http://www.city.grande-prairie.ab.ca/perform.htm#IssuesAndPrinciples

 

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT - ISSUES AND PRINCIPLES

The following list of issues and principles are excerpted from papers presented at the February 95 conference "Performance Measurement and Monitoring in Government" sponsored by the Institute for International Research, and from articles on Performance Measurement in the periodical "Public Management," Vol. 76, No. 9, Sept. 94. Because this is a collection, some concepts appear in more than one context.

 

KEY PRINCIPLES:

 

·         Acceptance of the measurement process is essential to its success as a performance improvement tool.  Like Strategic and Business Planning, the process by which you determine what to measure, how to measure, and how to utilize the measures is more important than the actual product itself.

 

·         The audience/user and purpose must be clearly defined.  Who are the customers and end-users for the measurement system?  What are their requirements?  What do they feel they need from measurement to help them do a better job managing, problem-solving, and decision-making?

 

·         The greater the participation in the process of creating a performance measurement system, the greater the resulting performance change, and the greater the ease of implementation of future changes based upon performance measurement.  (Morris, 1979).  This participation includes Employees, Management, Senior Administration, Council and the Electorate. 

 

·         Measures must be seen to have value well beyond the task performance level.  Performance measurement and reporting thus becomes not only an accountability tool, but also an advocacy tool. (Allen, 1985).

 

·         Measurement is hard and complex.  Once we accept this, measurement can become less difficult. 

 

·         A complete and effective system of performance measurement will require years of consistent, incremental work to achieve. 

 

·         One of the reasons performance measurement is difficult is that these measures were not available historically; and the resulting uncertainty dampens enthusiasm substantially for some individuals and groups. 

 

·         Further, it is complicated by the fact that there is no generally accepted "bottom line" in civic government because there is no scientific or analytical measurement that indicates the relative benefit to society of, for example, more hospital beds, less toxic waste, less family violence, more reforestation or better public transit. (Allen, 1985).

 

·         Measurement of any kind will affect the behavior of individuals within the organization [for better or for worse].  It has nearly universal capacity to focus attention.  Management needs to recognize their obligation to monitor and direct the resulting changes in focus.  Reporting performance measures will also affect the behavior of Senior Administration, Council and the Electorate.

 

·         One suggestion is to adopt an experimental approach to measurement systems development in order to drive out fear.  Eliminate the use of numerical goals, work standards and quotas.  Numerical measures are often achieved, even when improvement is not. (Deming, 1986). 

 

Deming, of course, is W. Edwards Deming, a page and extensive references for whom can be found at the Clemson Continuous Improvement Website at: http://deming.eng.clemson.edu/pub/psci/.  Also on-line, the Deming Electronic Network is "a volunteer-based, non-commercial electronic communications resource available internationally to individuals and organizations interested in the past, present, and future of Dr. W. Edwards Deming's System of Profound Knowledge and related philosophies."

 

·         Central Principle: It is NOT "the right measures." Instead, it is a process and culture for choosing, using and revising measures to assist employees in focusing on achieving continuous improvement over the long run.

 

·         Do not make a commitment to measurement, benchmarking, TQM or any other process or program, nor to the reporting of heroic results, nor to assigning the blame.  Instead, make a commitment to service delivery improvement [the latter implies changing the way we do things (usually cooperatively and in a spirit of good will), adding new activities and deleting old (sometimes favorite) activities].

 

·         David Osborne and Peter Plastrik, in Banishing Bureaucracy: the five strategies for reinventing government, in the chapter on the "Consequences Strategy," say: "We have not listed performance measurement as an approach because we do not believe that the act of measuring itself has enough power to force fundamental change in most public organizations.  It is a critical competence organizations need if they are to use the consequences strategy.  But some public organizations have measured performance for years, with virtually no impact." [P. 132, their emphasis.]

 

·         Aim to improve the things which will make a difference (those with large costs, large customer value, substantial consequences, etc.).

