Managing for Results and Organizational Learning Models
Auditors can go beyond evaluating and testing measures for individual programs, to assessing and helping to improve both:
- Performance management systems of an agency or entire government entity, for which “Managing for Results Models” can be useful;
- How well an agency or government uses these systems for continuous performance improvement, for which “Organizational Learning Models” can be useful.
Managing for Results Models
There are many possible ways to describe or depict “Managing for Results Models” which can guide the design, operation, and evaluation of performance management systems. A key criterion for any true managing for results system is that it should work as a cycle of continually assessing and re-assessing performance, and making decisions and taking actions to improve performance results over time. In government, a key decision involves resource allocation, so some form of performance budgeting is usually involved.
A simple but effective managing for results model is the “Government Accountability System” depicted here. The Office of the City Auditor in Austin, Texas, used this model to develop criteria for several entity-wide audits of performance management (Practice 1b. Audit performance management systems) which led to significant improvements in performance measurement and management in the city government.
Auditors can also use managing for results models to help explain performance management concepts when advocating for system improvements internally (Practice 4a. Encourage management) or externally to elected officials or citizens (Practice 5a. External advocacy). Auditors may also help elected officials make these systems meet their policy goals, or may help citizens participate in performance management Practice 5c. Assist external decision making).
The “Government Accountability System” shows a single managing for results cycle. But in a typical government environment there are likely to be multiple cycles at work, all of which can benefit from having relevant, reliable performance data available. For example, the “Plan” bubble in the graphic refers to both “Strategic” and “Annual” planning. Strategic planning may have a four or five year time horizon, or even longer. While annual planning refers to each year’s performance plans of programs and services. That suggests both annual and multi-year cycles generating performance results to be used in both short term operating and resource allocation decisions, and in longer-term strategic decisions.
Once a system is in place, auditors can look deeper into how well the system is being used, and whether the government organization—and by extension the public it serves—is getting the greatest benefit from the system. To assess that, auditors should not only examine whether performance targets are being met and whether the quality of performance information is maintained (Role 2. Assess performance information), but also how well the organization learns to continually improve performance at different levels of program planning and operations. Models showing multiple managing for results cycles can be useful for this purpose, as in the “Triple Loop Learning” model shown here.
- In the inner loop of the model, program staff, who can be program managers, operations supervisors, or service delivery staff (including contractors) regularly measure and assess operational results to make day-to-day or month-to-month improvements in service delivery operations.
- In the middle loop, management will use measured results to determine whether the program design needs to be changed. For example, analysis of results may indicate a program design flaw that leads to inconsistent service quality, so management may try to build better quality assurance into the program. Or analysis may indicate external conditions that occasionally arise that negatively affect results, which suggests adding a new program element to detect and address those conditions when they arise (e.g., a community health clinic may develop a referral relationship with a homeless services program).
- In the outer loop, basic resource allocation decisions across programs or regions are driven by performance results, and, in the long-term, a government agency may revise its strategic plan or even its mission. As noted in the bubble on the right side of the graphic, the organization can also be improving its performance measurement capabilities (e.g., developing better measures or targets, improving the technology and systems used to manage performance data) and people throughout the organization can be learning how to be better users of performance information, essentially “learning to learn” more effectively.
So, once a government entity has achieved a basic level of performance management, as in successfully implementing a single managing for results cycle, an auditor can probe more deeply into how well government organizations are using measured results to learn and improve over time. For that, auditors can use an organizational learning model, such as the “Triple Loop Learning” model, to develop criteria for such assessments, and go considerably further with Practice 1b. Audit performance management systems. |
