Observations from Under the Saguaro by Christian M. Williams @MyPublicTweeter
The City of Goodyear continues to align City priorities and initiatives to performance measures, Strategic Action Plan, and Priority Based Budgeting (PBB) programs. The purpose is to create a clear linkage and understanding that can be seen by citizens, Council, and staff. Goodyear’s performance measures program, called CITYSTAT, was developed prior to implementation of PBB. We had “Indicators of Success” where citizens, Council, and staff could see why each performance measure was important, however, as our program evolved the CITYSTAT team realized the need to enhance these connections. We focused on linking “Indicators of Success” to the Strategic Action Plan by referencing the actual goals within the plan.
PBB became our tool to do so. We evaluated our performance measures to determine how each fit into attaining city goals. A few takeaways:
- In PBB, the most relevant programs are assigned to Quartile 1 and Quartile 2.
- Roughly half of our PBB programs fall into Quartiles 1 and 2, which account for more than 70% of our City spending.
- Of the performance measures in our CITYSTAT program, 76% are currently tied to Quartile 1 and Quartile 2 Programs and thus by exploring PBB we could see which of the Strategic Plan focus areas the performance measure most contributes.
Departments have begun linking performance measures to one of the goals listed in the Results Maps/Strategic Action Plan. This process is manageable with the help of PBB scorecards. The PBB scorecard makes it possible for all performance measures, which fall under one of the four focus areas, to be easily reviewed, by City departments, for their overall goal achievement, thereby giving us our new “Indicator of Success.” This is another way PBB is working to assist staff in realizing what we do, how we do it, and why it is important.
Moving forward, new performance measures added to CITYSTAT will be a Quartile 1 or 2 PBB program link and an “Indicator of Success” that links to the goals of the Strategic Action Plan. This helps our performance measures audience and it helps us address where we need performance measures to track what is relevant and important to our overall goals and objectives. The process of using PBB in concert with performance measures has taken our Performance Management Program to the next level.
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