 

·         Measure what employees can translate into direct corrective action.  Measuring global hunger is interesting and is of monumental importance, but few can apply any direct correction.  "For metrics to be motivational, those they apply to must be able to see what to do.  There must be a "line of sight" between the actions employees can take and what shows on the measure.  Being held accountable for measures with no clear means to affect them is demotivating at any level."  [The foregoing quote is an excerpt from an article "Performance Metrics: How to Use Them and How to Get More Leverage" by Bob Frost.]

 

·         Good metrics (according to Ian Macdonald's "Performance Indicators" paper) need to be:

 

directional - to confirm that you are on track to reach the goals,

quantitative - to show what has been achieved and how much more is to be done,

worthwhile - adding more value to the business than they cost to collect and use.

 

·         Measure what's important strategically (or what is of value to customers), not just what is easy to measure, or already being measured.

 

·         Measure group and team outputs, not individual outputs.  Individual performance cannot be measured except over the very long run. (Deming).  Deming, of course, is W. Edwards Deming, a page and extensive references for whom can be found at the Clemson Continuous Improvement Website at: http://deming.eng.clemson.edu/pub/psci/.

 

·         Have the team that produces the result develop the measures, perform the measurements and report the results.

 

 

CAVEATS:

 

Remember: Measurement at its best only tells you something about the history of your performance.

 

Remember: no matter how well an employee's work is planned, managed and measured, the outcome will depend much more on how passionate the employee is concerning the work.

 

Remember: the word entrepreneurial doesn't mean outsourcing; it means continuously shifting activities away from those with lower returns and toward those with higher returns.

 

Remember: problems related to an organization's output are much more often related to poor management of the systems than to poor performance.  An excellent manager's superior interpersonal and leadership skills have much greater potential to foster continuous improvement than does performance measurement.

 

Remember: it is easy to measure the trivial.  It is much more difficult to measure what is truly important, and in an objective way.

 

Remember: increased focus on individual employee performance produces decreased focus on responsibility to the team and the organization. Intense focus on individual performance encourages competition at the expense of cooperation.  ["Equipment and files just disappeared, sometimes for weeks at a time, when individuals hoarded them for their projects. They made their gains; but the team and the organization lost much more."]

 

Remember: Outstanding performance has to make a difference (in recognition).  If everybody is treated the same when it is all said and done, then in the long run performance will never become outstanding.

 

Remember: that nowadays successful management: (a) completes the right task on time and within budget, (b) builds and strengthens the team, (c) develops the individual and (d) fosters continuous improvement.

 

Remember: that outcomes (or results) are what paid the bills last quarter.  What positions you to produce results in the coming quarter is the knowledge and experience your workers gained executing (well planned and managed) processes in the current quarter.  For additional information on Knowledge Management, see the series of Knowledge Management articles in the Archive of the CyberCity

 

 

RELATED PRINCIPLES:

 

·         The goal is to design, develop and successfully implement measurement systems that share information such that continuous performance improvement is supported and enhanced.

 

·         The measurement system must clearly fit into the management process and be acknowledged as decision-making and problem-solving aimed at performance improvement support.

 

·         An effective measurement system must build upon consistent and well understood operational definitions for the seven performance criteria

 

·         effectiveness,

·         efficiency,

·         total quality,

·         productivity,
quality of work life,

·         innovation, and

·         profitability/budgetability

 

 

·         The unit of analysis/target system must clearly be defined in order for measurement to succeed. An input/output analysis is a necessary precondition.

 

·         The process of measurement must clearly be separated from the process of evaluation.

 

·         Measure intermediate-term outcomes as well as longer-term outcomes. Set dates for revision of intermediate-term outcomes to reinforce the perception of their temporary status.

