6 Secrets To Public Sector Performance Measurement

Public sector performance measurement has the power to improve decision-making at all levels, educate your organization, and contribute to organizational outcomes. It's a valuable management tool, but successful implementation of performance measurement in the public sector can be challenging. Follow these 6 success secrets to implement performance measurement in your organization.

First, lets define public sector performance measurement. At it's simplest, performance measurement is seeking to answer the question "How are we doing"? Traditionally, this is done by the on-going monitoring and analysis of organizational activities, outputs and outcomes. This performance information is generally organized into a performance measurement framework that supports the ready collection and analysis of performance data.

Most importantly, understand that public sector performance measurement is just a means to an end. The real goal is effective and efficient organizational performance. Performance measurement is just one of the management tools to help achieve that goal.

Here are 6 success secrets that will help your performance measurement project.

Success Secret 1: Performance Measurement Needs Project Management.
To be successful, your public sector performance measurement initiative should be run like any other project, with defined objectives and supported by sound planning and adequate resources. Your performance measurement project needs a budget, a plan, a time-line and tangible milestones. If you follow a proven, structured methodology you can create and implement a reporting framework that will provide you valuable information about your organization.

Success Secret 2: Performance Measurement Needs Commitment.
You can't do real organizational performance measurement to someone, or even for someone. A successful public sector performance measurement framework can only be built with the engagement and commitment of your management team and key personnel. They know your business better than anyone; this knowledge is essential to creating measures and indicators that accurately reflect your organization.

Success Secret 3: Performance Measurement Needs Time.
In an organization of any significant size or complexity, it will take time to establish a performance reporting regime. The manager needs to have tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity at the start. Your personnel have to learn what is important to measure, and the most effective way to accomplish that. It may take several reporting periods to develop a robust and informative performance measurement framework.

Success Secret 4: Performance Measurement Needs Coordination.
It's critical that the manager doesn't underestimate the level of commitment and resources needed to support performance measurement. The manager has to plan for:

- transfer of performance measurement knowledge, skills and abilities;
- communications about the new system to promote and improve understanding;
- on-going support requirements, both technical and operational.

All this is made much easier if the manager appoints a performance measurement coordinator for the organization. The coordinator will be the custodian of the process of performance measurement, and the main point of reference for both staff and external stakeholders involved in the performance measurement project.

This is an important responsibility; ideally the coordinator is a person with good knowledge of the organization's goals and objectives. This knowledge is necessary to help ensure the performance measurement framework accurately reflects those goals.

Success Secret 5: Performance Measurement Needs Continuous Improvement.
In order to get the process of performance measurement embedded in the management practices of your organization, start small. This means begin by creating just a handful of key measures, and collecting data. Then communicate the results, and make decisions based on the evidence. Create an action plan to implement the decisions. Follow up, and make sure your action plan produced the results you desired.

This is continuous improvement driven by performance measurement. It is more important to get this process established than to create any particular measure. Once you establish the process of collecting, analyzing and using performance data to make decisions, more measures can be added as they become necessary.

Success Secret 6: Performance Measurement Needs Momentum.
In other words, start small but start fast; deploy your performance measurement system as quickly as is feasible. Do not try to create the 'perfect' framework, or craft the perfect measures, first time out. First, perfection is impossible; the best model is still just an approximation of your organizations tasks and goals.

Second, you don't really understand what you need to measure about your organization until you see some results i.e. data.

So, your goal when first embarking on public sector performance measurement is to identify some key outputs and desirable outcomes that support the objectives of your organization, and then come up with a handful of measures you believe will reflect your results. Get the data for these measures as quickly as possible, and see what it tells you.

If the measures are any good, your people will want to see more, and will work to improve the framework over successive reporting periods.