Too many things to do: how to deal with the dysfunctions of multiple-goal agencies

"All federal agencies must cope with the challenges of trying to achieve success on the multiple goals laid out for them by Congress, the President, or the public-at-large, with varying degrees of success. Recent economics and political science literature has laid out a theoretical framework that helps us understand why agencies might succeed in achieving some goals and fail in achieving other goals: Agencies will systematically underperform on goals that are hard to measure and that conflict with the achievement of other more measurable goals. The lack of information about these hard-to-measure goals means that there will be fewer rewards to agencies for any success on those goals.