 

·         Do not stop with measurement. Take time to analyze results of measurement, changes in behavior, etc. Take time to communicate results, propose improvements, persuade others of the value of the proposed improvements. Reward sound employee initiatives which are not adopted as well as those which are. Remember, it is the processes and the culture and the structures for focusing attention on continuous improvement which contain the long-term big payoffs we are seeking (not just the immediate improved results for a specific case).

 

·         Take time to analyze the real causes of the improvements.  Adjust effectiveness measures accordingly.

 

·         Balance the degree of management control over the processes being measured with the desirability of measuring outcomes (rather than outputs or inputs). Generally, the measurement of items purely under management control (usually only inputs) or pure global outcomes (usually substantially beyond management control) are not nearly as useful as measures which strike a balance.

 

·         Encourage comment/analysis in measurement reporting. Special circumstances need to be visible along with measures of performance (especially where the measures anticipated only the routine case).

 

·         Control-oriented measurement systems often hinder continuous improvement efforts.

 

·         Measurement is often resisted due to perceptions (real or imagined) of negative consequences. Visibility of good performance leads to diminished resources. Visibility of bad performance leads, initially, to more resources, but eventually to punishment. Visibility of performance therefore often leads to crisis catering, more measurement, micro-management [and little lasting improvement].

 

·         What is needed is not a standard set of measurements created by experts or obtained from a "shopping list" that are imposed on the organization, but rather a method by which measurement teams and their various clienteles create and continually modify performance measurement systems suited to their own inevitably special needs and circumstances. (Morris, 1975).

 

·         Any system should result in a vector of performance measures, not in attempting to achieve a single measure. Much of the controversy and lack of acceptance stems from attempts to make a very complex problem appear too simple. (Morris, 1975). [A corollary here is that the simplistic measure just causes people to focus more on the simplistic view of the problem, usually causing an imbalance of effort that produces results that are worse than the results obtained before the measurement was introduced.]

 

·         A performance measurement system must not appear to those involved as simply a passing fad. (Morris, 1975).

 

·         A useful system must be seen by those whose behaviors and performances are being assessed as being non-manipulative and non-gamed.

 

An Informal Bibliography of Sources of Performance Measurement Principles and Precepts.

 

The above list of performance issues and principles came mainly from a case study at the City of Tacoma, Washington by William Larkin entitled Establish Performance Measurement Within a Municipal Government, given at the February 1995 conference Performance Measurement and Monitoring in Government sponsored by the Institute for International Research (708 Third Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10017-4103; Tel: 800+345-8016 or 212+661-8740; Fax: 212+661-6677), and from a series of articles entitled Benchmarks of Performance, from the periodical Public Management, Volume 76, Number 9, September 1994. Public Management is published monthly by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), 777 North Capitol Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002-4201 (Tel: 202+962-3620).

 

For further interest we include the titles of the papers from the Performance Measurement and Monitoring in Government conference as follows (other sources, some with links may be seen below):

 

If You Don't Know Where You Are Going, Any Path Will Do, ... or, The Case Against Business-as-usual, B. Smith, Former Deputy Director of Defense Information, Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, 22 pp., mainly overheads.

 

Prepare for Performance Measurement, J. Hill, U.S. General Accounting Office, 10 pp., mainly overheads.

 

Using Surveys to Improve Human Resource Management, M. Dole, U.S. Department of the Interior, 42 pp., mainly overheads, but includes example survey questions.

 

Performance Measures in California's Performance Budgeting Pilot Program, R. Rusk, California State Department of General Services, 20 pp., mainly overheads.

 

Design Measurement Systems Based on "Customer Value", W. C. Parr, Director, Center for Advancement of Organizational Effectiveness, University of Tennessee, 78 pp., including overheads and three papers: A New Paradigm for Management, The Management Intervention and Maintaining Focus Within the Organization.

 

Colorado State Government: Exemplary Performance Measurement Efforts, J. Davies, Colorado Department of Personnel, 80 pp., including overheads and measurement charts. Also contains a paper: Customer Satisfaction: Survey Methods and Design.

