Comparison of Federal Performance Plans: HHS vs. DOJ

Browsing through several different Federal agency performance reports online there are some clear leaders in terms of quality of measures and others that have some challenges. In municipal performance reporting, police departments have often led the way in statistical performance data, largely because crime information is well-defined and one of the most monitored by citizens. Social service agencies typically lag behind their public safety counterparts with respect to municipal performance metrics. At the Federal level, it appears that the opposite is true.

The HHS Administration for Children and Families website has the agency performance reports going back to 2000. A look at the HHS ACF 2008 performance report shows some decent measures (many are outcome-oriented, a break from the output-focused measures of many agencies) that have been created by ACF as well as what looks like honest reporting of those measures. I assume honest reporting based on the fact that the agency has met less of its targets over the last several years. The measures appear well thought out and given the honest reporting of missed targets, the data appears to be reliable. Additionally, the reports get shorter each year since 2000. That's probably a good thing with respect to the public actually reading the document, and the agency focusing more intensely an a narrow set of measures and goals. If you can't explain a measure on a cocktail napkin, it's less likely to be reported and recorded accurately over time.

On the other side of the public spectrum is the DOJ Performance and Accountability Report for 2008. The report is a combination of both performance and financial data and comes just under the whopping-300 page mark. The parts that focus on performance metrics are lacking in a number of ways. Most are output-oriented and don't inform management or the public as to the effectiveness of the agency (One of the measures, "Terrorist Acts Committed by Foreign Nationals Against U.S. Interests", is zero in most years with 2001 the notable exception and would almost certainly be known without needing to be included in the performance report. The measure is neither informative nor a helpful management tool). While the municipal law enforcement agencies have made great strides in performance reporting, the Federal level agencies seem to just be getting their feet under them. One reason may be because of the difficulty in attributing crime and arrest rates to a Federal agency whose jurisdiction is the entire country. Most responsibilities of the agency are shared with state and local jurisdictions, yet the DOJ has little or no control over those agencies. Regardless, there are almost certainly some performance measures that the DOJ could come up with that are more worthwhile. If not, how can their effectiveness truly be measured? A good start would be to narrow the report into something more digestible that might actually be used in agency management.

State Correctional Group Leading the Way In Performance Measurement

An excellent example of a national group attempting to standardize measures across an industry is the Association of State Correctional Administrators. They have an ambitious project titled the Performance Based Measures system that seeks to standardize measures within corrections through strict definitions and counting measures for actions such as assaults, accidents, health-related measures and many others. Information on the project can be found here.

I was fortunate to attend a training session for the program and I have to say that it was really impressive. The counting rules and definitions manual is thorough and fairly clear (and as thick as a dictionary) and can be found here. They even have a web-based tool for jurisdictions to enter their data. The biggest problem that I could tell from their efforts was the general lack of sophistication of a number of state and local corrections agencies. Several of the jurisdictions I talked to simply didn't have the data to fill out the requirements of the PBMS system.

Still, this could be a great starting point for other areas of government such as health care, human services, parks and recreation, etc. to set up their own set of performance measures. It will not be easy, though. The PBMS system was started in 2001 and took more than 6 years to finalize and get a production application running.

For public data on performance metrics and management, check out these cities:

Washington DC: http://capstat.oca.dc.gov/

Baltimore: http://www.ci.baltimore.md.us/government/citistat/

New York City:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cscity.pdf

Good newsletters and sources of information

If you haven't already, sign up for the free ICMA newsletter on performance management here.

And check in periodically to see what's going on with the Performance Management Commision's efforts at: http://pmcommission.org/

Intro to Measures Matter

This blog is meant as a public discussion forum for anyone interested in sharing their thoughts on the topic of government performance metrics and management. Increased public oversight has called for greater use of metrics and data in evaluating the effectiveness of government agencies. The trend thus far has been a ground-up approach to the use of performance data as programs like CompStat in New York City, CityStat in Baltimore and CapStat in Washington DC have been successful in incorporating performance data into their operations. States and the Federal government have been slower to adopt performance management systems but the call for greater accountability of tax expenditures in the recent Federal stimulus package creates an excellent opportunity for advances in this area.

In addition, national initiatives to standardize metrics across municipalities such as the ICMA Center For Performance Measurement and the National Performance Management Advisory Commission have gained some momentum. The idea of having a standard set of well-defined measures for all public entities would provide the ability to benchmark across jurisdictions.

The struggle still lies in changing government culture, and convincing decision makers that this industry is no different from the private sector. While performance can't be rolled into the same ideas of expenses and profits, there are ways to objectively evaluate effectiveness in the public sector through a well thought out performance management plan. Public managers can make evaluate and determine corrective action based on metrics and data, not just conjecture and qualitative assessments.

I hope that you will join me in improving the discussion surrounding this area and will share this blog with your friends. Please feel free to post comments and if you think you would like to contribute to the blog feel free to contact me.