As lobbyists and attorneys filed into room N3437 A-D in the Department of Labor building, a small group huddled near the front row of seats. "OSHA’s always been on the chopping block trying to justify its performance," said an agency official. "Is OSHA effective? We’ve never been able to answer that question."
She was standing between Dan Petersen and E. Scott Geller, two renown safety theorists who had traveled to Washington this cold April morning to shed light on the subject of measuring safety performance. They were to address the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, which is trying to help OSHA come up with ways to measure what it does. It’s part of a strategic plan that OSHA must submit to Congress under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 -- an attempt to restore faith in federal agencies by making them set five-year goals and then chart their progress and results.