 

Create an Environment for Measuring Performance - The Human Side of Quality, D. Joseph and D. Glass, U.S. Air Force, 38 pp., mainly overheads.

 

Establish Performance Measurement Within a Municipal Government, W. Larkin, City of Tacoma, Washington, 18 pp., mainly overheads.

 

Implementing Strategic Planning and Performance Measurement in Arizona State Government, P. O'Sullivan-Kachel, Governor's Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting, State of Arizona, 24 pp., mainly overheads.

 

Analyzing and Integrating Large-scale Organizational Processes, T. Gulledge, Professor, George Mason University, and B. Smith, ibid., 40 pp., mainly overheads.

 

Measuring Program Outcomes and Impacts, M. Marsh, Oregon State Department of Administrative Services, 22 pp., mainly overheads.

 

Evaluative Criteria for Auditing a Performance Measurement System, G. Silva, City Auditor, City of San Jose, California, 10 pp., mainly overheads.

 

The Uses of Performance Measurement, R. Allen, Former Performance Measurement System Manager, Province of Ontario, 14 pp., mainly overheads. John R. Allen Voice: 416 + 769-2272; Fax: 416 + 769-2310; 61 Gilmour Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M6P 3A8.

 

Strategic Management: Using the Strategic Plan to Build Organizational Budgets, D. Well & L, Doherty, Department of the U.S. Navy Total Quality Leadership Office, et al., 66 pp., mainly overheads.

 

 

Other sources of Performance Measurement information include the following:

 

A Performance Measurement Addendum page is available containing examples, including those shown below. In both cases, energy is diverted from program effectivenss improvement into making reported measures look good.

 

Performance Measurement Addendum 1

Selective Measures to Support a Specific Position - Patricia Rogers.

This comment deals with a side-effect which does not (and perhaps cannot) contribute to program improvement.

 

Performance Measurement Addendum 2

Goal Shifting and Staff Behavior in Perf Measurement - Jerry Winston.

These examples show how measurements confirm improved performance, while actual effectiveness is not improved.

 

In the overview of the MIT Learning History Research Project, Dr. George Roth describes the use of "Learning Histories" (informal papers by participants describing their view of learning efforts) aimed at avoiding the adverse effects of assessments while facilitating the transfer of understanding among and between groups. Excerpt from the overview: "All efforts to transform organizations sooner or later run up against the challenge of proving their value. Yet traditional "assessment" approaches, reacting to everyday pressures, can easily undermine the original learning effort. As people become aware of being judged and measured, they seek to satisfy the evaluation criteria instead of improving their capabilities. The intrinsic motivation which drives learning is then supplanted by the desire to look successful. Yet evaluation is vital to learning as a feedback process that provides guidance and support. "Learning Histories" were invented in response to this dilemma" (our emphasis). Roth also provides a useful field manual and describes future aspects of the research.

 

"Four Measurement Traps" - a paper by Jim Clemmer of the Clemmer Group. "Measuring performance can cut both ways. It can play a valuable role in improving organizations - or it can stand in the way of necessary change." (1) Trying to manage results - that's history; (2) Measuring inside-out; (3) The measurement stick; and (4) Confusing knowing and doing. In his book, Pathways to Performance, Clemmer identifies (Chapter 19, Measurement and Feedback) five core measurement areas that provide balanced feedback for assessing and improving organizational performance:

 

 

In his book Firing on all Cylinders: The Service/Quality System for High- Powered Corporate Performance Jim Clemmer of the Clemmer Group and Barry Sheehy report on two broad categories of service quality used by Hewlett-Packard (chapter 18, "Standards and Measures"):

 

The first category deals with the quality of the product:

 

Functionality - the feature set, capabilities, compatibility, and security.

 

Usability - the human factors, consistency and documentation of the product.

 

Reliability - the frequency and severity of failures, the predictability and accuracy of the product.

