Citizen focus – General information

Have you ever asked…?

… Am I getting the goods and services for my money?
… How is the quality of these goods and services?
… Do I get good value in return for my tax dollars?
… Do these goods and services help improve my life?

If you have asked these questions, most certainly you hope a business will be able to answer them to your satisfaction and to that of other customers. However, for a long time it was nearly impossible to ask such questions of government entities and get a meaningful answer. Few governments could tell you (their customers) how good their services were, how much service they provided, if you received good value in return for your taxes paid, and few governments could even explain clearly what they were trying to accomplish.

Fortunately that situation has been changing. More and more governments are engaging in a practice called performance management. This is a comprehensive process for focusing an organization on its mission, goals, and objectives. Accomplishing these goals and objectives becomes the organization’s primary endeavor.

• Performance Management

The purpose of performance management relates to the underlying concept of government accountability to the public. Governments should be accountable for the proper use of tax dollars and for providing quality goods and services that citizens need and desire.

• Government Accountability

Performance management uses a tool called performance measurement to assess whether or not the organization is on course to achieve its intended end results. Service Efforts and Accomplishments (SEA) performance measures equip citizens with the information necessary to ensure sufficient accountability from their government organizations and their leaders.

SEA performance measures also provide governments with the kind of information needed for them to make accurate assessments of past events and to ensure their day-to-day operations run smoothly. SEA performance measures tell what needs are (or are not) being met and enable officials to devise a plan to meet those needs. Successful long-range planning requires reliable, useful, and accurate data.

• Performance Measurement

The following two examples provide a situation, questions you might want to know the answers to, and the SEA performance information that may be useful in providing the answers.

Example One:
Suppose you are planning to move and want to compare the schools in several districts.

• Will my child get enough attention from the teacher?
  -- Look at the number of students that a teacher is responsible for.
  
• Are the classes crowded?
  -- Look at the student / classroom ratio.
  
• What about academic standards?
  -- Look at graduation rates, mastery test scores, or changes in student achievement as they progress through the school system.

Example Two:
A municipal sanitation department needed to decide how to respond to rapid residential growth rate and, therefore, an increased demand for garbage collection.

• Is there enough room in the trucks?
  -- Look at the tons per truck shift (how much trash, on average, each truck collects each day).
• Will the workers have enough time to collect the additional garbage?
  -- Look at the number of hours it takes workers to complete a daily collection route.

So, what role can you, as a citizen, play in performance reporting for government?

• First, realize that citizens are the largest and most important audience for SEA reports.
• Second, because citizens are the primary audience, you should let your government (state, city, county, village, school district, etc.) know that SEA performance measures are crucial for you to make decisions, and then ask that they be collected and reported to the public.
• Third, collaborate with your government to identify what SEA performance information is needed to develop useful measures and to establish a system for collecting and reporting those measures.