A new report from Accenture is entitled “Performance Management – Driving High Performance by Focusing on What Really Matters to Citizens.” At 28 glossy pdf pages it’s probably what one would expect from a high-class consultancy.
Surprisingly, in a bullet-pointed list on page 2 to stress the need for performance management, there is no mention of the citizen, although they do appear later, fortunately rather more often than customers!
Interestingly, on page 9 a number of points are made about performance management in government – that it’s not used for measuring citizen-centric social outcomes, it is deployed in silos (not as an end-to-end enabler) and that it is used as a means of retrospective review or accountability…to report accomplishments (or failures).” Which I’d probably agree are points of failure.
They develop the neologism of “social outcomes”, sometimes used in educational circumstances, and employ it in mixed contexts with public value and social capital, which it perhaps is.
Overall, nothing I’d disagree with, apart from having to probably pay through the nose for what should be common sense to the public sector by now.
