March 25, 2009

The worst PART of it

The Senate is still debating the Serve America Act. And, while the vast majority of the comments have been positive - there have been a couple of hiccups in this debate. Just a moment ago Senator John Kyl (AZ) referenced the Learn and Serve America PART analysis conducted by the OMB in 2007.

Senator Kyl correctly identified that Learn and Serve America received a "Results not Demonstrated" rating. Which, lets be honest, could be a lot better. But, I think there is some misunderstanding about what "Results not Demonstrated" means. According to Expectmore.gov the "Results not Demonstrated" says a lot about measurement and not a lot about performance :

A rating of Results Not Demonstrated (RND) indicates that a program has not been able to develop acceptable performance goals or collect data to determine whether it is performing

So, we need better data collection -- which not the same as being a program that does not perform.

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