Citizen Satisfaction

Improving Government Performance, Efficiency, and Citizen Trust

F. Morgeson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780230341340
• eBook ISBN: 9781137047137
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Citizen Satisfaction investigates the topic of satisfaction with government services from a variety of perspectives, using case studies and empirical results from satisfaction studies at the federal level.

CHAPTER 1

Government Performance Measurement Comes of Age

Introduction

Government performance measurement is not a new phenomenon. Basic measures of government performance have existed for decades, and some for even longer. Nevertheless, over the last 20 years or so governments at all levels have become almost fixated on systematic and scientific measures of performance. The inspiration for this focus has come in part from the private sector. Like many private sector firms, a majority of which now routinely dissect nearly every aspect of their company’s production processes, supply chain, service quality, customer relationships, customer satisfaction, and so forth, through oftentimes complex systems of performance measurement, governments have followed suit and devised innumerable methods for measuring, monitoring, and benchmarking the performance of their various programs, agencies, and departments.

In this chapter, we begin by providing a brief definition of performance measurement, and then examine the evolution of government performance measurement over the last few decades. Here we focus on a review of key laws, regulations, and initiatives that have mandated various types of performance measurement. While we focus on the federal level of government in the United States, mostly due to the huge diversity of these initiatives at other levels of government and across national boundaries, many of these same kinds of initiatives—and the general pattern of performance measurement adoption and evolution we will outline here—is certainly not unique to the US federal government. Indeed, systems of performance measurement have emerged from among governments at all levels, and in governments around the world. Nevertheless, our review focuses on a look at legislation from the US Congress, as well as some presidential initiatives and executive orders enacted predominantly since the early 1990s.

Our review of the growth and evolution of government performance measurement reveals that, in a pattern similar to what has occurred in the private sector, and in part precisely because of this private sector evolution and its influence on the public sector, governments have begun to shift their focus from predominantly internal measures of performance to external, citizen-centered measures. That is, instead of focusing (almost exclusively) on internal evaluations of unit or agency performance conducted by actors within the institutions being evaluated (or related oversight agencies) and governed by internal criteria of performance success, these external measures highlight the importance of the perspective of the users, consumers, and citizens experiencing the services delivered by government.

The chapter concludes by arguing that the evolution toward external, citizen-centered performance measures likely will—and absolutely should—continue. Through an argument linking the dramatic growth in consumer power in the free market (due in large part to the growth in information accessibility realized through the Information Age) and citizen power (in democratic and nondemocratic societies alike), we suggest that external, citizen-centric performance measures are essential today.

A Review of Performance Management and Measurement Legislation in the United States

Attempts to reform the management practices of the US federal government are almost as old as the government itself. Efforts to achieve this goal through systems of performance measurement, while not quite as old, are nearly so. In its most basic form, performance measurement entails nothing more than the “regular measurement of the results (outcomes) and efficiency of [government] services or programs,” and since these kinds of metrics can come in a diverse array of shapes and sizes, governments have in fact long undertaken performance measurement initiatives, though some more complex and sophisticated than others.¹ In essence, performance measurement is conducted anytime an organization attempts to systematically gauge and quantify its success in achieving some fundamental goal, objective, or mission, and thus performance measurement is certainly not a new phenomenon.

Yet over the last few decades the quantity, the complexity, the rigor, and the focus of these performance measurement efforts have all changed.² A brief review of some of the recent and most important initiatives aimed at realizing improvement through performance measurement should make both the increase in intensity and the shift in focus apparent. For simplicity’s sake, we offer a short synopsis of each initiative (or law, executive order, etc.), followed by a summary of the primary performance measurement objective pursued in the initiative. And as mentioned earlier, this brief review will set the stage for an essential point we elaborate on later: Performance measurement initiatives have increasingly shifted from a focus on internal, agency-based analysis to external, citizen-centered analysis.

Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990

Passed by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990 sought to standardize and better regulate the budgeting and accounting practices of the federal government. Among its features, the CFO Act mandated a single chief financial officer for each applicable federal agency, thus better imitating the model of financial management found in the private sector. The CFO Act further aimed to centralize and make more transparent the accounting practices of federal agencies by empowering a government-wide chief financial officer, the Deputy Director for Management, within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a single individual responsible for monitoring the accounting practices of all agencies.

Performance Measurement Objective: The changes introduced by the CFO Act were intended to improve federal agency financial management by centralizing these practices, while also providing key budgetary information (i.e., performance data) to a single, centralized chief financial officer capable of making cross-agency performance comparisons (i.e., benchmarking).

Government Performance and Results Act of 1993

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 was considered a major innovation in federal government performance measurement at the time of its passage, and the legislation remains highly influential today (see below). A product of the “reinventing government” movement dominant in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the related government-wide “National Performance Review” directed by Vice President Al Gore in 1993, the GPRA mandated that all applicable federal agencies and departments create annual strategic plans, review performance relative to these plans, and produce annual “performance reports.” Prepared for submission to Congress and the OMB, these reports were intended to outline areas of both performance success and failure, detail actions the agency planned to implement toward improving areas found to be deficient, and to recommend future adjustments in performance goals.

Performance Measurement Objective: While the GPRA was diverse in its focus and the types of performance metrics mandated, a central goal of the legislation was to increase public confidence in the federal government through a renewed (or new) emphasis on performance measurement aimed at improved program efficiency and higher quality services delivered to citizens. A portion of the latter was to come directly via citizen-customer feedback and surveys, the first such government-wide mandate by the federal government.

