Performance measurement

In 2006, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) authorized the Performance and Accountability Reporting (PAR) Pilot Program, which permitted executive branch agencies to use an alternative approach to reporting financial and performance information. Eleven departments and agencies volunteered to participate in the FY 2007 PAR Pilot Program. Three initiatives were held to assess and share lessons learned from the PAR Pilot Program.

Public managers in communities across the country are under increasing pressure by the public to report on the outcomes and results of their programs. With both internal and external demands for information, public managers not only need to provide an accounting of resources expended and services provided, but also report on performance and outcomes.

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Based on her observations of best practices in various states, Judy Zelio identifies five specific actions that state agencies can take to provide performance information that legislators will see as useful, such as ensuring that executive branch budget staff provides performance information for legislative use that "emphasizes policy results rather than administrative measures."

Historically, transforming state government meant restructuring or reorganizing the executive branch or a single agency. However, these approaches are no longer seen as effective. State government must become more flexible and responsive to the rapidly changing environment in which they operate. The four transformation strategies recommended in this report can be acted upon in a relatively short period of time without investing a great deal of additional resources and without partisan debates.

Since the early 1990's, the federal government has been moving toward a more results oriented, performance-based management environment. Under performance-based acquisition (PBA), agencies tell the contractor the results they want, not how to do the work and then measure whether or not the results are achieved. Uneven adoption of PBA techniques appears to be partly due to holding contracting accountable for a program responsibility, as well as a lack of staff expertise.

Governments use analytics (often described as "business intelligence") to enable and drive their strategies and performance in an ever more volatile and turbulent environment. Analytics and fact-based decision making can make a powerful contribution to the achievement of government missions, just as they are now making to the accomplishment of corporate business objectives.

This insight brief provides the necessary steps agency management must take to recognize the critical role that contract management plays in accomplishing agency missions.Contracting

This paper outlines the challenges facing the U.S. health care system, how prevention can help address these challenges, examples of wellness and prevention programs, suggestions for program components and design, and proposed standards for the federal government to adopt to promote quality and effective programs. The Living Well plan brings together the best preventive care knowledge from the public and private sectors and offers the first real opportunity to transform the health of Americans, improve the quality of health care, and slow the growth of health care costs.

Dr. Ho presents two case studies - one from Des Moines, Iowa; the other from Boston, Massachusetts - where government agencies and citizen groups reported their own or their government's performance, respectively. While each of these cases reflects different strategic approaches, they both attempt to bring together what government does and what citizens see as being important in their community. In his report, Dr.