NOAA's Resurrection of Program Budgeting: Déjà Vu All Over Again?

• Author: Eric Lindquist,William F. West,Katrina N. Mosher‐Howe
• Date: 01 May 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.01990.x
• Published date: 01 May 2009

NOAA’s Resurrection of Program Budgeting 435

William F. West

Eric Lindquist

Katrina N. Mosher-Howe

Texas A&M University

NOAA’s Resurrection of Program Budgeting: Déjà Vu All

Over Again?

Fostering Fiscal

Responsibility:

International,

Federal, and Local

Government

Perspectives

William F. West is a professor and the

Sara Lindsey Chair in the Bush School of

Government and Public Service at Texas

A&M University. His primary interest is

in institutional controls over the federal

bureaucracy.

E-mail: wwest@bushschool.tamu.edu

Eric Lindquist is associate director and

associate research scientist in the Institute

for Science, Technology and Public Policy at

Texas A&M University. His research interests

are in public policy and decision processes,

agenda setting, problem/solution def‌i nition

studies, and the impact of focusing events

on public policy.

E-mail: elindquist@bushschool.tamu.edu

Katrina N. Mosher-Howe is an

assistant research scientist in the Institute

for Science, Technology and Public Policy at

Texas A&M University. Her research focuses

on the impact of casualties from terrorism

and international conf‌l ict on foreign policy

decision making. She is also interested in

research examining decision making proc-

esses in science and public policy.

E-mail: kmosher@bushschool.tamu.edu

 e National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

instituted a Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and

Execution System (PPBES) in 2002. As supplemented

by matrix management, PPBES was appealing as an

ef‌f ort to rationalize the performance of an agency with

an especially high degree of functional overlap among its

component parts. Although PPBES has had some salutary

ef‌fects, the agency’s experience to date consistent with

accounts of the dif‌f‌i culties that led to the abandonment of

program budgeting by the civilian bureaucracy almost 40

years ago. As such, it speaks to the limits of performance

assessment as a means of reallocating resources and

responsibilities across organizational boundaries.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA) is an extreme exam-

ple of the gap that often exists between the

reality of public bureaucracy and the Weberian ideal of

neatly dif‌f erentiated functions.

Cobbled together in an ef‌f ort

to coordinate implementation

in an interrelated set of policy

areas, its establishment in 1970

hardly eliminated the problems

it was designed to address. It

merely placed them under one

roof. Moreover, the potential for

redundancy within NOAA has

grown with the piecemeal accu-

mulation of new responsibilities

and organizational units.

NOAA instituted program

budgeting in 2002 as a response

to its management challenges.

As modif‌i ed by matrix manage-

ment, the intent of planning,

programming, budgeting, and

execution systems (PPBES) has

been to rationalize the agency’s

performance without having

to rationalize its structure.

NOAA’s adoption of PPBES

is interesting in this regard, both as the resurrection

of an old technique and as an extension of current

trends in public administration.

PPBES has had mixed ef‌f ects. It has resulted in a

clearer def‌i nition of agency goals and has improved

communications across organizational divisions. It

has required considerable time and ef‌f ort, however,

and is perceived by some as being inimical to NOAA’s

scientif‌i c mission. It has also had little impact to date

on the allocation of resources and responsibilities.

Whether the benef‌i ts of NOAA’s new management

system ultimately will justify its costs remains to be

seen.  is said, the agency’s experience with PPBES

so far is consistent with explanations for the demise

of program budgeting after a brief and disappointing

trial in the 1960s. It illustrates the tension that can

result from the introduction

of new and complex routines,

especially when they compete

with established norms and are

not accompanied by adequate

resources. It also illustrates the

obstacles to comprehensive plan-

ning and analysis that are framed

by theories of bounded rational-

ity and bureaucratic politics. In

these same respects, a considera-

tion of NOAA’s experience helps

def‌i ne the limits of performance assessment as a means

of coordination.

Introduction

Program budgeting removes

activities from their organi-

zational homes for analytical

purposes and evaluates them in

terms of their contributions to

hierarchically ordered objectives.

As such, it is designed to allow

managers and policy makers

to plan, to hold implementing

Program budgeting removes

activities from their

organizational homes for

analytical purposes and

evaluates them in terms of their

contributions to hierarchically

ordered objectives.

Cobbled together in an ef‌f ort

to coordinate implementation

in an interrelated set of policy

areas …[NOAA’s] establishment

in 1970 hardly eliminated the

problems it was designed to

address. It merely placed them

under one roof.

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