Against a backdrop of the Gershon Efficiency Review, Citizen take-up of e-services, and Joined-up Government, measuring output, providing targets and reporting in the public sector is a hot topic which has considerable cultural implications throughout the sector. What gets measured, gets done, is an adage that the efficiency gurus must have had in mind when they devised the measurement and reporting protocols which now take up over a day a each week of each ICT manager’s time.
But what exactly do you measure, and can measurement be constructive and not simply a burden? Just over half of the respondents questioned in the Bathwick Group’s research said that targets and performance measurement made their organisation more efficient, but nearly 60% of respondents weren’t sure of the importance of KPIs, and the majority said there were too many of them. When it comes to creating reports, burdensome paperwork is even more evident, with 63% saying that they produce reports which are never used or even read.
It’s easy to see where this sentiment comes from. Richard Granger, the NHS IT Director General, demonstrated that an inefficient and convoluted procurement process ensured that by the time a system is implemented it is already halfway through its lifecycle and that the things which really should be measured, seldom are.
The panel composed of representatives from the NHS, HMRC, the CPS, the Cabinet Office’s eGovernment Unit and the DCMS, and was less a debate than a general consensus on the shortcomings of current evaluation methods. The panel cited examples of misaligned targets, targets which related more to internal processes than to outward facing service delivery or which conflicted with those set for other departments.
And the solution? Stop measuring things which don’t add value, integrate data more effectively and take into account the end-user’s perception of the services they receive according to the panel. Risk-averseness was discounted as a reason for projects falling short of expectation, in fact ‘conspicuous failure’ of an ICT project was regarded as a more serious ‘career limiting episode’ in the private sector than in the public sector.
So what is the best way of evaluating ICT within your organisation? Turn it off for a day, commented one panel member, adding ‘or consider what your organisation would be without it’.
Quelle: eGov monitor, 13.10.2005
