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SECTION 8: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
8.1 There is global convergence in relation to organisational performance management in a government context. There are consistent feature in all contemporary performance management systems including the emphasis on outcomes and the central role for strategic planning, performance indicators and the use of 'easy to understand' concurrent and post- control tools and techniques. In order to achieve National Outcomes, the Scottish Government must work with partner organisations including local government and the NHS. In Scotland there is scope for organisational performance management in a government context to operate at two levels, intra-organisationally and extra-organisationally.
8.2 The system must primarily manage the performance at the level of the Scottish Government and this can be achieved through the introduction of three elements:
- Pre-controls through strategic and operational planning incorporating targets linked to National Outcomes
- Concurrent controls in the form of a system which allows for internal and external communication of progress against targets. An enhanced 'traffic lights' system would be best, showing performance against target and performance trajectories.
- Post-controls including twice yearly formal reporting: one being a summary of highlights and exceptions to planned performance; and the other being a comprehensive review of performance in each area of government activity in advance of budgetary allocation decisions. The reports require a performance management system which makes use of traffic light systems. Both reports would be open to scrutiny by an independent body and the Scottish Parliament.
8.3 This system should preferably be reflected at the strategic level for those partner organisations involved in providing public services. There would be advantages in having the same 'traffic lights' system across all Scottish public services at a strategic level as this could promote performance comparison and performance in cross-cutting projects. Performance management systems within Scottish public sector organisations could be more bespoke as long as the information generated was capable of translation readily into the Scottish Government Organisational Performance Management System ( SGOPMS) and Scotland Performs.
8.4 Research by the Improvement and Development Agency ( IDeA) (2004) highlights that developing the right environment for performance management to flourish requires clear leadership, both political and managerial, that champions improvement and the use of performance management to achieve it. There is also a requirement for a shared sense of purpose that is evident both in what people say and through their actions and a willingness to pull together and stick with plans even when progress seems slow. There must also be a genuine desire to learn both from what's working well and from what's not and to celebrate achievements along the way.
8.5 The Crerar Report (2007) advocates careful consideration of the costs and benefits of information collated by public sector organisations for use by inspection and audit agencies. It would therefore be consistent with this approach to advocate such rationality to the design and development of organisational performance management within and across governmental activity in Scotland.
8.6 At the moment many public sector organisations are developing bespoke systems with little regard to their capacity for aggregation. One consequence of this would be that time and other resources would have to be used by the Scottish Government to monitor the extent to which the Scottish public sector was performing to the required standards against the Scottish Government National Outcomes. This 'bottom-up' approach will therefore do little to promote national monitoring, coordination and control of the performance of Scotland's public sector. Such an approach will be inefficient and may lead to unnecessary complexity and duplication of effort and this clearly would not be the best use of public resources. Corrective action can be taken now but this requires a consistency of approach to the development of organisational performance management systems across the Scottish public sector. Does Scotland need or want a proliferation of styles of strategic plan, balanced scorecards, performance prisms and other performance management adaptations?
8.7 The Scottish Government has stated that it will support robust self-assessment within delivery organisations using outcome based approaches, tied into the five national strategic objectives and the key national indicators, to set challenging benchmarks on which to assess progress against. The involvement of service users will be a critical component of self assessment. (Scottish Government, 2008a)
8.8 This review of the literature has demonstrated that there are great difficulties in accommodating outcomes in systems of organisational performance management in government but nevertheless governments across the globe are pursuing such outcome agendas. Organisational performance management systems in a government context must respond to this change by developing and effectively implementing comprehensive, output- and outcome-focused, systems of organisational performance management.
8.9 There may be scope for developing organisational performance management at the level of central government departments by taking the existing global best practice and contextualising for the Scottish Government. This would serve the dual accountability purpose of performance and value for money as well as enhancing the capability of the Scottish Government to implement continuous improvement in public services. Departmental planning, monitoring and evaluation could incorporate performance targets (pre-controls), monitoring systems (concurrent controls) and review, evaluation and reporting (post-controls) which assesses the extent to which the department has been effective and has demonstrated acceptable performance against pre-determined criteria. There would be complementary approaches to organisational performance management across the Scottish public sector although these complementary approaches need not be 'one size fits all'. This would facilitate benchmarking and comparisons across central, local, health and other public services and would be compatible with Scotland Performs.
8.10 Such an approach could be used to improve on certain aspects of the Virginia Model such as the autonomy of the Virginia Agency Chief Executives over the agency's strategic direction and the Agency self-assessment involved in the reporting of performance levels achieved.
Final thoughts
8.11 Potential problems may arise when policy outcomes are not achieved or there are clearly gaps between desired performance levels and performance levels attained. Ideally the organisational performance management system would cover all of government (holistic), the information would be as close to 'real time' as possible and all of the information relating to the performance achieved would be in the public domain with well presented summaries appearing in the form of 'traffic lights' at regular intervals on the Scotland Performs website.
8.12 If governments are committed to the principles of organisational performance management in government they must be prepared to address both the good news and the bad news. In saying that, the early evidence of comprehensive organisational performance management systems in government must lead to the conclusion that they appear to enhance performance, responsiveness and empower citizens and as such must be seen as a positive development in public management.
8.13 It is too early to conclude that the impact of organisational performance management systems in government has been a success as whole-of-government systems have only been introduced globally over the last five years. At sub-governmental levels the evidence (out with the UK) is that such performance management systems have contributed to enhanced public service performance albeit that these systems have largely focused to date on municipal/local government and evaluations have tended to focus on inputs, process and output enhancement and not on outcomes achieved.
8.14 There is evidence of utility if the system is organisation-wide and linked to strategic planning and budgetary management systems. The organisational performance management systems act as concurrent controls providing essential management information as an aid to decision making at all levels. Benefits relate to improved organisational performance, better management, better stakeholder communication and better relations (both internally and externally). Organisational performance management systems in a government context have potential for multiple beneficiaries: politicians, civil servants, others involved in service delivery; other stakeholders; and the ordinary citizens.
8.15 However, the premise underpinning these answers is that performance improves, in part, as a consequence of an holistic organisational performance management. The difficulties of effective policy implementation and the problematic consequences of performance measurement systems will always apply and an organisational performance management system is no guarantee of policy success. Policies fail because of bad policy, bad execution or bad luck and there may be some sense that governments have to introduce systems of organisational performance management not because of their potential benefits but because other governments are introducing such systems and the rhetoric of an organisational performance management system in government may be sufficient to appease the public. It may be that the policy of organisational performance management becomes a substitute for action. This approach may be useful when confronted by a problem, which is difficult to address (low tractability), and policy implementation activity may result in no tangible signs of improvement. The policy as a statement of intent is a substitute for action and the organisational performance management system is never effectively implemented.
Organisational performance management: fashion or fad?
8.16 Organisational performance management systems are high on government agendas worldwide and it must be assumed that there is global consensus within governments over the potential merits of such systems. Organisational performance management in government has the potential to enhance the effectiveness of public policy implementation but will only succeed where it is effectively implemented and applied holistically both within government and across governmental activity. Organisational performance management in government is globally fashionable but it may become a transient hobby (a fad) unless it is effectively implemented and continuously responsive to internal and external challenges. Politicians and public managers can promote the sustainability of organisational performance management but the extent to which it becomes embedded will depend on the extent to which organisational performance management performs.
Dr Bobby Mackie
Mackie Public Management
July 2008
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