Formal systems of comprehensive planning and performance-based management have a long if disappointing history in American government. This is illustrated most dramatically by the failure of program budgeting (PPB) in the 1960s and resurrection of that management technique in a handful of agencies over the past decade. Beyond its present application, the significance of PPB lies in its relationship to the goals and assumptions of popular reforms associated with the performance movement.

Program Budgeting and the Performance Movement examines PPB from its inception in the Department of Defense under Robert McNamara to its limited resurgence in recent years. It includes an in-depth case study of the adoption and effects of PPB at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The fact that program budgeting is subject to the same limitations today that led to its demise four decades ago speaks to the viability of requirements, such as those imposed by the Government Performance and Results Act, that are designed to make government more businesslike in its operations.

As the federal government’s programs have increased in complexity, with regard both to world and national affairs and to state and local interests, the problems of decision making have become vastly more intricate. This book is designed to help improve understanding of the principles of program budgeting in relation to the decisionmaking process in the federal government; to stimulate others to develop these ideas further; and to accelerate the application of program budgeting in governmental activities.

Divided into three sections, the book begins with a discussion of the government decisionmaking process, the role of budgeting, and efforts made in past years by the federal government to improve the planning–programming–budgeting process. The second section covers the introduction of program budgeting in the Department of Defense and possible application to other federal activities. The third section deals with the subject of implementation and operation of the program budget and discusses an operating federal program budget in terms of its usefulness to specific areas.