Striking the balance between budgetary discretion and performance accountability: the case of the US Forest Service’s approach to integrated restoration

Abstract

Budgetary discretion affords agencies flexibility to accomplish complex goals but must be balanced with accountability. Recently, Congress increased budgetary discretion and changed performance measures to support integrated forest restoration. We use this experiment to explore how an agency utilizes budgetary discretion and how this discretion interacts with performance measurement. We find that while the flexibility has allowed the agency to pursue integrated goals, performance measures divert attention from addressing complex problems. Our findings suggest that performance measures are not a panacea for accountability and need to be combined with other mechanisms, such as internal guidance and oversight from collaborative partners.

Keywords:

• budgetary discretion
• restoration
• performance assessment
• goal ambiguity
• Forest Service

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funding from the USDA Forest Service (grant number 13-CS-11132420-254).