Performance
Measurement &
Benchmarking Charting Success
FGFOA Webinar 10-30-14
Objectives of Session
 Help understand the context of performance
measures and benchmarking
 How performance measures and benchmarking
should and can be used for improvement to a
department/division’s performance
 How performance measurement systems and
benchmarking can benefit an organization & be used
to communicate with the public being served.
Sound Familiar???
•
Councilman: Tampa’s code enforcement system ‘broken’
Tampa Tribune: August 1, 2013
•
Poor survey results turn focus to code enforcement
Pasco Tribune: May 14, 2014
•
Fed up, Tampa woman calls 8 On Your Side about neighbor’s
trash dump
News Channel 8: June 2, 2014
•
Commissioners want action on Valrico property mess
News Channel 8: March 19, 2014
Telling Your Story with Data
Accountability & Transparency
•
Can you demonstrate to citizens and elected officials that
your department, agency, program provides: efficient,
effective and quality services?
•
Can you tell your story?
•
How do your departments and services compare overall to
other local governments?
•
Do you have departments or services that are exemplary?
What is Performance
Measurement?
• Movies
• Schools
• Cars
• Baseball
• Others?
Definition of Performance
Measurement
“The regular collection of specific
information about the effectiveness, the
quality and the efficiency of government
services and programs.”
The Urban Institute in Cooperation with the National League of Cities and National Association of
Counties Performance Measures: A Guide for Elected Officials, 1980.
What is Performance Measurement?
• A system of measurement on a regular basis of the
results and the efficiency of services or programs.
• Helps to tells the public and elected officials how
they benefit from our services.
• Provides more insight into the extent to which our
services help accomplish our mission.
Why Performance Measurement
is Important
• What gets measured, gets done.
• In order to improve something, you have to change it
. . . In order to change something, you have to
understand it . . . In order to understand something,
you have to measure it.
• It is better to make decisions on the basis of data
than on “gut feelings”
• If you can demonstrate results, you can increase
public support.
Categories of Information Used in
Performance Measurement Systems
• Inputs
Resources used in producing an output or outcome
• Outputs
Completed activity, amount of work done within the
organization
• Outcomes
Assess the effect of the output
• Efficiency or Unit-Cost Ratio
Relationship between the amount of input and the
amount of output or outcome
The Three Dimensions of Performance
FEEDBACK ON QUALITY
INPUTS
OUTPUT
QUALITY
OUTCOME
PROGRAM
FEEDBACK ON EFFICIENCY
FEEDBACK ON EFFECTIVENESS
Source: L. L. Martin (2002). Making Performance Based Contracting Perform: What the Federal Government Can Learn From
State & Local Governments. IBM Center for the Business of Government www.businessofgovernment.org
What benefit is there to Performance
Measures?
• Behaviors change when people know they are being
watched. (Hawthorne Effect)
• Helps develop a system of recognition based on facts
• Reveals information about your operations that you
may not have known or uncovered
• Links our organization's mission to our daily work
• Demonstrate accomplishments
• Maximizes utilization of resources
Telling Your Story to Stakeholders
Some Guidelines
• Focus on the important few things you do.
• Pick measure that tell stakeholders:
• what you do,
• how much of it you do,
• how well you do it,
• what results you get.
• Measuring too much is just as bad as not measuring
anything (Peter Drucker)
• You get 80% of your results from 20% of your efforts”
(Pareto Rule)
You Can’t Measure What We Do
Response: No matter what the service or program,
some local government is already measuring it.
It’s Not Fair Because We Don’t Have Total Control Over
The Outcome
Response: Few, if any, programs and services have
total control over their outcomes.
It Will Invite Unfair Comparisons
Response: Comparisons are going to be made anyway
It Will Be Used Against Us
Response: Demonstrating transparency and
accountability inspires trust, even when the news is not
good.
It’s Just a Passing Fad
Response: No it isn’t! It has been around for 30 years.
We Don’t Have the Data/We Can’t Get the Data
Response: In the IT age, it is hard to believe that performance
data are not available
We Don’t Have the Staff
Response: You probably won’t get additional staff. However, if
all your staff devoted 5% of their time to developing,
tracking, reporting and managing with performance data,
your programs and services would probably have fewer
problems.
Source: Fairfax County, Virginia (2005). A Manual for Performance Measurement.
Performance Measurement Pitfalls
• Weak formal program or coordinating team
• Measures are presented in program plans but are
not linked to any specific goals, funding levels or
performance trends
• Most measures are output indicators
• Results are not helpful in decision making or program
modifications
• There is no process for confirming accuracy/validity
of data
• There is no benchmarking to compare services to
peer communities
Performance Measurement
Performance Measurement - focuses on
measuring what is occurring, but does not
ask why or how it is occurring
Benchmarking…
NOT the same as marking benches
18
Objectives of Session
• Help understand the context of benchmarking
• Set the ground work for implementation or
improvement to a department/divisions choices for
benchmarking
What is Benchmarking?
• Selection of a reference point to make comparisons
or measurement against
• A standard that we measure ourselves against
• Benchmarking should motivate people to improve
toward a goal
Beginning to Benchmark
To really improve your performance, you have to
ask yourself:
• Why are others better?
• How are others better?
• What can we learn?
• How can we catch up?
• How can we become the best in our peer group?
