Performance Management: A Multi-Pronged Approach

For many years, people have been using the words performance management as a sort of synonym for performance measurement. But as Kathryn Newcomer, a professor in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University says, “government performance means different things to different people. Some people talk about measuring specific items like outputs and outcomes, which people call performance measurement. But there are different communities of practice that don’t necessarily speak with one another. They don’t even recognize that they’re in the same enterprise with a similar goal – improving government.”

Part of the confusion stems from the fact that for years, there was huge excitement about the potential of using measures to help make important decisions. But in recent conversations, zealots of that practice can come out sounding depressed by the lack of attention it’s been getting lately.

Elected officials have long been somewhat wary of the potential of well-publicized performance measures coming back to bite them come election time. As a result, “elected officials are leery of reporting,” says Marc Holzer, Professor Emeritus and Founding Dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University-Newark. “If the line starts going in the wrong direction, they figure they’re going to be blamed for it, and they’re paranoid about that.”

That doesn’t mean that performance measures aren’t being used extensively by state and local agencies, and the ease with which data can be gathered and utilized on a real-time basis has provided the potential for even more useful and targeted approaches. Moreover, the advent of artificial intelligence has potential for speeding analysis when used with care.

Clearly, there are demonstrable benefits when performance measures are made as transparent as possible. Consider the city of Phoenix. “We have 180 plus key performance indicators across 31 city departments, and our object is to be transparent” says Michael Hammett, director of the city manager’s office of innovation. “For example, we have a dashboard that shows response times for a variety of services including police, fire, EMS and so on. These are resident services. There were times when we may not have met goals, and we had to make adjustments. But since we’ve highlighted the data, when it comes to budget times the residents understand why we’re spending the money we are on them.”

Another powerful example comes from the state of Ohio. “The previous administration really laid the groundwork very well by creating a strong data infrastructure,” says Kim Murnieks, director of the Ohio Office of Budget and Management. “And one of Governor DeWine’s first actions was an Executive Order that required all the state agencies to participate in and submit data to that infrastructure. From that, we created a transparent data portal and a data analytics program, so the public could see data that our state agencies were reporting and to ensure that our state agencies share and analyze data to better inform policy, improve customer service, and improve operational efficiency.”

Currently, any new program or program that is expanding in the state must lay out their theory of change in outcomes and not just outputs to be considered for new or expanded budgeting in the next budget cycles. One example, cited by Murnieks, was based on data that showed that some 40 percent of the best students in the state were being lured away by other states that that had Merit Scholarships. So, the state created a USD 5,000 per year scholarship available for all four years of college for any student that graduated in the top five percent of their high school graduating class. In the first year, the scholarship retained approximately 75 percent of those top students and the second and third cohorts exceeded 80 percent, with even better results still to come.

Says Murnieks, “Because we gathered the scholarship acceptance data, and we could show the data both statewide and county by county, we were able to make the case for continued funding in the legislature as the scholarship program ramps up, because we could show them the clear results.”

PERFORMANCE AUDITS

Many local and state governments have an office of some kind that issues performance audits about very specific issues that are of consequence to their residents or their legislators. While these audits may not necessarily wind up changing practices, in a number of instances they do – and it’s only reasonable to think of them as part of the big picture of performance management.

For example, in Multnomah County, Oregon, according to auditor Jennifer McGuirk, “One of our audits that has had a real impact was our 2024 audit of county contract monitoring.” The auditor made five recommendations to management that were focused on improving the effectiveness of contract monitoring through improved standardization and coordination across the county.

Says McGuirk, “We issued an evaluation on the status of these recommendations in January and found that the county had implemented all but one - and management was in the process of implementing that one, which is to develop a mechanism to evaluate department compliance with the countywide contract monitoring policy.”

Similarly, the auditor’s office in Kansas City, Missouri issued an audit a couple of years ago about the city’s Public Improvements Advisory Committee (PIAC),” which found that most of its projects did not meet timeliness standards. The audit, resulted in management adding a PIAC dashboard to the Capital Improvements Program dashboard,” according to former city auditor Doug Jones.

EVALUATIONS

Evaluations are similar in many ways to performance audits, though they are done by a different group. Though the difference between the two have been blurring over the course of time, auditors issue reports with specific actionable recommendations, while evaluators are more inclined to publish research papers, policy briefs or assessments of  the impact of a program.

