Dashboards for Public and Private Sector Use

Dashboards seem to be all the rage these days and it's easy to understand why. In a world where instant and voluminous information is the standard, data dashboards allow users to take in a large amount of data in a short amount of time. My own company recently developed a new Dashboard tool because that seems to be where basic data analysis is headed. But a quick Google search on "data dashboards" reveals a myriad of tools and articles for various dashboard solutions. One question I'd like to pose is what makes for a good data dashboard and how can that be used in the context of an overall performance management program? Can dashboards be used to better inform an agency on performance? I'll follow up with a few postings on this topic but I look forward to any comments.

Performance Management Software Tools

This is an open question to all readers. What kinds of performance management software tools do you use in your agency or organization and can you provide the names of software tools? We have a tool we've developed called Gov-Metrics but I'm curious what others are using to assist them in gathering and reporting data. I imagine most are internal or custom solutions. Heck, I think most groups just use spreadsheets! For human services groups I know that Social Solutions has a great tool. Please chime in with feedback on the tool(s) used by your organization.

Measurement and Managing

You can't manage what you don't measure! If an organization believes that adage and decides to measure, it must also leverage software to increase its chances to manage successfully. I recommend that organizations take a three-pronged approach to ensure that they are not only measuring, but measuring with confidence!

The first ‘prong’ is what I call, “Identification”. What is being identified? What the organization should be measuring. It should measure those activities or results that are important to successfully achieving its goals. Once these are identified, they will be defined and measured to ensure that progress is made toward the organization’s goals.

Software does not currently offer much help in identifying what needs to be measured, but it does provide a mechanism to capture and document the metrics that will be measured. It also provides a central repository for this information as well as a search engine for locating them.

The second ‘prong’ is collection. This is the entering of raw data that happens at a defined interval: Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, etc. The data is typically entered by organization workers and prone to error. Workers can also enter descriptions of missed targets as well as narratives that provide insight into improvements.

Software offers a lot of help here. It can provide a clean web based interface to allow the organization workers to enter the data. It can offer a myriad of validations to reduce error rates. It can even import the data from existing systems so that data entry is minimized and/or eliminated.

The final ‘prong’ is where transparency is realized and provided to the organization’s constituents. I call it, “Dissemination”. There is an expectation that the data be tallied and distributed to interested parties allowing them to have a more complete picture of the activities and performance of the organization.

This is where the right software really shines! It can provide visually appealing, clear, informative reports that allow user interaction, filtering, sorting, exporting, etc. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, it can also provide graphical representations of the data so that trends can easily be spotted. Management can use these visual outcomes to assess performance and set goals for improvement.

Without the data gathered from performance measures—particularly those tied to the organization’s goals—it can be difficult to judge if an organization is being managed efficiently. Organizations should use software to take a three-pronged approach to measurement: Identification, Collection, and Dissemination. When they do, they will be well on their way to measuring with confidence!

Performance Management in Africa

I recently came across a seedling of performance management in Africa of all places through the Africa Public Service Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Forum. The only presence that they currently have is on Facebook but I encourage anyone interested to follow them online and assist in informing the discussion. It would be interesting if Africa became a hotbed of performance management discussion.

Software as a Service (SaaS) for Performance Management - Part 2

This is the second of a two-part post about Software as a Service (SaaS) for performance management. In the first part I provided an introduction to SaaS, defined what it is and touched on some of its applications to performance management. In this second part I'll detail the various benefits of SaaS including but not limited to cost-effectiveness, reliability, and ease of deployment.

SaaS Benefits

Here are the benefits of SaaS for Performance Management:

• Cost-Effective and Affordable

• Secure and Reliable

• Easy to Deploy

• Easy to Learn

• Low-Risk Investment

• Simple and Scalable

• Controls Costs

Cost-Effective and Affordable

How would a busy agency support a sophisticated technology used to manage its performance? They could rely on a SaaS vendor to maintain the technology for them. SaaS is the easiest way for government agencies that use technology to manage performance to get up and running quickly. All they need is a Web browser. For a low subscription cost, workers can enter, monitor and report on performance metrics using a Web browser. The public has Web-based access to reports. The agency has no server costs and no backups to maintain locally.

Secure and Reliable

Because SaaS vendors serve many clients, they invest more resources than a typical government agency in equipment and expertise to maintain reliability and security. Many SaaS providers leverage co-location datacenters, which offer highly secure, redundant hosting environments and off-site back-up systems. These are often “greener” solutions through the use of server virtualization and multi-tenant applications. Most SaaS providers offer service level agreements with information about privacy and data security, including: the physical security of servers and data, redundancy, back-up services, network security, and the location of the servers (hosting the application from at least two sites prevents loss of service in case of a fire, power outage, loss of Internet connectivity or other issues that typically cause a disruption in service).

Easy to Deploy

By leveraging cloud computing, SaaS applications can be turned on as needed because there is no client-side infrastructure to buy, install, configure, or maintain. When users log in they see what they need based on their role in the system, and the administrator simply adds new users by creating a new account.