Most Common Areas to Benchmark
Five areas to benchmark
• Historical trends
• Our goals to our results
• Internal components, i.e. between departments
or between neighborhoods
• Our community’s service level to similar
communities’ level of service
• Comparisons to other entities, i.e. larger
communities, private business
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Benchmarking – What to do…
• Be proactive – select your benchmarks before they are
selected for you
• Be sure to compare apples to apples
– Common definitions
– Common data elements
– Common time frame
• Establish criteria for selecting benchmarking partners before
selecting those partners
• Remember it isn’t about “who’s first and who’s last”, it’s about
your organizations priorities.
Telling Your Story with Data
Accountability & Transparency
 Can you demonstrate to citizens and elected officials that
your department, agency, program provides: efficient,
effective and quality services?
 Can you tell your story?
 How do your departments and services compare overall to
other local governments?
 Do you have departments or services that are exemplary?
Telling Your Story with Data
Identify what questions need to be answered in your
jurisdiction
 Peer Groups
 Performance targets and status
 Best practice tracking
Benchmark against peers on actual work performed
and actual cost of performing that work
Identify a target performance (estimate # of work
orders that can be completed based on budget)
The Benefits
• Accurately measure organizational performance
• Opportunity to learn from similar organizations
• Quantifiable, verifiable, relevant data to present to
management
• First collection cycle may be challenging, successive
cycles will be easier
• More participation in a larger group (like FBC), better
results!
Summary of Benchmarking
• Benchmarking should motivate people to improve toward a
goal.
• If you don’t measure it, you don’t know if it works.
• Used wisely, benchmarking can be a powerful change
management tool.
• Long term process that takes TIME!
• "If we do not change our direction, we might arrive where we
are moving towards." (Chinese Proverb)
Overview: The Difference Between
Performance Measurement and Benchmarking
Performance Measurement
Focuses on measuring what is occurring, but
does not ask why or how it is occurring
Benchmarking
Comparing your performance to yourself (over
time) or to other similar governments, programs
or services
Facts, Shmacts
Framework for Using Data
Measure
Compare
Learn
Improve
Measure
• Adopt good balanced performance measures
(inputs, outputs, quality, efficiency)
• Collect relevant data
• Report your data
Compare
• Compare against yourself over time (are there
trends?)
• Compare against your peer communities
• Compare against your adopted operating
targets
• Compare with your adopted strategic plan
targets
• Compare against industry standards
Learn
•
•
•
•
After doing comparisons, what did you learn?
Are you on target or not?
If not, you need to learn why not
Conduct analysis/assessment on why you missed
target(s)
• Find out why your peers are better (phone calls,
survey, etc.)
• Conduct analysis of the peer survey results to learn
where you can get better.
Improve
• Based upon what we learned, what do we need to
do to improve - specifically?
• What do we need to do to get back on target?
(without spending more on operations and staffing)
• Are there process improvements we can make? [(reengineering) – quicker and smarter]
• Re-organization for better alignment (re-assign
existing staff)
• Budget revision (redistribution of existing resources)
And now…without further ado…
Looking at the Data!!!
Examples of Output Measures
Looking at Fleet Management
• Vehicle turnaround time
• Unscheduled work orders completed
• PM/scheduled work orders completed
• Gallons of fuel dispensed
• Annual new vehicles purchased
• Annual vehicle disposition
Examples of Quality Measures
Looking at Fleet Management
• Customer satisfaction measures
• Repetitive maintenance statistics
• Mean time between failures
• Warranty statistics
• Average maintenance cost per vehicle
Examples of Outcome Measures
Looking at Fleet Management
• Daily vehicle availability
• Fuel consumption reductions
• Percentage of replacement eligible vehicles
• Revenues (direct labor/material sales)
• Customer mission completion statistics
Fleet Management – Example of
Outcome Measure
Fleet Management – Example of
Outcome Measure
Average Days from Complaint
to First Inspection (Cities)
Average Days from Complaint
to First Inspection (Counties)
Percent of Cases Brought
Into Compliance (Cities)
Percent of Cases Brought
Into Compliance (Counties)
Square Miles per
Officer FTE (Cities)
Square Miles per
Officer FTE (Counties)
Cases per Officer FTE (Cities)
Cases per Officer FTE (Counties)
Cost per Case (Cities)
Cost per Case (Counties)
Cost per Citizen (Cities)
Cost per Citizen (Counties)
So how do you gain support?
• Define, align & achieve organizational
goals
• Engage your employees, bosses and
peers
• Create & nurture a metric minded culture
Questions to Ask Yourself
• Why should data collection be important to
management?
• What can be learned by drilling down into your data?
• Why use metrics to promote and report your
department’s strengths and weaknesses?
• How can you use FBC data to improve your
organization?
To Chart Your Success . . .
The Ultimate Goal Must Be:
Improved performance, not just in
terms of compliance, but efficiency
and cost effectiveness in achieving
compliance!!!
Final Comments
• Remember – measuring too much is the same as
not measuring at all
• If you don’t measure it, you don’t know if it works
• Long term process that takes TIME!
• “Performance measurement systems should be
positive, not punitive. The most successful
performance measurement systems are not ‘gotcha’
systems, but learning systems.” -National
Performance Review
Questions…
Contact Information
FBC Website: www.flbenchmark.org
Susan Boyer
FBC Executive Director
Email: sboyer@flbenchmark.org