Colorado Governor Bill Owens, the keynote speaker, encouraged leaders to borrow good ideas from others. As an example, he spotlighted the continuing progress of the charter school system and other school accountability measures in Colorado. "The change has been miraculous," Owens said. "We don't have any excuses. We measure and we try to improve."
The attendees also heard Denver's longtime Mayor Wellington Webb-- recently term-limited out of office--emphasize the role that performance data played in his efforts to improve public safety. "We use a lot of statistical data. You need to be able to some degree to statistically document what your achievements are."
BRINGING DATA ALIVE
"Put a face on the data," O'Neill advised his audience, if you wish to convey the significance of performance measures to political leaders and citizens. "Anecdotes are the way that public policy gets made." To make measurement data truly relevant, public managers must present it in a way that shows the human element, that connects the numbers to real-life consequences.In Austin, Texas, the fire department started managing for results as a new way of doing business to win the trust of citizens. Sometimes, that meant collecting and using negative data. As Kevin Baum, the department's assistant fire chief and fire marshal, explained, "if you can't recognize failure, you can't fix failure."
By thoughtful use of the data, the Austin fire department has reaped notable (and tangible) rewards. At one point, its arson arrest rate stalled. After examining the causes, and making small changes to help investigators be more efficient, the rate almost doubled. The department marketed its success to citizens and city leadership, and the media developed an ongoing interest in fire investigations. As a result, the department received an increase in its investigation budget, as well as additional funding from the FBI and ATF.
Regulatory agencies face a particular set of obstacles in adopting general performance measurement principles, said Shelley Metzenbaum, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs.
In agencies where the emphasis is on inspection and enforcement activity, it's not always clear whether a decline in enforcement is good or bad. The goals of regulatory action, Metzenbaum observed, "are strengthened by time, place and geographical specificity. Clean water and workplace safety are not actionable goals. Making the lower Charles River swimmable in 10 years is an effective goal."
MANAGING TOP TALENT
In Virginia, even cabinet members have performance contracts. Herb Hill, a Virginia budget official, described how Governor Mark Warner's administration is using performance contracts for government leaders. These "executive agreements" are an especially important tool in Virginia, where a governor limited to one term has to hit the ground running to make the most of a short time in office. They provide a clear, concise and measurable way for the governor to communicate his priorities to the 10 cabinet secretaries and roughly 100 agency heads.The agreements have two components: One focuses on programmatic priorities and results, while the other lays out management and administration standards. Training is available, and each agreement officially commences with a face-to-face meeting with the governor.
Recent reforms in Florida's personnel system are intended to get managers throughout state government to focus more on performance. The state's 17,000 managers can now be dismissed for poor performance. In exchange for giving up some of their job security, workers received better benefits--more vacation days and the option of exchanging annual leave for cash.
The plan also involves pay-for-performance bonuses, and a strong performance measurement system. Pam Pfeifer, chief of staff at the state's Department of Management Services, says, "What we're trying to do is make public service sexy again. We have so many people retiring, we can't afford not to."
STARTING OVER
Data played an essential role in the Louisville-Jefferson County merger that took place a year ago, explained two of the new metro government's deputy mayors. Rick Johnstone and Joan Riehm described the excitement of creating a new government, focusing on cost savings and eliminating duplicate services.They began with an inventory of county and city activities, which disclosed some easy ways to save money. The two jurisdictions' fleet systems, for example, used different fuels; by using the same fuel, they save more than $100,000 a year. Government offices were leasing space in buildings even though there were vacancies in other government-owned buildings. By starting from the ground up, costs could be questioned and often reduced or eliminated through simple reorganization.
The budget process in Washington State last year also started from the ground up. By focusing on the functions of government, rather than the organization of government, the state determined its priority goals, aligned existing activities with those goals, funded those, and reduced or eliminated many of the others. "Agency names never came up, program names never came up," explained Wolfgang Opitz, deputy director in the state's Office of Financial Management.
The governor and the legislature worked to consolidate and fund as many of the priority activities as possible, recognizing that some wouldn't make the cut. "We talked about everything in terms of what we keep and what we don't. And people instantly understood," said Opitz. "There's no 'back page' where the secret extra money is hidden. I liked the fact that people got it: The press, the legislature, the public got it."
Lots of officials were wishing there was a place to find "secret extra money" this year. Faced with declining revenues, a number of states looked to the structure of their tax systems for the cause, and concluded that what they found needed fixing. But upending a long- standing system, with many interest groups involved, is easier said than done--even if the old system doesn't really reflect today's economy.
Nevada's tax reform passed, but in Alabama, voters resoundingly defeated the governor's plan. Describing lessons learned, Guy Hobbs, chairman of the Governor's Task Force on Tax Policy in Nevada, counseled thinking out the legislative process carefully. Alabama's Deputy Finance Director Ben Patterson agreed that communicating priorities is key. In Alabama's case, he thought the plan was too complex. "Focus on what's absolutely necessary," he advised.
TECHNOLOGY FOR MANAGERS
Achieving clarity in the goals and activities of a government is a good reason to use geographic information systems, argued Jim Geringer, the former governor of Wyoming. He explained how information superimposed on a digital map helps policy makers see links and interrelationships, and then make more informed decisions.Illustrating that point, Eric Conrad from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection described how GIS helped fight the West Nile virus cost-effectively. Not only was the commonwealth better able to target its resources by gathering timely, location-specific data about the occurrence of the disease, but it also made it easy to stay on top of the incidence of the virus, and communicate that quickly to the media and the public.
Technology is also making managing easier in North Dakota, where the state is integrating business processes across state government and the university system. North Dakota's Management and Budget Director, Pam Sharp, and Ellen Chaffee, president of one of the pilot campuses in the project, gave a first-hand account of the challenges and benefits of such an undertaking.
"Communication is always the major issue," said Sharp, making clear that moving from an old mainframe, homegrown system to a best- practices, integrated system required major cultural and operational changes. But the expected benefits--more accurate, consistent, timely and efficient provision of data and services for students, legislators, employees, managers, faculty and citizens--make the effort worthwhile, they noted. "It's forcing behind-the-scenes changes throughout state government."
