Performance management government

1. Performance management government
I. Introduction
The term Government Performance Management (GPM) is totally derived from the
concept of "Corporate Performance Management (CPM)". However due to the
differences in the goals and vision of corporate entities versus Government institutions,
the new term GPM is more relevant.
CPM consists mainly of three stages:
1. Crafting/Planning
2. Execution
3. Monitoring and Analysis
GPM also consists of pretty much the same phases. However the main difference lies in
the Planning stage, and mainly in the strategic planning stage. When any organization
"crafts" a plan, it does so based on its vision and mission. As per the Balanced Scorecards
concepts, in order to measure the organization's performance, the various objectives
should be classified under 4 main categories:
1- Financial
2- Customer
3- Learning & Growth
4- Business Process
The core difference between CPM and GPM lies in the order of these quadrants and also
in the nomenclature. For GPM, the Customer (who is actually the "Citizen") lies on top
of all the quadrants. The Financials quadrant lies in the bottom, as it is purely a means,
not an end for Governments (obviously the opposite is totally true for corporate
organizations). Therefore the quadrants under GPM are:
1- Citizens
2- Processes
3- Learning & Growth

2. 4- Financials
II. Crafting/Planning
Crafting or Planning is the process of building the plans and criteria upon which the
performance of an entity will be measured. This is done usually on two levels:
o Strategic
o Operational
Strategic Plans are long term objectives. The range of these plans vary based on the
policies set by each organization. For example in the UAE, strategic plans for
government spans a three (3) years period. I.e. the strategic plan includes KPI's for goals
that have to be achieved within 3 years. Other organizations might decide to build
strategic plans for five (5) years. The Urban Planning Council in Abu Dhabi has an
aggressive strategic plan that needs to be achieved by 2030. An example of these
Strategic goals would be achieving 98% in citizens satisfaction.
To achieve a strategic plan, it has to be divided into annual milestones, which are mainly
Operational Plans. These operational plans will include initiatives that need to be
accomplished within one year, or at least a pre-defined percentage of them. Therefore a
strategic plan for 3 years would include 3 operational plans. Each initiative in the
operational plan has to be linked to a strategic goal. For example, to achieve a strategic
goal in the above example, i.e. 98% citizens satisfaction, an operational initiative might
be implementing a Citizen Relationship Management system to manage and track
citizens complaints and suggestions. Another operational KPI might be hiring more
Customer Care agents, or giving them additional training.
In an ideal world, if all the initiatives that are related to a specific Strategic goal are met,
then the strategic goal is expected to be achieved as well. However for this relationship to
be this accurate, then a proper Crafting/Planning platform has to be available. Such a
solution has to enable authorized users to log the Strategic Objectives, Goals and their
related KPI's. Then necessary workflows will need to be triggered to collect the necessary
approvals for these inputs. Many details should also be set, such as reminders, deadlines,
stakeholders, etc.
The system should also facilitate the operational planning which is done on an annual
basis. I.e. before the beginning of each year by a specific duration, authorized employees
should be able to log the operational initiatives, KPI's, and other details such as the
percentages that should be achieved for each initiative throughout the 4 quarters of the
year. Then a workflow should also be triggered to get the operational plan approved by
the higher management.
III. Execution

3. Throughout the operational lifecycle of the organization, KPI's stakeholders are expected
to log their achievement for each KPI on a quarterly basis. This will enable managers
later to track the progress of each initiative, and to keep track of any slacking in
accomplishing the defined tasks. The GPM system should send reminders to employees
on a quarterly basis, asking them to fill their accomplishment for each KPI that they are
responsible of. This will be the case if the results were supposed to be filled in manually.
A more accurate Actual figure can sometimes be retrieved from other applications. For
this purpose the system should be able to integrate with backend applications to get
precise numbers without any room for human errors. For example if an operational
initiative was implementing a CRM application. If this initiative was supposed to be
100% complete by the end of the operational year as follows:
o 30% in Q1
o 55% in Q2
o 80% in Q3
o 100% in Q4
If the organization has an Enterprise Project Management system, then the progress of the
CRM implementation project can be retrieved automatically from the EPM, thus
disallowing employees from filling inaccurate numbers for the actual progress of this
project.
IV. Monitoring and Analysis
Now that plans have already been set, and progress on various KPI's has been logged, it's
time to monitor the performance of the organization, and analyze the organization's
performance.
a. Monitoring
Understanding what is happening at any given point in time within your organization is
critical to effective performance management. Organizations need to be able to:
o Check progress against individual, departmental and organizational goals.
o Learn how a division, subsidiary, or team is performing against organizational targets.
o See how individual goals affect overall organization's strategy.
For this purpose, the GPM solution should provide highly visual and interactive
scorecards and dashboards that can keep officials and authorized employees users up to

4. date on what is happening and how it relates to the overall performance of the
organization.
Based on up-to-date and reliable data, officials will be able to study the situations at any
point in time, and then come up with the right decisions faster, after proper analysis for
the data.
b. Analysis
Rich and powerful analytic capabilities can give users answers to the "why" questions:
o Why did performance dip when you expected it to peak?
o Why is citizens' satisfaction not getting better?
o Why is a forecast off-target?
The GPM solution helps organizations answer those questions because it provides
advanced visualization tools that help them gain insight into data faster. Using
visualizations like performance maps, decomposition trees, and other tools can help
expedite their understanding of what is happening at any given moment in their
organizations.
V. GPM Solution - Technical Overview
The GPM system provides an end-to-end solution for the performance management
lifecycle. It can be implemented using Microsoft technologies as follows:
o .Net modules for the Crafting/Planning & the Execution
o PerformancePoint Services of MOSS 2007 to build the interactive dashboards and
analytical reports
o SQL Server Analysis Services for building the data warehouse necessary for the
dashboards
o A workflow engine for building the necessary workflows for Planning and Execution
o MOSS 2007 for displaying the dashboards in an Intranet Portal
http://performanceappraisalebooks.info/ : Over 200 ebooks, templates, forms for
performance appraisal.