How to grow a government program

Many government programs fail. You can track these at the Expect More website. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it means "expect more spending," instead of expect more for the money already spent. There are way too many government programs, and the list has grown under President Bush. According to this website, 28% of Federal programs are Not Performing. A rating of Results Not Demonstrated (RND) indicates that a program has not been able to develop acceptable performance goals or collect data to determine whether it is performing.

Let's just look at one program--and even reading through its history you wonder why it was ever considered necessary, the Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE).

"FSNE began in 1988 when cooperative extension faculty in Brown County, Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin extension staff discovered that by committing state and local funding and contracting with the state food stamp agency, an equal amount of federal dollars could be secured to expand the reach of nutrition education to low-income persons in that area. Other universities soon followed. In 1992, seven states conducted FSNE using $661 thousand in federal funds. By 2004, FSNE was conducted throughout the country using nearly $460 million, with $228.6 million in Food Stamp Program administration funds and the remainder contributed by the states.

Here's why it got an RND rating:

"There are no standardized performance measures across State programs to gauge progress. The scope of nutrition education efforts varies widely, making it difficult to establish meaningful outcome measures to capture the program's progress. While States collect some data on participation, the data collected is limited and ambiguous and varies across programs.

The program's mission and goals are not clearly established in statute or regulation. The program relies on guidance to establish program policies. While nutrition education is clearly intended to contribute to advancing the program's purpose, the Food Stamp legislation and regulations are silent on the specific goals of nutrition education.

It is unclear if funds are spent effectively to increase participation and improve nutrition-related behaviors. The program grew from $660,000 in 1992 to over $147 million in 2002. This rapid growth, coupled with the program's unlimited matching source of funding, lends itself to greater oversight."

So here are the suggestions,

"Developing efficiency measures to assess program effectiveness related to its goals.

Developing a plan to increase the use of evidence-based food and nutrition education initiatives across States.

Seeking legislation to make nutrition education a component of the Food Stamp Program and developing a plan to publicize regulations."

In other words, there were no measurable results for all that money, and it could be moved to another program. That doesn't mean the money stream will stop. And even if people misunderstood the program or didn't apply correctly, would they have misunderstood it to the amount of $460 million? Maybe the solution is to write the programs in understandable English?

Other government programs are listed as ineffective. They seem to be like wayward children--the government never gives up on them.