Performance Management is Alive & Well!
This month, we attended the 5th Annual Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Conference, sponsored by the Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Network in partnership with the State of New Jersey Department of the Treasury. We found the practice of performance management in government to be "alive & well!"
Conference attendees gave an impressive number and variety of presentations of their work. Our team made a presentation based upon our recent work for a Florida county government evaluating the use of its economic development funds.
Today's economy is forcing governments across the U.S. and Canada to focus greater attention on performance results to assure taxpayers that their money is being used wisely and efficiently. The use of performance management and measurement by public organizations continues to grow.
It is well-acknowledged that public performance measurement & the widespread practice of collecting performance measures provide improvements in the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of governmental services. Citizen participation, employee motivation, effective decision-making, and effective resource allocation are positively impacted by performance management systems.
Some of the initiatives presented at the conference included:
In Canada, the Institute for Citizen-Centred Service (ICCS) has incorporated citizens' concerns at every stage of the service design and delivery process. Citizens' needs are the organizing principle around which the public interest is determined and service delivery is planned. The ICCS is a collaborative (not-for-profit) venture that engages all governments across Canada, as well as internationally, to improve service delivery by listening to and acting on the voice of the citizen.
The City of Baltimore, Maryland is a sterling example of a government that has specified a set of priorities and mandated that every program in their discretionary budget directly contribute to those priorities. Those that do not are eliminated by spinning them off, finding other funding, or canceling them altogether.
In The City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the mission of their performance management program, PhillyStat, is to define, measure, and track the Mayor's goals. Performance targets are set, overall performance is measured and reported to provide transparency to the public on how the city is performing.
Communicating results to staff...good and bad... and discussing performance, in a straightforward manner can lead to performance improvements, especially serving as a wake-up call when performance is not as good as anticipated. Moreover, analyzing performance results from both the raw data and a variety of statistical measures creates a more accurate picture of "real" results than just looking at one measure, such as a per capita average. While quantitative performance metrics can tell a detailed and informative story, they can never tell the whole story, and should always be supplemented with qualitative data.
According to a presentation by David H. Rosenbloom, Distinguished Professor of Public Administration, American University Washington, DC, performance measures have a great impact when they address societal issues such as Equal Opportunity, Distributive Fairness, Reduction of Crime, Anti-social Behavior, Harmonious Society, Population Control, Good Citizenship, Personal Privacy, Public Health, Globally Competitive Human Capital, Energy Conservation, Recycling, Environmental Justice, Environmental Sustainability, and Strong Families. Measuring the impact in these program areas makes a lot of sense when you consider them in light of The Centre for Bhutan Studies' "Indicators of Gross National Happiness":
Economic Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of economic metrics such as consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio, and income distribution.
Environmental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of environmental metrics such as pollution, noise, and traffic.
Physical Wellness: Indicated via statistical measurement of physical health metrics such as severe illnesses.
Mental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of mental health metrics such as usage of antidepressants and rise or decline of psychotherapy patients
Phenomenal results can be fostered by asking our governmental leaders and candidates for public office, "How will you measure your performance?"
