Not content to focus on helping just its own organization improve performance, this county government takes to heart government-wide calls, such as those outlined in the President's Management Agenda, for agencies to focus their application of information technology on improving agency mission performance, reducing duplication, and coordinating efforts with other agencies in an integrated manner. Toward this end, ingrained in Sarasota County's own performance management efforts is a philosophy intended to help themselves and other local governments:
- Collaborate for more efficient utilization of available resources
- Reduce costs through sharing of technology assets
- Gain the use of the latest technology without suffering the costs and aggravation related to obsolescence
- Achieve all this with minimal start-up costs and technology requirements.
A commitment to performance permeating its culture, Sarasota County's very organizational structure is built around it, with departmental hierarchies organized around strategic projects. A Process Quality Innovation (PQI) department oversees the coordination of the enterprise-level balanced scorecard and related objectives and measures. In addition, the Organization and Employee Development (OED) department conducts necessary education and training, with an Enterprise Management Education Series (EMES) required for all management -- from utilities to parks and recreation to health department management -- to be trained in performance management.
Weekly operational excellence TV broadcasts to all employees, in which a specific county area's performance is reviewed, help ensure that county-wide cross-pollination of learning is occurring regularly. Publicly posting these broadcasts on the Internet maintains transparency and keeps Sarasota's taxpaying community informed of the county's work on its behalf. With a data center and a sophisticated, internally-developed integrated strategic planning, budgeting and performance management system already in place, the organization saw the next step to taking its performance management program to an even higher level was integrating it with third-party software.
As it searched for a solution to help advance its existing system, Sarasota County Government was introduced to Pilot Software. Pilot's operational alignment software, PilotWorks, proved to fulfill all of the organization's initially-specified requirements. Moreover, the software included a host of additional innovative functionality, such as initiatives management, that the team previously had not seen anywhere else in the market.
"PilotWorks, with its unique initiative management capabilities, provides a good balance between the high-level overview of performance and the details, such as schedule, contingencies and drill-down analysis, that reflect the substance of successful planning and execution," noted county CIO Bob Hansen.
Up and Running Quickly
In a matter of months, Pilot's operational alignment software framework had been integrated with Sarasota County Government's original internally-developed system. The combined system was then initially rolled out to three of the county's10 core service areas which align the county organizationally by the services -- or outcomes -- it provides to taxpayers. Accessing PilotWorks within the organization's own system, Sarasota County Government stakeholders will quickly understand current progress toward goals and initiatives within their core service area; in other words, their effectiveness in delivering desired outcomes to their taxpaying constituents. For example, public safety stakeholders will quickly understand their progress in reducing the time it takes ambulances to get
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from an accident scene to a major hospital -- one of the key measures under Emergency Medical Service (EMS) -- while process and service automation stakeholders can view their progress in boosting the percentage of customers rating system availability as "good" or "better." Since each core service area's objectives and measures are created by managers within that area -- Parks and Recreation objectives and measures are defined by Parks and Recreation managers, and so on -- the organization is assured of working toward meaningful goals county-wide. The array of visualizations and analyses -- strategy plans and pathways; initiative management and prioritization; scorecards and dashboards; and reports and ad hoc -- help the county and its employees map contributions to organizational goals all the way to the individual employee level. With the combined power of its own developed solution integrated with PilotWorks, the organization can ensure alignment of all of its precious resources, across the organization, with strategic objectives. Budgeting is all outcome-based, with dollars and staff assigned in support of organizational objectives and initiatives; projects failing to meet performance targets will not receive future funding. In addition to providing a service-based view of the budget, the county government's outcome-based system helps break down organizational silos as the budget is built to support community goals and objectives -- all of which contributes to a higher performing organization.
"Plug-and-Play" Performance Management
The county views the system as such a promising asset that it has decided to work with Pilot to offer the integrated system to other counties and municipalities, calling it a "prime example of how organizations can share resources to better serve their constituents." Offered through cost-sharing agreements on hosted basis -- a virtually "plug-and-play" environment, with no upfront hardware or software costs -- the combined offering allows other local governments to take advantage of the sophisticated, years-in-the-making performance management functionality at truly minimal cost. Other communities, both within the state and nationwide, have already expressed interest in adopting the integrated system in their own municipalities. With local governments collaborating to deliver more for less, constituents everywhere win.
