Performance Management
Leadership and Learning from Experience
To improve government performance, the Collins Center
- promotes outcome-focused, data-rich, evidence-based government management
- encourages increased use of goals and data to improve communication, decision-making, and program effectiveness
- identifies and shares useful measurement methods, diagnostic tools, and data-driven management approaches
- offers benchmarking assistance, analytic assistance, and training in the use of performance, cost, and operational data
- conducts analyses to motivate governments to increase their impact and lower their costs
- promotes intergovernmental arrangements that emphasize increased attention to knowledge management over command-and-control to achieve better performance with reduced tension
Services
Technical assistance, training, and consulting services for governments adopting CitiStat and other performance management approaches.
Tools and services include:
- templates, models, diagnostic methods, and other tools for collecting, organizing, and analyzing data to support performance measurement and management,
- facilitation, implementation assistance, and training,
- facilitation of cross-municipal performance information exchanges
- analysis of the impact of past cost-cutting projects.
To engage the Collins Center in a performance management project for your municipality, please contact collins.center@umb.edu or 617-287-4824.
Examples of Performance Management
Useful examples in cities and counties:
- Boston's "Boston About Results" Performance Management System - Boston's online performance reports page
- NYC Mayor's Management Report - Detailed, well-designed downloadable performance reports for city departments
- NYC Citywide Performance Reports - Well-designed, online reports organized by agencies and common themes that cut across multiple departments
- St. Petersburg, Florida City Scorecard - Easy-to-navigate page offering a wide range of good performance measures
- King County, Washington's Office of Strategic Planning and Performance Management - Good example of performance management at the county level
Useful examples in smaller communities:
- Town of Arlington, MA annual budget - Great example of large number of performance measures built into the annual budget document and placed online
- City of Saco 2007 Performance Measurement Report - Downloadable performance report with excellent performance measures
Publications on Performance Management
Performance Management Recommendations for the New Administration. Shelley Metzenbaum (2009).
Time Well Spent: Managing Time in the Regulatory Process A Management Note from the Environmental Compliance Consortium. Shelley Metzenbaum and Allison Watkins (2007).
Measure to Comply, Measure to Perform: A Government Performance White Paper. Shelley Metzenbaum (2006).
Performance Accountability: The Five Building Blocks and Six Essential Practices. Shelley Metzenbaum (2006).
Strategies for Using State Information: Measuring and Improving Program Performance. Shelley Metzenbaum (2003).
Get Results Through Performance Management, Kennedy School of Government (2001).
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Helping Governments Work Better
The Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center for Public Management
617-287-4824; collins.center@umb.edu