21. Department of Commerce · Notable
Make the National Weather Service a Performance-Based Organization
Printed page 675 21. Department of Commerce
“The NWS should be a candidate to become a Performance-Based Organization to better enforce organizational focus on core functions such as efficient delivery of accurate, timely, and unbiased data to the public and to the private sector.”
What has happened
- Not started
Nothing found. The National Weather Service was not made a performance-based organization: no executive order, Commerce order, Federal Register document or budget request proposes it, and the FY2026 and FY2027 Congressional Justifications use the phrase only about contracting methods in the Radar Next program.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Rides the trail of #1868 (Fully commercialize National Weather Service forecasting operations,
major, not started) and #1867 (Break up and downsize NOAA, attempted), and takes the same two
Congressional Justifications, but the Quote asks something they do not contain.
Negative search: grep -n -i "Performance-Based" over the text-extracted FY2026 and FY2027 NOAA
Congressional Justifications (two hits, both “performance-based contracting” in the Radar Next
program narrative); Federal Register full text since 2025-01-20 for "performance-based organization" (nothing at Commerce) and "Department Organization Order" (0 in-window
documents); and presidential-actions.ndjson for weather.
What did happen to NWS in the window is a staffing floor written into appropriations: P.L. 119-74’s Commerce title sec. 114 (recorded at #1867), which is the opposite of a structural conversion.
- Action
- other
- Object
- National Weather Service
- ID
- 1869