"Telling your story" using performance measurement: presenting an approach to performance measure development

Thesis (M.P.P.A., Public Policy and Administration) -- California State University, Sacramento, 2013.With an increased interest in government accountability and transparency, many strive to understand the role of our government and seek ways to gauge the success of public programs, departments, and agencies. Government has taken steps to measure and understand performance as well, especially following the passage of the Government Performance Results Act twenty years ago and, more recently, in response to the economic recession of the past five years. Performance measurement is a popular response amongst many municipalities in attempt to learn where they are succeeding and where they may need to improve. However, literature shows that many, if not most municipalities have fallen short of collecting the data needed to effectively pursue performance-based, results-oriented management. \ud \ud In this thesis, commissioned by Yolo County???s Administrative Officer, I design terminology and a customized training approach to help County departments develop performance measures, while avoiding the common challenges municipalities frequently face during their initial efforts. \ud Ultimately, two main factors continued to surface throughout the completion of this project, the need to include the appropriate people in the development of performance measures and to develop measures that clearly connect to goals. Developing this tool for Yolo County revealed that organizations need to be aware of the context of their work and their goals, in order to utilize the appropriate people to identify the accurate measures that will inform the performance of the organization. Only within the appropriate context and with connections drawn to goals, will the information gathered through performance measurement serve the need of informing the successes and failures of our government.Public Policy and Administratio