Easy to Learn

SaaS helps government centralize information while distributing control. Instead of manually gathering metrics in separate formats, the information is entered in a consistent manner into a central repository. Workers and the public have role-based access to appropriate data and reports. They are empowered at the proper level with the needed data.

Low Risk Investment

Because SaaS-based solutions deliver service online and have a common code base, the setup and implementation for an agency is minimal. An agency can essentially test the service without a significant outlay of capital and time.

Simple and Scalable

The SaaS application can be rolled out to a few users or departments at a time. Once others are ready they can easily be added to the system. Since the SaaS provider developed the system capabilities they make the updates available to all customers, not just the ones that reported the issue.

Controls Costs

The greatest benefit for customers is the ability to control costs. The estimated price for an installed enterprise solution for a large government agency is more than 1/2 million dollars with at least 1 year implementation time, plus annual line items for support agreements, dedicated full-time employees (providing support), and hardware costs. With SaaS, the customer is able to start small and have a solution up and running in a matter of weeks. In addition there is a predictable amount to pay each year (usually paid monthly).

The Real Opportunity Is Change

Transforming today’s challenges into opportunities requires smart leadership and strategic use of technology to save time and money while capturing performance metrics that will allow an organization to improve over time. A reliable software as a service provider that specializes in and understands the unique needs of the Performance Management environment can help government produce better results today at a fraction of the cost of enterprise software. Performance management software costs should never be a deterrent in developing your jurisdiction's program.

Software as a Service (SaaS) for Performance Management - Part 1

This is the first of a two-part post about Software as a Service (SaaS) for performance management. In the first part I'll provide an introduction to SaaS, define what it is and touch on some of its applications to performance management. In the second part I'll detail the various benefits of SaaS including but not limited to cost-effectiveness, reliability, and ease of deployment.

The race is on for Government to focus on results, but the race is long and difficult because the path is rot with challenges. New technologies promise transformation of performance management processes, a great opportunity, indeed, but often at a high cost with a long implementation timeframe. SaaS solutions offer a cost effective way to simpler performance management implementation.

Municipalities, large and small, need to discover Software as a Service (SaaS) — referred to by some as applications that live in “the cloud”, Web-based, online, or on-demand as a way to save time and money without sacrificing the basic tenants of performance management: Results, Relevancy, Transparency, Timeliness, and Accuracy. SaaS also brings applications under a single platform, making it easier to implement performance management programs as well as an improved ability to benchmark across jurisdictions. SaaS is a technology trend that promises to provide a simpler solution for implementing performance management programs.

SaaS Defined

SaaS, on-demand, and cloud computing have become common terms in the technology world. In one way or another, they refer to the growing trend of software vendors providing their applications over the Web as a service, rather than as a set of code to install on a local server or desktop computer. Some actually provide both solutions. With SaaS, customers tap into one code base that is refined and enhanced (producing better results for the users) based on feedback from all users. The whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. Organizations and/or individuals subscribe to the service and access it using a computer, laptop or even their mobile phone. These applications are known as on-demand, Cloud-based, Web-based, or online. Cloud computing is used by many SaaS providers and refers to massive server farms that host applications online for many customers. Cloud computing enables flexible processing power and storage capacity to scale up or down, depending on actual usage.

Almost everyone who uses the Internet today has used SaaS. Email programs such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail are examples of SaaS. What is really nice is that there is nothing to download or install, users simply create an account and log in through a Web browser. Popular social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter operate using a SaaS model.

SaaS as a Government Performance Management Tool

SaaS is ideal for government seeking technology solutions to help them implement performance management programs. Because these programs often encompass many disparate agencies/divisions that can geographically span hundreds or thousands of miles, it is useful to have a centralized, common technology platform that many users can share. In the event that some users are outside of your network, SaaS allows users to access your performance management data and application from anywhere. SaaS offers both simplicity and a cost-effective solution for government users.

Updates on Recent and Upcoming Performance Management Events

It's been a little while, but I have a few upcoming posts on performance management. In the meantime, here are a few upcoming events that are of relevance in the government performance management realm:

The Community Indicators Consortium (CIC) holds its international conference in Bellevue, Washington this year on Oct 1-2. CIC is a great group and Ben Warner runs a great blog on Community Indicators for anyone interested in this area. Very similar to performance metrics and from a slightly more citizen-centric standpoint.

The Association of Government Accountants (or is it Accountability?) holds its Performance Management Conference on Nov 5-6 in Seattle, Washington. I plan to be there along with all the other party people involved in performance management.

If anyone made it to the ICMA conference this week, feel free to chime in with some comments. I missed it and am curious how prevalent performance was discussed.

Finally, the Performance Management Commission released its Performance Management Framework for public review and as expected, it's too long! Who's going to read this thing when it's more than 30 pages? It's too bad because there are a lot of great concepts in it. For anyone who doesn't have the time to read such a document, I still advocate my own framework.