Performance Measurement in the Public Sector, Van Dooren, Wouter; Bouckaert, Geert; and Halligan, John

Performance Measurement and the real world must meet just as the economic man and the satisficing man must meet. The discussion starts with setting the goal of identifying performance measurement, performance information and performance management as parts of the same process. The author believes that you must be able to identify each, understand why you feel it will benefit the organization and who your audience will be when presenting the information.
The author states that the information will not be used by the organization if just specific individuals believe that the information has value. There is still reasonable resistance to performance management because it measures the past and fails to adjust to changing conditions.
The key is in understanding how the information is used. Each category must include flexibility in the use of the information. The author states that the soft uses related to learning are the most flexible, steering and controlling has moderate flexibility and giving account has the least flexibility.
The book helps focus on the value of the information, the uses and the expected results. It ends with the idea that management needs to be able to react to changing conditions and that rigid performance numbers can lead to serious problems. They use the example of Wall Street when the market stop reacting the way the models said it would.

Stony/Plainview

The purpose of this motion is to award a contract for street reconstruction. The Work includes 1,545 linear feet of concrete storm sewer and appurtenances; 2,720 linear feet of concrete, curb, and gutter; 11,100 square feet of concrete sidewalk; 5,070 square yards of new asphalt pavement and base course; and 5,200 square yards of seed restoration.
The City of Lake Mills received sealed bids for the 2012 Street Reconstruction Project at 1 P.M., local time, March 29, 2012 at City Hall,
The Council is being asked to award the bid to R&K & Sons Construction, LLC., 7030 Tolles Road, Evansville, WI 53536 for Contract 1-2012, Stony Road / Plainview Terrace Roadway and Utility Reconstruction in the amount of $346,792.00.
The motion awards the contract to R&K & Sons Construction, LLC., 7030 Tolles Road, Evansville, WI 53536.

What To Look for

Alone in a crowd can have several meanings, for me – it is the result of maintaining personal distance. The reasons are sound, becoming too friendly with subordinates leads to favoritism, too friendly with council members results in unequal information distribution, to friendly with vendors leads to purchasing issues, contractors and bid awards, etc. In a small city, the practice may be consider aloofness, worse is arrogance.
The Rotary Club expects you to ask city vendors and contractors to make donations and press employees to buy raffle tickets. All now expect a favor in return. A business makes a large investment in the city and expects certain codes, regulations and inspections to be reviewed favorably. Council members are willing to use special information to distinguish themselves from other members. Even members of your church will expect special consideration during special assessments or condition use actions.
Ultimately the criticism begins to weigh heavy on your soul, they don’t really want to know you – they want to use you. Finding the person that can be your friend and appreciate your job in a small city is a special gift.

Today's Thought

To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
— Theodore Roosevelt, American adventurer and president (1858-1919)

'Policy-based Evidence'

I have a growing concern that our efforts to promote evidence-based policy will sometimes be undermined by those seeking 'policy-based evidence' — information that can be used to justify politically-motivated action. The total lack of performance measurement, performance information and performance management in most small local governments doesn’t provide much opportunity for evidence based policy, but generating the information leads to other political issues.
The difficult connection from outputs to outcomes leaves ample opportunity to generate policy based evidence making. This doesn’t mean we should stop doing performance measurement, performance information and performance management, it just means we need to be prepared to use the tools available to us.
We do not have the resources to develop significant social research which uses the methods of scientific enquiry—such as surveys, qualitative research, analysis of administrative and statistical data, case studies and controlled trials—to measure, describe, explain and predict social and economic change.
We will need to develop surrogate or substitute indicators when cost, complexity or timeliness prevent the scientific evaluation of outputs and outcomes from explaining and predicting social and economic change.

Electronic Voting

An electronic voting system improves transparency by recording each member’s vote. Under the system, members of Council vote in favor or against a motion by pressing the appropriate button, and the overhead screen displays how each individual voted. All votes other than procedural motions are recorded, and the meeting minutes show how each member voted.
Previously, votes were only recorded during a roll call. Roll call voting encourages game playing and reduces government transparency.

Game Playing, Really

The bag of tools brought to the table for work here needs to be the ability to think critically, the decision-makers need to pursue well-defined exogenous objectives (they are rational) and take into account their knowledge or expectations of other decision-makers' behavior (they reason strategically).
An agent is rational if and only if they choose the action which yields the highest benefit for them.
An agent is strategic if and only if they account for the other agents in their decision. On the contrary, an agent is naive if and only if they only care about their own actions.