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Weekly UpdatesThe Oregon Progress Board is unique in the way it publicly reports performance data. Other governments, including British Columbia, (1) Tasmania, (2) and South Australia (3) emulate aspects of Oregon's system. But unlike Oregon, they do not publicly link public entity performance measures directly to societal goals and progress indicators. Oregon's system wraps externally reported government data in the context of societal goals. This provides a framework that can enhance public understanding of the purpose of government and encourage a more integrated, systemwide approach to better results.
The governor and Legislature launched Oregon's current system in 1989 with a statewide strategic plan called Oregon Shines, (4) companion progress indicators called Oregon Benchmarks, (5) and an independent Progress Board to track progress and keep the plan current. The benchmarks offer evidence about Oregon's economic, social, and environmental wellbeing. In 2007, the Progress Board launched benchmarks.oregon.gov, an interactive Web site that links the Oregon Shines goals and 91 high-level benchmarks to state agency performance measures.
UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES
Benchmarks.oregon.gov is the portal to Oregon's high-level planning and reporting system. Because state agencies self-link their organizational performance measures to pertinent benchmarks as part of the budget process, benchmarks.oregon.gov also serves as an external performance reporting tool for state government. State agencies' performance data linked to high-level benchmark data provides a societal framework for public entity performance.
Here are some of the principles that underpin benchmarks.oregon.gov.
* Oregon Benchmarks were developed to track progress toward a statewide plan. Some community indicator systems arise from a process that does not include planned goals and targets. In contrast, Oregon Benchmarks come from a societal-level planning process. Benchmarks track Oregon's progress in seven categories aligned to the Oregon Shines goals (see Exhibit 1).
* Oregon Shines and the benchmarks are about advancing Oregon's wellbeing in a sustainable manner. Oregon Shines goals and benchmarks reflect the interconnectivity of economic, social, and environmental wellbeing. For this reason, the benchmarks have been studied as sustainability indicators. (6) Since the original Oregon Shines in 1989, the idea has always been to move the needle toward economic, social, and environmental benchmark targets simultaneously. This approach is important to help harmonize economic development, for example, with other benchmark areas such as affordable housing, traffic congestion, and carbon emissions.
* Oregon Shines and the benchmarks are about results. Oregon Benchmarks represent the end of the "Why?" chain. Why complete intake assessments on new inmates? To get more of them into training, treatment, and other rehabilitation activities. Why do that? To increase the percentage of inmates who behave better and possess more skills. And why do that? To reduce recidivism once they get out, which is Oregon Benchmark 65. Citizens may not care how many intake assessments occur or how many inmates receive training, but they probably do care about the likelihood of a repeat offense in their community or workplace.
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WHAT BENCHMARKS.OREGON.GOV DOES
Benchmarks.oregon.gov tells it like it is, with no spin. People often note the candor with which the benchmarks reveal bad news about Oregon, alongside the good. Benchmarks.oregon.gov provides a virtual report card of Oregon's economic, social, and environmental progress. Most benchmarks have targets set at five-year intervals. With adequate data, the Progress Board can "grade" whether the trend is on course to achieve the target. Online reports also provide data tables, national comparison and county data, where available, and background information on each benchmark.
Benchmark facts can quickly inform policy-making dialogue and help balance the political process with reliable data. For instance, a legislator can take a laptop into a hearing room with WiFi and run a searchable report on any of 91 benchmarks (wee Exhibit 2). If testimony raises issues about per capita income, eighth-grade reading, or any other benchmark, the legislator can click to that benchmark and get the latest data on statewide, agency, and, in many cases, county progress. Progress Board staff update the Web site's database as soon as they receive new data points.
