NCJ Number
146760
Date Published
1993
Length
8 pages
Annotation
In testimony before Congress, the authors are critical of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's failure to develop strategy based on its stated goals, failure to establish performance measures for individual agencies and failure to improve the quality of data collected.
Abstract
In this statement presented before the House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations, the authors testified on the performance of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's (ONDCP) performance during its first four years of existence. The testimony addressed ONDCP's performance in the areas of policy formulation, management and data collection and analysis. The authors believe that ONDCP has been successful in identifying goals and in developing a national policy, but the Office has failed to tie the two. There is little evidence that ONDCP evaluated a number of strategies and then chose the strategy that would best accomplish the stated goals. No cost- effectiveness analysis was done. This makes it impossible to evaluate whether prevention, treatment, interdiction and domestic investigation each received an appropriate share of drug control resources. With regard to management, the authors are critical of ONDCP's failure to establish criteria for measuring the performance of individual agencies. It is therefore difficult to compare the effectiveness of agencies working within the same functional area or to evaluate an individual agency's contribution to achieving the stated goals. The quality of data on drug use available to federal policy makers has been lacking for years. ONDCP has failed to make any significant improvements in data collection.