By Richard Siegel

In the business of performance management we often ask the question:  What should we do first: develop measures, acquire a system, or do both at once?

Last year Bellevue’s [Washington] leaders acquired a performance management system to capture over 1,500 performance measures used by city departments. We have worked with measures and measurements over many years to capture meaningful data and have recently refined our focus to weaving data into our decision-making processes. In the past we have had many Excel spreadsheets, Access data bases, and measures in Word document tables but never a single, dedicated performance system to serve as a central point for data collection.

The system is a warehouse of indicators with dashboard and reporting capabilities. It does not provide significant analytical tools, but does allow for uploads from existing data systems. It provides a web interface for performance reporting to the public and the ability to categorize indicators by outcomes to support measuring performance in our outcome-based budget.

The acquisition and use of a dedicated performance system has accelerated performance thinking and data use with a focus on results for our community. Data now has a permanent seat at the decision-making table, and this is a bonus for our city.

First, we developed measures and then focused early efforts on external reporting and citizen feedback through scientifically based community surveys. We have done a lot with citizen reporting and have won many awards for our performance measurement program, “Vital Signs” and annual performance report. Our survey data goes back to 1998. This past year (2013-2014 budget), we joined the small subset of cities that received Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) recognition for integrating performance measures in our budget.

Moving to a “budgeting for outcomes” approach has accelerated the integration of performance and budgeting in Bellevue. Performance management initiatives are staffed and managed through Bellevue’s Budget Office, and the system’s administrators are our budget analysts. Budget staff used a “train the trainer” approach for rolling out the system and asked departments to identify “power users” who can support users in their departments. The high organizational acceptance of our performance system has been gratifying, as it speaks to the groundwork we have done over the past fifteen years to integrate data into daily decision making with city operations. 

The new system with its dashboards, strategy maps, and reporting functions allows us to quickly look at our measures, compare trends, or evaluate current performance against targets. The combination of performance systems training, manager training on using data to make decisions, and team workshops on using logic models to improve performance indicators has increased organizational capacity to effectively use the system.  In fleet operations, for example, our mechanics have developed a self-directed work team. They have essentially abandoned a measurement of “wrench time” in favor of vehicle availability to the customer. They are looking more to who they serve and how their work impacts customer performance rather than counting what they do.

Certainly we are not without challenges. Most of our current measures are annual, but work units are beginning to enter monthly or quarterly data. We also have workgroups and departments that have to be nudged a bit more than others to use performance measures.

We did all of this without adding resources (except for the system purchase). The system has led to an increase not only in performance discussions but also in collaboration among departments.