 

Performance - the speed and efficiency of the product as well as the resource consumption.

 

Supportability - maintainability and serviceability of the product, along with its ability to be installed.

 

The second category deals with the quality of the relationship with the customer:

 

Anticipation - the ability to identify, understand and help solve customer needs before they become problems.

 

Availability - the degree to which our products and services provide for uninterrupted usage at full functionality.

 

Responsiveness - the ability to provide timely, accurate and complete information and/or solutions to customer initiated requests for help.

 

Transitions - the ease of initial startup and of ongoing changes as individual products and services evolve and conform to new needs and technologies.

 

The CyberCity Mailing List (Selected Current Topic Indexes) article "The Death of Industrial Age Organizations," in the digest of 29 Nov 1999 digest, contains links to articles by Dee Hock describing management and organizational principles and practices which will need to be adopted to replace those of industrial age hierarchies.

 

Robert H. Kent of the Mansis Development Corporation posts "Why You Should Think Twice About 360 Degree Performance Appraisal." In the article, Kent points out some of the pitfalls, including the usual anonymity with which these appraisals are done, and asks: "Do you really want to have a company with a culture that promotes the use of secret reports to assess and judge its employees? How can your organization pretend to be open, honest and forthright when it uses secrecy and anonymity to measure the value of employees? Is this the way you want your business to run?" Kent provides four questions to ponder before jumping on this band wagon.

 

The Governing.com magazine for state and local government officials is hosting the Government Performance Project which provides report cards for the states (scroll down to "State Report Cards") and about three dozen cities (scroll down again to "City Report Cards"). Among the cities, of course, Phoenix is at the top with straight A's, and Austin is close behind. The reporting criteria include Financial Management, HR Management, Information Technology, Capital Management and Managing for Results. The in-depth performance project is the work of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Maxwell School's more complete website for the Government Performance Project (about) is administered by the Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute. The Maxwell State Grade Report provides a side-by-side comparison, where Missouri, Utah, Virginia and Washington come out on the top of the heap. They also post a side-by-side City Grade Report.

 

The National Center for Public Productivity at the Rutgers University Graduate Department of Public Administration at Newark (alternate entry page) posts Publications, Conferences, Model Programs, and more, including the "Citizen-Driven Government Performance" project. The latter aims to "assess and improve how local governments perform their broad mission of maintaining and improving the conditions in the communities they serve."

 

The Centre for Business Performance at the Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University in the U.K., focuses on "applied research and knowledge transfer involving the development, application and dissemination of practical tools and concepts underpinned by high-quality academic research. They also host the Performance Measurement Association, "a global network for those interested in the theory and practice of performance measurement and management." The specific aims of the Centre are:

 

 

Zigon Performance Group posts an extensive page of links to reviewed Performance Measurement Related Websites, including sections on Performance Measurement, Performance Management, Performance Management Software, and many others. Their page of "Articles by Jack Zigon" provides links to a dozen or more articles, including "Measuring the Hard Stuff: Teams and Other Hard-to-Measure Work." and "How to Measure White-Collar Employee Performance." And they also sell performance measurement manuals, including one with hundreds of example measures.

 

The Cabinet Office of the British government has posted an "Access Checklist" which is a first step in providing guidance for departments in improving access to government services. They have focused on seven areas:

 

 

The Cabinet Office also posts the "Performance and Innovation" website, which contains list of their projects, etc., and the results of a poll, "Open all hours?" dealing with extending the office hours for agencies handling government services.

 

The British National Audit Office lists among its publications a report on Good Practice in Performance Reporting, (850 Kb; 66 pp; .PDF format) an Executive Summary of which (95 Kb; 9 pp; .PDF format) is also available. For those without access to the Adobe Acrobat file format, the Archive of the CyberCity Mailing List (Selected Current Topic Indexes) contains an article "Converting Web Pages from PDF to HTML Format" in the digest of 1 March 1999 that may be useful. I used the simple form explained in the article to convert a similar file to HTML in under a minute.

