This paper discusses the nature, scope, and limitations of the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education's Planning and Management Systems Program (WICHE-PMS). (1) It summarizes the goals of the program which are the improvement of (a) higher education institutional management, (b) statewide coordination, and (c) decisionmaking processes at the highest national levels. (2) It identifies the basic guidelines governing the program. (3) It describes the major functional areas for research and development essential to the improvement of higher education management. These include: (a) goal setting; (b) program planning and resource allocation; (c) execution, i.e., the operation of the institution to see that what has been chosen to be done is done well and efficiently; (d) evaluation; and (e) providing a common vocabulary to ensure comparability of data. (4) It identifies the research and development areas with which WICHE-PMS is currently working. And (5) it describes briefly the higher education management process and indicates the point at which each of the WICHE-PMS projects relates to this process. (Author/AF)