Performance Measurement & Management

Performance Costing and Finances

Please enter your thoughts, suggestions, concerns, successes, etc. about performance costing and finances.

It is interesting to me, having researched and written in the broad performance field for so long, that I did not initially include a section on COSTING.  I found an intriguing report by Deloitte (one of the Big 4 Accounting firms) on public sector finance.  Here is the link to Deloitte's page on Public Sector http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/section_node/0,1042,sid%253D37085,00.html  and here is the link to the June 2008 survey report on "Mastering Finance". http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/article/0%2C1002%2Ccid%25253D213128%2C00.html  I focused on page 10 of the report, where the survey respondents (government finance professionals) indicate 63% of "program owners do not understand the full cost of their services including asset costs", 49% say "our systems find it difficult to support the preparation of costing reports" and 54% believe there is not "a thorough understanding of the relationship between investments made (program costs) and outcomes achieved".

The importance of cost accounting has been noted on numerous occasions by the North Carolina Benchmarking Project as a barrier to useful information sharing and cross-government learning.  General information http://www.sog.unc.edu/programs/perfmeas/ Costing article http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.433425/it.I/id.62/.f    

Performance Evaluation

Please enter your thoughts, suggestions, concerns, successes, etc. about performance evaluation.

This is an area that has not received much attention until more recently.  The discipline of policy analysis is what I think of here, but others may certainly have other views.  I noticed the category in GFOA's 2007 conference materials as one of the 4 "spokes" in its "Integrated Model".  Here is the link to the conference pages.. http://www.gfoa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=489&Itemid=259  the link to the overview with the "Integrated Model"  Introduction – by Anne Spray Kinney, GFOA....and the presentation on Performance Evaluation – by Laurie Hestness, Ramsey County Community Human Resources, MN.

A site with lots of links and examples by Betty C. Jung includes government and non-goverment, and many on health  http://www.bettycjung.net/Evaluation.htm

Performance Measurement

Please enter your thoughts, suggestions, concerns, successes, etc. about performance measurement.

For the purpose of this blog, we might want to be careful about what we include in this category.  My preference is that we limit it to the issues of how to measure, what measures are valid, how to develop proxy measures, how frequently we collect the measures, how much detail to collect, the trade-off between relevance and reliability and similar issues.  There certainly are pleny of these to wrestle with - but we (in my humble opinion) often confuse the measuring issues with the other similar performance activities that have unique challenges such as reporting and auditing or managing and budgeting.

When I pause to think of great online resources in this area, I step back and realize that no generic website comes to mind.  There certainly are efforts at measurement driven by particular programatic areas, such as police or education or healthcare or transportation or corrections, but nothing of a general nature (please post one if you know).

One example of a well-defined measurement system for a programatic area is in corrections.  http://www.asca.net/pbms.html  and two of the downloads - Key Indicators (05/27/08) and the Glossary of PBMS Terms (updated May 2008).  Note that the initiative was started in 2001 and is not yet nationally deployed.

Another topic that crosses over here and with information systems is the concept of "meta-data" - such as used in the XML language (eXtensible Markup Language).  XML can be customized to numerous settings, so you may have heard recently about XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) which the Securities and Exchange Commission is now promoting.  The AGA has a project involving XML under the original title of "Process-Based Reporting" - though the name may be changed to "Performance Based Management".  The State of Oregon is a leading state in this area, currently doing a pilot project.      

Performance Citizen Engagement

I will confess to being like the majority of the attendees that have already filled out the pre-conference survey - the performance activity I have the least experience with is Citizen Engagement.  And yet, my own research on performance reporting shows that it is the weakest area of reporting by a large margin (using GASB's 16 criteria).

The Sloan Foundation has promoted this area with numerous grants.  The name/group that I am most aware of is Barbara Cohn Berman and the National Center for Civic Involvement.  A copy of her presentation from the PPMRN conference in November of 2007 provides a rich description of what she has found in her research.  http://ppmrn.rutgers.edu/GeneralContent.aspx?Id=18&PId=9pingli@!&PId=9

Performance Information Systems

I did not think about this "category" of performance activity until I found this article from Business Performance Magazine.  http://www.bpmmag.net/magazine/article.html?articleID=14980

It may come as a surprise to those in government that the language and concepts of performance measurement and performance management are regularly used in the business world.  Much of the emphasis in the business world is on the information systems that allow data to be seen or explored in new and deeper ways.  Other names include Business Intelligence (BI) or Business Analytics (BA), or BPM (Business Performance Management) as used above. 

The question/issue for our government blog - is how useful or relevant are these same (perhaps generic) information systems for helping us do performance measurement and management?

