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How
Am I Doing?
by John
Kamensky
During the 1980s, New York City mayor Ed Koch was renown for wandering the streets asking citizens the simple question: “How am I doing?” Now, the Comptroller General of the United States thinks that maybe we as a Nation need to ask that simple, but powerful, question. Comptroller General David Walker, along with Dr. Harvey Fineberg of the National Academies, convened a forum of a wide range of public/private national leaders in late February to explore the “need to establish a comprehensive portfolio of key national performance indicators.” He quickly cautioned that “this is not a set of national goals or priorities,” but rather “a portfolio of key performance indicators that could help demonstrate America’s position and progress . . . It is simply a good-faith effort to make sure we’re not flying blind . . . Wouldn’t it be nice to have some facts?”
How are the world’s leading democracies measuring national performance? Key National Performance Indicators have been used in other countries for a number of years. In fact, one participant in the forum says the United States is the only major industrialized country that does not have a set of national indicators. Australia and Canada are but two countries that regularly report publicly on key indicators such as human capital, natural capital, social capital, and financial capital.
A GAO survey identified nearly 170 different indicator efforts going on at the state, regional, or local levels. For example, Minnesota and Oregon are two of the states that have done this for several years; New York City and Boston are two cities with interesting community-level sets of indicators. Likewise, there are long-standing sets of federal indicators, largely in the economic sectors, such as those compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis that report GDP and inflation rates. But the federal government also reports indicators in selected social areas such as child well-being, and the well-being of older Americans.
So, with so many existing building blocks exist, what might the US do to improve its approach? Some recommended starting with what goals the country should be trying to achieve, that “you can’t have meaningful indicators absent a goal,” and “what we choose to measure reflects what we care about.” Others cautioned that this approach was attempted more than 30 years ago and resulted in a dead end, that instead, the federal budget process was a better determinant of American priorities and values. Still others felt that developing national indicators could create a demand for solving national problems at the federal level that may be best solved at the state or local levels in a federal system. While there was not unanimity, there seemed to be agreement that whatever the broad strategy chosen, that disaggregated data to the smallest areas possible (e.g., neighborhoods) would be particularly valuable in empowering citizens to take action where they live. Several participants stressed the need for the indicators to be disaggregated to the local level because “you manage things at the level at which you measure them” and that people have to “see themselves in the indicators” for them to be relevant – that measures must be linked to the appropriate response system.
Another question addressed was: “What are the important areas to measure?” Martha Farnsworth Riche, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, developed a think piece that she shared with the group as a “stalking horse” to stimulate the conversation. The group discussed a wide range of potential frameworks and some specific areas to include, such as child well-being and homeland security.
The forum also addressed the issue of how to get started on developing a process for defining, collecting, and sharing indicator information. Participants described several existing successful governance models for the collection and dissemination of performance indicators, such as the Healthy People 2010 approach. Participants agreed that any process would have to be highly participatory, using networks and partnerships both public and private to ensure the credibility and quality needed for the exercise to be worthwhile to a broad range of potential users.
The question of “so what” was also raised. Who would use the information, and for what purpose? Experience in other countries showed that the information was more useful at the state level than at the national as a context-setting device, and that it was a valuable resource in schools to educate students more about their country and to be more informed citizens.
The overwhelming majority of the forum participants concluded that pursuing the creation of a national set of indicators would be useful; however there were many different opinions as to how to do it. In fact, the day after the forum, an informal coordinating committee was formed to pursue planning for the development of a set of key national indicators for the U.S., with initial leadership from GAO, OMB, the National Academies, and the Council for Excellence in Government. And, a subsequent meeting under UN auspices of chief statisticians from a number of leading democratic countries reached agreement to begin building a global community of practice on this issue.
GAO also committed to summarizing the results of the forum in the near future and making them publicly available on its website. It has also put together a set of resources that are a useful guide to the state of the art.
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