Facilitates congressional use of Fed. agencies' annual performance plans. The Results Act requires the plan to (1) identify annual performance goals and measures for each agency's program activities, (2) discuss the strategies and resources needed to achieve annual performance goals, and (3) provide an explanation of the procedures the agency will use to verify and validate its performance data. This guide is organized around 3 questions that correspond to these requirements. For each question, it identifies issues that need to be addressed and presents key assessment questions that can help users elicit the cost and performance info. relevant to their decisionmaking.

The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA) provides important tools that can help inform federal decision making. In implementing GPRAMA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) established a strategic review process in which agencies, beginning in 2014, were to annually assess their progress in achieving each strategic objective, the outcome the agency is intending to achieve, in their strategic plans. To refine and illustrate the practices, GAO reviewed strategic review documentation and interviewed relevant officials from six selected agencies: USDA, Education, DHS, HUD, EPA, and NASA. GAO selected these agencies based on several factors. This included the extent to which agency strategic review processes had a greater chance of addressing areas identified in GAO's work on fragmentation, overlap, and duplication or high-risk issues, and agency results on selected items in GAO's 2013 survey of federal managers on performance and management issues.

The Results Act shifts the focus of gov't. decisionmaking & accountability away from a preoccupation with the activities to a focus on the results of those activities. Government agencies are to develop strategic plans, annual performance plans, & annual performance reports. This report is based on reviews of 24 major agencies' strategic plans that were formally submitted to Congress by Sep. 30, 1997. The report: summarizes observations on agencies' plans; & provides additional info. on how the next phase of the Results Act's implementation -- performance planning & measurement -- can be used to address the critical planning issues observed in reviewing the strategic plans.