KPIs

"Outcome-focused KPIs in place to measure performance"

Many of the performance measures currently in place for councils focus on process - measuring volumes, throughput times, resource use and other measures relating to the actual mechanism for delivery rather than on the outcomes expected from the service. It is well established that measures and targets based on process lead to reduced performance, degraded service and lower efficiency. The result is that the outcomes actually deteriorate rather than improve. Effort focuses on achieving the targets, rather than on achieving the outcomes that are important to customers.

Examples are waiting times - focusing on waiting times as targets has resulted in numerous ingenious ways of disguising the fact that people are waiting, so that technically, the waiting time targets are adhered to. But often these are met at the expense of the overall service to the customer - either their total waiting time actually increases (though only part of it is measured) or their waiting time is reduced, but the service they receive at the end of it is not as good.

The Council of the Future will be more outcomes focused - using measures associated with customer perceptions and attitudes more than measures of volume or delay.  Example outcome measures might include:

• Overall customer satisfaction with the service received from the public sector organisations locally (not just with individual transactions or with individual organisations)
• Outcome measures for individual services - such as absence of litter on the streets being an outcome for streetscene, higher real attainment levels for school leavers (not just reducing pass levels to meet targets), take up of benefits by those entitled to them, as a measure for revenues and benefits.
• Measures internally about the organisation itself - about the quality of the organisation as an employer, the satisfaction of the staff who work within it.