Measuring Government Service Delivery in Canada: Performance Under Pressure

Governments are under increasing pressure to improve the quality and cost effectiveness of service delivery. The pressure comes as most governments face a shortfall of resources. Citizens influenced by the growing sophistication of the Web and a consumer-oriented society expect governments to offer them choices on how they can access, receive and, in some cases, pay for services.

Besieged governments have to become high-performance governments—delivering more and greater outcomes in a more efficient and responsible manner. It will be no easy feat for governments to make this transformation, but they have started and there is increasing evidence of the move in this direction.

But how can you balance all of these competing pressures to get the best value for your money? At Accenture, we have been asking these questions while working with academics and industry experts from around the world in our research institute and out in the field with our clients.

Governments in Canada, including the Ontario government, are showing that they are committed to improving service delivery to citizens. The recent service guarantee put in place by Dalton McGuinty's government around birth certificates is a good example of a new service relationship between the civil service and the public. Such a guarantee can only be successful if the civil service measures its performance and understands the service dynamic that contributes to successful outcomes. The commitment demonstrates a new level of confidence by government in its ability to consistently deliver high performance.

Performance measures help an organization meet statutory responsibilities by assisting with planning, budgeting and managing day-to-day operations. In addition, the act of reporting these measures enhances the accountability a government has to its public. By setting service standards based on these metrics they are staking them as commitments to the public.

First, you get what you measure. In other words, behavior is driven in the direction of the outcome. Second, performance must be driven by linking costs to outcomes. Third, management must be committed to embedding a management information system into all levels of the organization—feedback must be relevant and reliable. If there is not a commitment within the agency to embed performance measurements into the system, the desired result (high performance) will never be achieved.

In many instances, this service transformation will start with the workforce. Investment in the new skills for the civil service of Canada is vital. As well, new organizational models built to focus on service delivery, like Service Ontario, Service Canada or shared services models, are important to ensure concentrated performance management and consistent measurements for success. For instance, shared services frees up scarce resources to allow departments and agencies to focus on their core business and on their customer needs, while providing organizational flexibility to have the administrative back-office structures independent of front-line activities and structures.

In addition, training and enabling new technologies to offer new delivery channels for citizens will also be important. In Canada, our research has shown that Canadians continue to prefer the phone, such as 311 services, for interacting with the government but there should still be a focused mix in service delivery.

At Accenture, we have been studying and researching public sector value as a tool to justify outcomes and the cost of providing service citizens. The Accenture Public Sector Value Model is built to measure outcomes and make governments more confident that they are doing everything possible to be accountable to—and deliver value to—constituents. Around the world, we are seeing increasing interest in this model by governments in how to report results to the public.

We have noted that a number of governments are making real headway on the road to effective performance measurement. Certain practices have come to the fore among these "pockets of success," including:

• Concentrate on performance management at the agency or team level.
• Focus on setting goals and performance expectations to guide measurement.
• Support, but don't drive, performance management initiatives with new technology.
• Use legislative and regulatory mandates to create a consistent, cross-administration push.
• Understand that performance management is an iterative process.

Service guarantees should be seen not as gimmicks but a commitment by elected officials to stand behind their commitment to improved public services. Governments must always keep in mind the measurements and factors for improving service delivery. If you don't measure performance or build the right foundation, promises can easily fall short.

Michael Jordan is a senior executive in Accenture's Government operating group in Canada.