Users can drill down to an agency's key performance measures (KPMs). As part of Oregon's budget process, state agencies self-link their KPMs to pertinent Oregon Benchmarks. Viewed collectively, the links shed light on how government contributes to the societal goals and benchmarks of Oregon Shines. The Progress Board strives to keep this information transparent to the public within the framework of the statewide plan. Visitors can access "Benchmark/KPM Links" from the Oregon Progress Board's home page, from benchmarks.oregon.gov, and from within individually generated online benchmark reports.Visitors can tell at a glance whether an agency is on target and can click directly to that agency's performance analysis from its annual performance progress report (see Exhibit 3).
Benchmarks.oregon.gov also provides legislators with one-stop shopping for a range of benchmark products, including benchmark and KPM "Crosswalks" for Ways and Means subcommittees. A special Web area for each legislator's district allows easy access to all benchmark products, including custom slide shows for counties in his or her district.
The portal also offers a range of county data products for local users. Local governments and communities find county data more useful and compelling for their work than statewide data. Benchmarks.oregon.gov provides county data for about a third of the 91 benchmarks. Users can download benchmark slide shows, customized for each of Oregon's 36 counties, along with county data tables and comparison maps (see Exhibit 4).
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Oregon Shines and the benchmarks are about all of Oregon, not just state government. Many people in local governments and communities, businesses, and nonprofits contribute to moving the needle on the benchmarks. To capture this experience and to offer a venue for learning around shared goals, benchmarks.oregon.gov invites partners outside state government to link their benchmark-related programs and documents.
WHAT BENCHMARKS.OREGON.GOV DOES NOT DO
Benchmarks.oregon.gov does not guarantee good management. External performance reporting is important to help account for what citizens get for their tax dollars, but performance measures are not useful to managers without a process that uses those measures to manage for results. Without performance management, measures become a perfunctory exercise. Oregon started with agency performance measurement, hoping that this would become the "tail that wagged the dog" of strategic planning and performance management. In 2007, Oregon's budget shops in both the executive and legislative branches began working together to expand the Progress Board's performance measure system to one of performance management.
Not all state agency performance measures are captured. Eighty-five Oregon agencies link about 55 percent of their 900 legislatively approved KPMs to Oregon Benchmarks. Much of the work not captured by the Oregon Shines framework is regulatory in nature, such as health licensing boards, or deals with activities that only distantly link to a benchmark, such as those of the Oregon Racing Commission.
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Benchmarks.oregon.gov does not attempt in-depth benchmark analysis. It provides a brief analysis of why the Progress Board graded the state on teen pregnancy, for example. But because of resource limitations, benchmarks.oregon.gov does not attempt a deep analysis of what drives the data, nor does it suggest policy options. The Progress Board engages partners in that kind of re-thinking during the Oregon Shines planning process.
CONCLUSIONS
Both the Government Finance Officers Association and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board affirm the importance of performance measurement and management. (7) A system like Oregon's can help mitigate the risks and enhance the benefits of these efforts in at least two ways.
Oregon's system can help people understand why government does what it does. People (the press, elected officials, citizens) may misunderstand publicly reported performance data, and that kind of misunderstanding can put the entities reporting the data at risk. A tiered, linked system of performance measures with higher-level outcomes that people more easily understand and care about can help reduce this risk. If people understand that reducing repeat crime is why inmates receive special training and treatment, they may be less likely to oppose those expenditures. Benchmarks.oregon.gov wraps agency measures such as inmates trained in the context of societal goals and benchmarks--in this case, Oregon Benchmark 65, Adult Recidivism. It provides a logical framework that can help people see from a nongovernmental, societal perspective why public entities do what they do.
Oregon's system also provides a "systems view" of the state's progress toward shared, societal goals. Perhaps the greatest benefit of benchmarks.oregon.gov is that it can help promote much-needed systems thinking. In our society, we traditionally divide up complexity to better organize and understand it. This "reductionist" thought process has given us wonderful specialists but also painful and inefficient fragmentation in the economy, education, medicine and health care, social services, public safety, transportation, and natural resources. All of these areas are connected by human needs, behaviors, and the social fabric of community,One cannot separate mill closings, for example, from laid-off loggers' needs for job retraining, health care, and food for their families.
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