 

Kevin Bounds' paper on the balanced scorecard (Kevin is Finance Director at Nationwide Life) "The Role of Performance Measures and the Impact of Corporate Structure" from the Foundation for Performance Measurement (about the foundation).

 

"Score It a Hit" [cookies (cookie caution)] a November 1998 article in the Enterprise edition of CIO magazine [more cookies (cookie caution)]. "The arrival of the balanced scorecard dates back to a 1990 study by The Nolan Norton Institute, the defunct research arm of KPMG, which documented the feasibility and benefits of instituting a balanced- measurement system organized around four perspectives: financial, customer, internal, and innovation and learning. The balanced scorecard, a tool that has become the core management system in some businesses, helps companies communicate, measure and stay focused on strategic goals. For the scorecard to work, everyone from the top executives down needs to spend considerable time reaching consensus on the key performance indicators and then providing, collecting, collating and analyzing feedback on the measurements that the corporation deems critical to its success. [But if senior management is] quick to delegate it down to a cross-functional team, that's usually an early warning of death for the process. It sends a pretty loud message that it's not important to them. So who else in the organization is going to spend much time on it?"

 

The Related Links page from the performance measurement systems toolkit at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech.

 

Performance Indicators, by Ian Macdonald. This paper compares the Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan and Norton), the Performance Pyramid (Lynch and Cross) and the Stakeholder Model (Curtis and Kastner).

 

The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) posts some example "Performance Indicators" for police and fire services, neighborhood services and for support services.

 

Perform Magazine is published several times a year in hard copy for a fee with some articles on its website. The spring 1999 edition contains an article "Performance Metrics: How to Use Them and How to Get More Leverage" by Bob Frost. It emphasizes reporting results using graphs and with consistency (of data collection and measurement) and reporting comparative information.

 

"Your metrics need anchor points for comparison, ... [but] think carefully about which comparatives will lead you to valid conclusions and sensible action."

 

"If your employees know that you value metrics and track the entire organization's performance, an amazing thing happens: The culture of your organization changes. Whether mentally or on paper, employees begin to track how their own performance contributes to enterprise performance. And a results-tracking culture is one of the most powerful competitive advantages your enterprise can have."

 

Fred Nickols of The Distance Consulting Company posts several dozen articles, including "Human Performance Technology: The End of An Era," which provides a brief overview of his contrarian view. He gets more specific with "Don't Redesign Your Company's Performance Appraisal System, Scrap It!" and "Now What?: What to do after you scrap your performance appraisal system." He makes a number of very good points to be considered in any kind of performance review or management initiative.

 

The Australian state of New South Wales posts a page "Service Efforts and Accomplishments in the NSW Government," which describes their performance measurement program. In their program "the Council has taken the view that SEA [Service Efforts and Accomplishments] reports should be of use to the agencies preparing them and not simply another reporting requirement imposed by central government agencies." They plan to post Service Efforts and Accomplishments reoprts (SEAs) during 1997 for a variety of government functions, including Arts and Culture, Economic Development, Agriculture, Health, Transport, Housing, Public Safety, Justice, Roads and Traffic, Education, Vocational Education and Training, Environment, Fisheries, Social and Community Services and Sport and Recreation.

 

The Local Government and Shires Associations' page "Towards Best Practice" records and links information relating to benchmarking and best practice relevant to Local Government throughout Australia.

 

The U.S. General Services Administration [cookies (cookie caution)] "Office of Information Technology" [cookies (cookie caution)] has posted a page "Performance Pathways" [more cookies (cookie caution)] which provides a good list of performance measurement materials and links [more cookies (cookie caution)], including guides; sample performance measures; legislation, regulations and policy; training sources; etc. Their "Performance-Based Management" [yet more cookies (cookie caution)] report (table of contents) [cookies (cookie caution)] provides a comprehensive discussion of the "eight steps to develop and use IT performance measures effectively." It also includes a good three page "Executive Summary" [cookies (cookie caution)]. In their finance area [more cookies (cookie caution)], they also post U.S. General Services Administration FY 1999 Performance Plan. It supports and adds current detail to the Strategic Plan of GSA submitted to Congress on September 30, 1997.

