Direct v. Indirect Goal Conflict: Examining the Effect of Goal Multiplicity on Government Transparency.

Performance management necessarily involves establishing program goals and measuring performance toward goal attainment. Superior public management systems differentiate among inputs, outputs, and outcomes in measuring performance and efficiency. This otherwise straightforward effort is complicated where program goals are multiple, vague, or in conflict, and where implementation is delegated to third parties whose interpretive view of program goals may further depart from those intended by policymakers (Frederickson & Frederickson, forthcoming). Exemplary of recent policy change has been relaxation of transparency requirements for particular programs through exemptions from transparency laws. Most notable among these are economic development policy and homeland security policies. Within the policy subsystems for both economic development and homeland security there are clear goals, though often not clearly prescribed courses of action. Overarching constituent policy such as open records and open meetings laws (like state freedom of information acts), while not in direct conflict with economic development policy, interferes with the competitive recruitment process at the state level. On the other hand, transparency conflicts directly with the goals of U.S. federal and state policies intended to prevent and respond to emergencies such as terrorist attacks. This paper examines recent policy change in these two policy areas and suggests a theoretical framework to explain how different models of change apply to each as a result of differences between direct and indirect applicability of transparency to policy goals. The paper concludes by examining the role of goal conflict as the impetus for policy change and its implications for performance management. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]