Recent comment from a government technology conference  http://www.governing.com/conf/tech/report.htm

Performance Management

Please enter your thoughts, suggestions, questions, concerns, successes, etc. about performance management.

Many of the sources on other performance topics include information about performance management.  Some additional sources include:

ICMA - The International City/County Management Association http://www.icma.org/main/bc.asp?bcid=646&hsid=1&ssid1=2509&ssid2=2527  just announced a new book by David Ammons which should be a great resource http://bookstore.icma.org/Leading_Performance_Management_P1841.cfm  Here is summary of one chaper on results-based management  http://www.icma.org/main/ns.asp?nsid=3905&usnewslink=P009

GFOA - Government Finance Officers Association has a glossary of terms (and other links & resources) http://www.gfoa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=526&Itemid=282

PPMRN - Public Performance Measurement & Reporting Network has some good resources as well as several presentations from its 2007 conference http://ppmrn.rutgers.edu/GeneralContent.aspx?Id=18&PId=9pingli@!&PId=9

GRADING THE STATES - here is the link to the Oregon page.  http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/states_card.aspx?abrv=OR  There is a pretty detailed 13-page report here "NEW! Download the Oregon Performance Report"

CHANGE MANAGEMENT - The so-called "business world" is often supposed to be better at performance management and it is allegedly easier (by some) to measure the performance of business by simple "profits".  Here is an interesting article referring to a study by "The Economist" where business seems to struggle mightily with change management issues.  http://businessfinancemag.com/article/why-most-change-initiatives-go-thud-0714

Performance Reporting

Please enter your thoughts, suggestions, questions, concerns, successes, etc. about performance reporting.

One of the key organizations is the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB).  http://www.seagov.org/aboutpmg/performance_reporting.shtml

Another proponent is the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) and two programs - the Certificate of Achievement http://www.agacgfm.org/performance/sea/aboutsea.aspx and Citizen-Centric Reporting http://www.agacgfm.org/citizen/

Performance Benchmarking

Please enter your thoughts, suggestions, questions, concerns, successes, etc. about performance benchmarking.

One of my all-time favorite benchmarking initiatives (and perhaps the best and longest running) is the North Carolina Benchmarking Project.  http://www.sog.unc.edu/programs/perfmeas/index.html

Here are some more benchmarking sites:

OMBI out of Canada is an amazing benchmarking effort http://www.ombi.ca/index.asp

Florida: http://www.flbenchmark.org/default.aspx

Southeastern: http://www.seresultsnetwork.org/index.php

South Carolina: http://www.ipspr.sc.edu/grs/SCMBP/SCMBP.asp

ICMA of course is the biggest; they also have multiple regional efforts including Puget Sound (but not much online re: the regional efforts) http://icma.org/main/bc.asp?bcid=107&hsid=12&ssid1=2470&ssid2=2540

Barrett and Greene assist with the "Grading the States" project at the Pew Center for the States.  http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp_report_card.aspx    Which has led to lots of ranking efforts.  What do you think about this effort to rank the best state for business?  http://www.cnbc.com/id/25501924  and  http://www.cnbc.com/id/25350187/site/14081545/

Performance Auditing

Please enter your thoughts, suggestions, concerns, successes, etc. about performance auditing.

One of the best sources I am familiar with is the "Auditor Roles" project funded in part by the Sloan Foundation.  http://www.auditorroles.org/

Performance Budgeting

Please enter your thoughts, suggestions, concerns, successes, etc. about performance budgeting. 

Two good sources that I am familiar with include the GFOA (Government Finance Officers Association) and the just completed World Bank conference in Mexico City.

GFOA - general website http://www.gfoa.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=220

Presentations from 2008 Annual Conference http://www.gfoa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=682

Presentations from 2007 & 2008 "Pre-Conference" Trainings http://www.gfoa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=489&Itemid=259

Budgeting for Outcomes  http://www.gfoa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=506&Itemid=270

World Bank conference - June 2008 (I found the keynote paper by Graham Scott to be a good introduction - the sound from the videos are only in Spanish at this point.)

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/LACEXT/MEXICOEXTN/0,,contentMDK:21789925~pagePK:141137~piPK:141127~theSitePK:338397,00.html   

A recent column (July 9, 2008) by Paul Posner from the GOVERNING daily e-mail talks about performance budgeting and the notion of overpromising.  In my opinion, the use of ethical argumentation would be a great way to avoid many of these over-selling problems. http://www.governing.com/mgmt_insight.aspx?id=5486  This column has several guest writers and changes weekly - the most recent column http://www.governing.com/mgmt_insight.aspx