Program-Performance Evaluation and Government Accountability in New Mexico—Some Applied Lessons for Intergovernmental Relations

Abstract

In Strategies for Using State Information: Measuring and Improving Program Performance (2003), Shelley Metzenbaum poses a series of “key questions” about the federal-state performance reporting relationship. Metzenbaum asks whether there should be a uniform accountability system across the American states and whether it should be required of the states by the federal government. Ancillary questions include what uses should be made of state performance information and whether federal agencies should publicy report such information.

These questions are important in light of the burgeoning performancemanagement movement in contemporary public administration. The extension of performance measurement and reporting systems to state governments is largely due to the impact on states of the federal Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), and generally to the ascendancy of new public management perspectives in governmental practice.

The experience of the State of New Mexico with regard to intergovernmental performance reporting in recent years, under both Republican and Democratic gubernatorial administrations, suggests that closer integration of federal and state performance reporting is necessary, that more comprehensive performancebased systems (that include comparative performance measurement and strategic planning frameworks) are essential, and that new evaluative models are needed to address the sometimes cooperative and sometimes adversarial nature of intergovernmental relations. Lessons from the MPA classroom arising from these interrelated concerns and from the authors’ applied research with state government are addressed at the conclusion of this study.