I. IntroductionThe term Government Performance Management (GPM) is totally derived from the concept of “Corporate Performance Management (CPM)”. However due to the differences in the goals and vision of corporate entities versus Government institutions, the new term GPM is more relevant.
CPM consists mainly of three stages:
1. Crafting/Planning
2. Execution
3. Monitoring and Analysis
GPM also consists of pretty much the same phases. However the main difference lies in the Planning stage, and mainly in the strategic planning stage. When any organization “crafts” a plan, it does so based on its vision and mission. As per the Balanced Scorecards concepts, in order to measure the organization’s performance, the various objectives should be classified under 4 main categories:
1- Financial
2- Customer
3- Learning & Growth
4- Business Process
The core difference between CPM and GPM lies in the order of these quadrants and also in the nomenclature. For GPM, the Customer (who is actually the “Citizen”) lies on top of all the quadrants. The Financials quadrant lies in the bottom, as it is purely a means, not an end for Governments (obviously the opposite is totally true for corporate organizations). Therefore the quadrants under GPM are:
1- Citizens
2- Processes
3- Learning & Growth
4- Financials
II. Crafting/PlanningCrafting or Planning is the process of building the plans and criteria upon which the performance of an entity will be measured. This is done usually on two levels:
o Strategic
o Operational
Strategic Plans are long term objectives. The range of these plans vary based on the policies set by each organization. For example in the UAE, strategic plans for government spans a three (3) years period. I.e. the strategic plan includes KPI’s for goals that have to be achieved within 3 years. Other organizations might decide to build strategic plans for five (5) years. The Urban Planning Council in Abu Dhabi has an aggressive strategic plan that needs to be achieved by 2030. An example of these Strategic goals would be achieving 98% in citizens satisfaction.
To achieve a strategic plan, it has to be divided into annual milestones, which are mainly Operational Plans. These operational plans will include initiatives that need to be accomplished within one year, or at least a pre-defined percentage of them. Therefore a strategic plan for 3 years would include 3 operational plans. Each initiative in the operational plan has to be linked to a strategic goal. For example, to achieve a strategic goal in the above example, i.e. 98% citizens satisfaction, an operational initiative might be implementing a Citizen Relationship Management system to manage and track citizens complaints and suggestions. Another operational KPI might be hiring more Customer Care agents, or giving them additional training.
In an ideal world, if all the initiatives that are related to a specific Strategic goal are met, then the strategic goal is expected to be achieved as well. However for this relationship to be this accurate, then a proper Crafting/Planning platform has to be available. Such a solution has to enable authorized users to log the Strategic Objectives, Goals and their related KPI’s. Then necessary workflows will need to be triggered to collect the necessary approvals for these inputs. Many details should also be set, such as reminders, deadlines, stakeholders, etc.
The system should also facilitate the operational planning which is done on an annual basis. I.e. before the beginning of each year by a specific duration, authorized employees should be able to log the operational initiatives, KPI’s, and other details such as the percentages that should be achieved for each initiative throughout the 4 quarters of the year. Then a workflow should also be triggered to get the operational plan approved by the higher management.
III. ExecutionThroughout the operational lifecycle of the organization, KPI’s stakeholders are expected to log their achievement for each KPI on a quarterly basis. This will enable managers later to track the progress of each initiative, and to keep track of any slacking in accomplishing the defined tasks. The GPM system should send reminders to employees on a quarterly basis, asking them to fill their accomplishment for each KPI that they are responsible of. This will be the case if the results were supposed to be filled in manually.
A more accurate Actual figure can sometimes be retrieved from other applications. For this purpose the system should be able to integrate with backend applications to get precise numbers without any room for human errors. For example if an operational initiative was implementing a CRM application. If this initiative was supposed to be 100% complete by the end of the operational year as follows:
o 30% in Q1
o 55% in Q2
o 80% in Q3
o 100% in Q4
If the organization has an Enterprise Project Management system, then the progress of the CRM implementation project can be retrieved automatically from the EPM, thus disallowing employees from filling inaccurate numbers for the actual progress of this project.
IV. Monitoring and AnalysisNow that plans have already been set, and progress on various KPI’s has been logged, it’s time to monitor the performance of the organization, and analyze the organization’s performance.
a. MonitoringUnderstanding what is happening at any given point in time within your organization is critical to effective performance management. Organizations need to be able to:
o Check progress against individual, departmental and organizational goals.
o Learn how a division, subsidiary, or team is performing against organizational targets.
o See how individual goals affect overall organization’s strategy.
For this purpose, the GPM solution should provide highly visual and interactive scorecards and dashboards that can keep officials and authorized employees users up to date on what is happening and how it relates to the overall performance of the organization.
Based on up-to-date and reliable data, officials will be able to study the situations at any point in time, and then come up with the right decisions faster, after proper analysis for the data.
b. AnalysisRich and powerful analytic capabilities can give users answers to the “why” questions:
o Why did performance dip when you expected it to peak?
o Why is citizens’ satisfaction not getting better?
o Why is a forecast off-target?
The GPM solution helps organizations answer those questions because it provides advanced visualization tools that help them gain insight into data faster. Using visualizations like performance maps, decomposition trees, and other tools can help expedite their understanding of what is happening at any given moment in their organizations.
V. GPM Solution – Technical OverviewThe GPM system provides an end-to-end solution for the performance management lifecycle. It can be implemented using Microsoft technologies as follows:
o .Net modules for the Crafting/Planning & the Execution
o PerformancePoint Services of MOSS 2007 to build the interactive dashboards and analytical reports
o SQL Server Analysis Services for building the data warehouse necessary for the dashboards
o A workflow engine for building the necessary workflows for Planning and Execution
o MOSS 2007 for displaying the dashboards in an Intranet Portal
By: Ahmad Moussa About the Author:
