Analysis of the Impact of the Program Assessment Rating Tool on Program Budget Reduction

Abstract

The Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) is a performance management system to adjust the program budget allocation based on the program’s results. The purpose of PART is not simply to evaluate the program, but to use the assessment results in crafting the budget, which differentiates this system from other general policy assessments. Even though the PART assessment has been performed annually since 2004, research into and an examination of whether the program budget is increasing or decreasing based on this result hasn’t yet been done. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to verify whether the annual program assessment results affected the future budgets of programs during the official introduction of PART, from 2004 to 2007. The conclusions suggest that the PART results had an impact on the budget adjustments for 2004 and 2007. However, it did not have a meaningful impact in 2006. This means that PART was effectively incorporated into the crafting of the budget in the early stage, but as it started to settle into standard usage, the impacts on the budget disappeared. In 2007, system enhancements were completed, so PART could again be applied to budget determination. PART therefore had a temporary renewed impact, but it is difficult guarantee the long-term effect. In order to obtain an effective system for the long term, it is necessary to constantly evaluate the system’s operating situation and conduct system improvements. In addition, the PART results don’t affect the National Assembly’s budget adjustment process. In order to fully incorporate PART into the governmental budgetary system, the final decision maker of the budget, the National Assembly, should respect the PART results and reflect these in the budget. A systematic effort to make budget allocations based on the PART result needs to be undertaken not only by the Administration, but by the National Assembly as well.