 

The U.S. National Performance Review (brief history) has issued some relevant reports and papers:

 

An annnouncement of the NPR "Managing for Results - Initiatives" website appeared in the CyberCity mailing list article "Managing for Results at U.S. Federal Gov't" which appeared in the digest of 4 March 1997.

 

Managing Results: Initiatives in Select American Cities.

 

Their On-line Highlights lists new and interesting resources made available in the last several months.

 

Their News Room contains newsletters, press releases, and speeches.

 

Their Library contains agency agreements, customer service improvements, executive orders, performance measurement initiatives, privatization, regulatory reform guidelines, etc.

 

The Sunsite edition of selected National Performance Review links.

 

The U.S. Department of Commerce Acquisition Community has posted a comprehensive "Guide to a Balanced Scorecard: Performance Management Methodology," (Table of Contents) describing application of performance management in a government agency.

 

"The most successful performance measurement systems are not "gotcha" systems, but learning systems that help the organization identify what works--and what does not--so as to continue with and improve on what is working and repair or replace what is not working."

 

The Fairfax County, Virginia Auditing Performance Connection - Performance Measurement, Management and Audit Resources. Fairfax County Department of Management and Budget. Links to Performance Measurement Web Sites.

 

The Congressional Institute (a Washington D.C. non-profit) posts a "Results Act" page to inform congressmen and citizens about the GPRA and the results obtained. They also post a large variety of related information.

 

The Washington, D.C., non-profit OMB Watch posts "GPRA Report: News and Analysis of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA)," which provides news, resources, analysis and comment concerning GPRA.

 

FinanceNet has posted a page "GPRA - Integrating Performance Measurement into the Budget Process." It contains sections on "How to Do It: a Developing Cookbook on Integration" and "Challenges and Considerations to Overcome Them." Most of the pages are in PDF ( portable document format), but they are clearly marked. Note: For those without access to the Adobe Acrobat file format, the Archive of the CyberCity Mailing List (Selected Current Topic Indexes) contains an article "Converting Web Pages from PDF to HTML Format" in the digest of 1 March 1999 that may be useful. I have used the simple form explained in the article to convert files like these to HTML in under a minute.

 

The Government Executive Magazine posts "The Results Report" They provide a "Results Act primer for everyone trying to help their agencies get their plans together as well as regular coverage of Results Act hearings, workshops and news."

 

FinanceNet posts several other useful pages Government Performance Measures/Benchmarking page; U.S. Government department Performance Plans (many of the latter in PDF format, unfortunately); and Archive of Performance Measures Mailing List Messages.

 

The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) has posted a text page: "Executive Guide - Effectively Implementing The Government Performance And Results Act" (109 Kb) that is also available in Portable Document Format (caution: the latter is a 60 page document). It points out that "every major federal agency must now ask itself some basic questions: What is our mission? What are our goals and how will we achieve them? How can we measure our performance? How will we use that information to make improvements?"

Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountabilty posts "Florida Monitor," containing reviews of various performance-based program budgeting measures and standards.

 

Overcoming the Inadequacies of Performance Measurement in Local Government: The Case of Libraries and Leisure Services (abstract).

 

The American Evaluation Association at the University of Alabama posts a Program Evaluation Standards page which identifies standards of utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy and the rationale therefor.

 

OECD's page on Key Performance Management Issues.

 

The US Department of Health and Human Services has embarked on a process to establish performance measures for their public health programs. This is a good site, with lots of health care related links.

 

Hennepin County, Minnesota, Performance Measurement Reports.

Database of Local Government Innovation Research