Government Management Reform Act of 1994 and the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996

While primarily an addendum to provisions included in the CFO Act of 1990, the Government Management Reform Act (GMRA) of 1994 attempted to further modernize the accounting practices of federal agencies and bring them even more into line with private sector practices. The GMRA mandated independent, audited financial statements of all applicable federal agencies and departments, primarily as a means of better tracking and managing the financial performance of these agencies. The Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (FFMIA) of 1996 would advance this agenda a step further, creating federal agency-wide accounting standards and external checks on compliance with these standards.

Performance Measurement Objective: Much like the CFO Act of 1990 before it, the GMRA and the FFMIA aimed at improved federal government performance through the adoption of new budgetary management techniques, and improved budgeting and accounting performance measurement.

Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996

The Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996, sometimes also called the Clinger-Cohen Act (after its Congressional authors), sought to reduce waste—in the form of excess bureaucratic paperwork—and streamline myriad federal government processes through the adoption of information technologies (IT) already commonplace in the private sector. Like the CFO Act of 1990 and the GMRA of 1994, the Clinger-Cohen Act aimed to achieve these goals in part through the reform of management practices, with each agency thereafter required to create the position of chief information officer, who would in turn outline and implement an integrated “information technology architecture” (ITA). Clinger-Cohen also aimed to measure the performance of these newly mandated IT systems from the perspective of reduced waste and reduced expenditure, while also requiring extensive performance measurement of these new IT systems for the purposes of interagency benchmarking of process quality, and the quality of outputs and outcomes.

Performance Measurement Objective: While Clinger-Cohen is often credited first and foremost with ushering in the era of electronic government (or “e-government”) in the United States, it also exemplifies the heightened focus on performance measurement emerging in the federal government during this period, as these new IT systems were from the start to be rigorously monitored and measured for their performance success and accomplishment of core goals and objectives.

The Program Assessment Rating Tool

Enacted in 2002 by the “President’s Management Council” within the OMB, the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) was the most significant performance measurement and management initiative enacted during the administration of President George W. Bush. The PART was explicitly designed to better achieve the core performance measurement mission of the GPRA legislation enacted almost a decade earlier, and to do so through a four-category rating system applied to nearly every federal agency centered on the agency’s program design, strategic planning, program management, and program results. Going beyond GPRA and other earlier initiatives, the PART was also intended to provide a means for undertaking “performance-based budgeting,” where agency and program funding decisions (and even the continued existence of some programs) were to be determined in part by their success on a set of unified cross-agency performance standards. Because it demanded the use of common metrics for gauging performance, the PART also facilitated means for effectively and accurately benchmarking performance across all of the measured agencies.

Performance Measurement Objective: The PART represented a first attempt by the federal government to provide a systematic, unified, and government-wide performance measurement system encompassing a variety of types of metrics, including internal assessment of agency performance, external assessment (through customer feedback), and more efficient budgetary resource allocation through performance-based budgeting.

E-Government Act of 2002

Passed in 2002, the E-Government Act (EGA) was a statute aimed at advancing the e-government capabilities of the federal government as a whole. While most federal agencies had by this time already introduced e-government tools for providing services to citizens (and were required to do so by the aforementioned Clinger-Cohen Act), the EGA was created with the recognition that federal government had not yet done so at a level consistent with the best practices of the private sector. The EGA thus mandated centralized leadership, through a new government-wide chief information officer and a new “Office of Electronic Government,” as well as some central government funding, aimed at creating a comprehensive and unified electronic infrastructure capable of integrating information technology (and especially a system of modern, high-functioning agency websites) into essentially all of the activities of the federal government.

Performance Measurement Objective: While the EGA aimed primarily at improving agency performance through the adoption of more and better e-government resources, it also sought to achieve this goal through a range of new performance metrics, including explicit demands that performance measures of the impact of e-government on customer service delivery be devised.

Executive Order 13450

Executive Order (EO) 13450 was signed by President George W. Bush in late 2007. Primarily an attempt to formalize the system of performance measurement enacted through the PART, EO 13450 does so in a unique way, by mandating the creation of the position of “Program Improvement Officer” within each applicable agency. EO 13450 also created the “Performance Improvement Council” within OMB, a group tasked with monitoring program performance and performance measurement government-wide. Finally, EO 13450 requires each agency to publish the results of its latest performance review on its agency website for public review, increasing public transparency of the performance measurement process.

Performance Measurement Objective: The main goal of EO 13450 was to formalize the type of performance measurement—and, it was hoped, to permanently institute it after George W. Bush’s second term had ended—advocated by the PART, while also demanding greater transparency in the delivery of performance information.

Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010

The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act (GPRMA) of 2010 represents the first substantial legislative revision to the GPRA of 1993. Building on the GPRA, the GPRMA codified into law several aspects of EO 13450 (discussed above), including the designation of Performance Improvement Officers within agencies and the Performance Improvement Council within OMB. GPMRA also requires agencies to submit their performance plans and regular performance reviews through a new government website designed for this purpose, instead of submitting them independently each ye...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1   Government Performance Measurement Comes of Age
• 2   The Purposes and Objectives of Citizen Satisfaction Measurement
• 3   The Practice of Citizen Satisfaction Measurement: Unit of Analysis Selection, Questionnaire Design, and Data Collection
• 4   The Practice of Citizen Satisfaction Measurement: Statistical Analysis and Modeling
• 5   Using Citizen Satisfaction Results: A Multidimensional Priority Matrix Approach for Satisfaction Improvement
• 6   Enduring Lessons in Citizen Satisfaction: Trends, Findings, and Public-Private Comparisons
• 7   Governing in an Age of Scarcity: On the Role of Cross-National Citizen Satisfaction Measurement
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index