Performance measurement as policy rhetoric: the case of federal arts councils

Abstract

Various reforms at the federal level have led bureaucracies, including arts councils, to design and implement performance measurement systems. We still know very little about whether performance measurement has any influence on the external conditions of arts councils, or whether it serves as policy rhetoric for arts advocacy. In this article, we seek to understand the answers to these questions by conducting a case study of performance measurement at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). We conclude that there is little evidence that performance measurement at the NEA has had any appreciable effects on agency appropriation levels. Therefore, as a policy response to federally mandated performance measurement systems, arts councils might do better in focusing exclusively on metrics that capture internal efficiency, as opposed to those that serve to demonstrate performance to external constituencies.

Keywords:

• Performance measurement
• federal arts councils
• National Endowment for the Arts

Notes

1. Ned Read (Office of the Chairman for Management and Budget, NEA), phone interview with Joanna Woronkowicz, 25 March 2015.

2. See Robin Pogrebin’s 7 August 2009 article in the New York Times, ‘New Endowment Chairman Sees Arts as Economic Engine’.

3. Bill Ivey, e-mail message to Joanna Woronkowicz, 17 March 2015.

4. We identified research staff members listed in NEA publications between 2011 and 2013 and searched Linked-in profiles for educational credentials.

5. As of January 2017, neither the House nor the Senate had voted on the proposed increase to NEA FY17 appropriations.

6. The Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) was developed by OMB during the George W. Bush administration in 2002 to help agencies rate the effectiveness of their programs. The Obama administration did not utilize PART in its mandates for agency performance measurement. See https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/performance_past for more information.

7. See OMB Circular A-11 (Part 6) for OMB guidance for performance measurement for federal agencies.

8. Sunil Iyengar, email message to Joanna Woronkowicz, 28 June 2016.

9. An exception might be in 1994 when the NEA voted to eliminate funding for individual artists. While this decision was ultimately made on the part of agency bureaucrats, many argue that it was made in response to Congressional pressure stemming from the funding of controversial artists. See Diana Jean Schemo’s November 3, 1994 article in the New York Times, ‘Endowment Ends Program Helping Individual Artists’.