Goal setting and running regular, data-driven reviews are tools an agency can use to improve performance. Across the federal government, we need to understand where we are regarding current performance, and be able to regularly ask the right questions to review progress on meeting those goals. It’s less about hitting a specific target and more about looking for root causes to advance continuous improvement activities.
Without goals there’s really no way to examine successes or shortfalls. Goals, specifically data-driven goals, allows departments and agencies to quantify their level of performance to improve outcomes.
GovLoop and the Performance Improvement Council have joined forces to improve government performance by giving away 2 tickets to the Performance Symposium June 27 -30 in Landsdowne, VA. The free tickets will include the conference registration, meals, receptions and overnight accommodations. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and all you have to do to win is tell us about performance in your department/agency by answering the question below:
How has your department/agency improving performance by setting goals and/or conducting regular data driven reviews?
Winning answers will be picked on June 13th by the Performance Improvement Council in partnership with GovLoop. Only federal government employees are eligible to win the tickets, but we encourage all members of GovLoop to share their success stories.
Here’s a little more information about the event:
The Symposium will take place on June 27-30, 2011 at the National Conference Center in Lansdowne, VA. The Symposium will feature keynote speakers such as Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Honorable Gene Dodaro (Comptroller General of the U.S., GAO), and Shelley Metzenbaum (OMB Associate Director for Performance and Personnel Management). Tracks for the event include focus areas on performance, strategy, budget, harnessing data, evaluation and analytics, hiring, energy efficiency and specific case studies. For more information regarding the event, please go to live.isixsigma.com/dod2011. Registration is open to federal employees only. If you would like to register, please use the code Federal2011.
The Department of Commerce is becoming a resulted oriented organization by focusing on program execution and strong management. By setting super high stretch goals, Secretary Locke has implemented “creative destruction” by focusing on customer service, organizational excellence and workforce excellence. The Secretary reframed the department’s strategic goals around economic growth, science and information and environmental stewardship and used a Balanced Scorecard approach to monitor progress and drive data-based decision making. Commerce’s recent successes include creating a Performance Excellence Program, implementing priority-based budgeting, costs savings of $392 million, implementing CommerceConnect to streamline the way the department helps business complete in the global marketplace, decreased the time to process grants from 7 months to 18 business days, whittling down a backlog of 76,000 patent applications, and reducing the time to process patents from 38 to 28 months. Commerce is also in the process of implementing an OHRM Excellence Initiaitive where employees are empowered to study OHRM process to optimize customer service.
Carol, thanks for sharing this. By the way, the effort that your chief learning officer, Fred Lang, made over the past few years to not only lead development of a coherent leadership development curriculum, but foster a network that became the interagency Chief Learning Officers Council, also undoubtedly supports Secretary Locke’s groundbreaking work. I’m more impressed by the Department of Commerce all the time.
Great answer Carol.
So did I win?
Yes, you did Carol. Let me get you in touch with the event people and get your squared away.
Thanks for picking me! In addition to Secretary Locke, we have some fabulous leaders working here like Bill Fleming on OHRM Excellence Initiatives, and CommerceConnect’s Executive Director Dennis Alvord and Deputy Director Efrain Gonzalez working on breaking down stovepipes to build inter bureau collaboration to hep U.S. Business compete more effectively in the global marketplace. I look forward to blogging on what I learn.