Baseline performance information
"Knowing your starting point to enable measurement of progress. Measure outcomes not processes"
Before embarking on a programme of change, measuring and recording the council’s current performance is essential. It gives a baseline from which to measure the achieved improvement, and also serves to highlight current weaknesses in performance.
In recording the baseline, it is important to focus on outcomes, not on process. Current performance indicators for councils are often process based, and this actually encourages a degradation in real performance rather than an improvement. Setting a key performance indicator (kpi) which focuses on how long it takes to process an application, for example, focuses on the process of the application itself, and not on the outcome – hence it discourages councils from considering whether the process needs to exist at all.
The types of performance that a council might wish to document include:
(internally)
- What are the true costs of dealing with specific categories of transaction with the public?
- What is the utilisation of core resources?
- What degree of duplication exists in the council’s information assets?
(externally)
- What is the level of unfulfilled demand from potential customers – people who would use the council services but find it too difficult, or they feel their needs wouldn’t be met?
- What is the level of customer satisfaction with the services provided by the council?
- What proportion of the total budget of a service is spent directly on the service given to customers, and what proportion on the delivery and administration?
| Related Consulting services | Related Learning courses |
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| Baseline performance audit | Measuring your real performance - outcome based performance management | |
| Outcome based performance monitoring | ||