One of the particularly well-known evaluators offices is in New Mexico, where it’s part of the Legislative Finance Committee (LFC). Explains Director Charles Sallee, “Over the past two decades, LFC’s integration of independent program evaluation with legislative budget recommendations helped establish an evidence-based policymaking framework that enabled the Legislature to make appropriations based on measured outcomes, expand successful programs, and continually refine policy through ongoing evaluation.”

For example, for some time the LFC has been exploring the value of investments in early childhood education. According to Sallee, here’s how that worked: “The inaugural PreK class served approximately 6 percent of the state’s 4-year-old population, providing an opportunity to rigorously evaluate the impact of high-quality early education before broader expansion. In 2013, LFC evaluated PreK alongside other early childhood programs and found PreK participation was associated with improved kindergarten readiness and higher reading and mathematics achievement in the early elementary grades.”

The state launched the Early Childhood Education and Care Department Act in 2020, establishing a unified early childhood system and directing the department to coordinate programs, monitor child outcomes, and improve program quality.

“As evidence accumulated,” says Sallee, “the Legislature increased annual state investment in PreK from USD 14.5 million in fiscal year 2012 to USD 275.5 million in fiscal year 2027, expanded enrollment from a pilot serving approximately 6 percent of New Mexico’s 4-year-olds to a program serving 53 percent of the state’s 4-year-olds while expanding statewide access to 22 percent of its 3-year-olds through state-funded PreK.”

As a result of this work, New Mexico is currently considered a national leader in early childhood education. And according to the National Institute for Early Education Research’s 2025 State of Preschool Yearbook, the state now meets nine of ten national quality benchmarks, while neighboring Texas meets only two.

EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES

“States and counties spend billions of dollars on critical services and programs to help protect and improve public health, support reentry for individuals who were formerly incarcerated, and protect children from abuse and neglect—yet many state and county leaders lack comprehensive information about the impact of those expenditures,” explained the Pew Charitable Trusts several years ago.

One way around this issue has been to rely on proven practices from other entities before embarking on a new policy or program – thus heightening the likelihood that it will perform well when actually put into action.

“Maryland aims to become a model of evidence-based governance in the United States,” according to a recent report from the state. “Results focused budgeting uses evidence about program effectiveness to ensure the best use of limited taxpayer dollars. Therefore, enhancement requests are highly encouraged to submit evidence information. Maryland defines ‘evidence-based’ as meaning that there is evidence from an experimental or quasi-experimental study that a key program component has been effective in improving a relevant outcome with similar populations or in similar settings. “

The report goes on to explain that “to determine if a program or initiative is evidence-based, agencies can provide information from an agency-sponsored evaluation, evidence-based research clearinghouses, academic research institutions, peer-reviewed journals, information from other states, local pilot programs, and your own agency research and data.”

PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

One approach that can easily be considered as part of the body of work that comprises performance management is LEAN and other similar approaches, which have been used for decades --- first in the private sector and subsequently in the world of government. As Michael Jacobson, owner of Jacobson Consulting LLC. and former deputy director of King County’s Office of Performance Strategy and Budget, explains, “It’s about examining processes, mapping the processes, identifying unnecessary steps, getting agreement, establishing consensus about all the steps in the process and who’s responsible for it, then clarifying that and basically reducing redundancy and making the process more efficient and more time responsive.”

The poster child for this approach is Denver’s Peak Academy, which was founded in 2011 and has been an inspiration for hundreds of other entities. According to the Academy’s website, it “measures success through hard dollar budget savings as well as soft-dollar efficiency savings realized by city employees after participating in classes. Soft-dollar savings are calculated by monetizing the amount of staff hours freed up because of process improvement changes that can then be reallocated to other programs or service delivery within the agency.”

One concrete example of an Academy accomplishment has been a dramatic improvement in the city’s excise and licenses permit counter waiting time. Back in 2014, people could easily be kept waiting for as long as eight hours. But the kinds of process tools described by Jacobson reduced the average wait time by 85 percent.

CONCLUSION

There’s no one size fits all approach to improving state and local performance. The preceding variations on that theme can work for one entity, but potentially not for another.

It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that a single way to improve performance hasn’t worked, when another one may. What’s more, combinations of the different techniques can easily be better than one single one.

“I think calling it performance management is part of the problem. What we’re really looking for is results driven management,” says John Bernard, founder and president of America’s Pulse, “and I don’t use those words without a great deal of thought, because performance management is a vague generalized concept. When you describe it as results-driven management, we begin with what result do you want, and then we develop a system of management that essentially pulls all the various pieces together.”