December 2007
CCAF releases a comprehensive report on good performance reporting practices
CCAF has completed a report on good practices in public performance reporting that contains practical ideas for report producers, central agencies, legislators and auditors. The report, What can we learn from effective public performance reporting?: Good Practices for central agencies, legislators and auditors, and report producers., identifies good practices from eight jurisdictions:
- Canada
- Alberta
- Washington State
- Oregon
- New Zealand
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- New South Wales.
CCAF selected these jurisdictions because they are working to improve public performance reporting. Within each jurisdiction, the Foundation studied two public sector organizations that have reputations for producing quality reports.
The result is a collection of 27 good practices: 11 that could be employed by central agencies, 5 that apply to legislators and legislative auditors, and 11 that report producers could use.
The report is not intended as a guide to good performance reporting. Instead, it offers a range of practices that appear to have helped officials in the jurisdictions studied to produce good performance reports.
Focus on external users
In carrying out the project, CCAF research associates Chris Hyde and Greg Gertz paid particular attention to practices likely to make public performance reports more useful to legislators, non-governmental organizations, the media and the public. The report includes 12 good practices that promote the capabilities of such users.
Effective public performance reporting is an essential element of public sector accountability. CCAF believes that progress in performance reporting will require a much closer link between the needs of report users and the production of reports.
CCAF began working to improve public performance reporting in 1999. The Foundation’s most significant early contribution was in the area of reporting principles, culminating in the public release in 2003 of Reporting Principles: Taking Public Reporting to a New Level.
In 2006, CCAF published Users and Uses: Towards Producing and Using Better Public Performance Reporting — Perspectives and Solutions. This research report noted that governments have made much progress in improving their public performance reports — and that they still have a long way to go to make them truly useful to such key audiences as elected officials, journalists, non-governmental organizations and the public.
CCAF then launched a three-year program — the Improved Public Performance Reporting Program — to improve the quality and usage of public performance reporting. The program receives generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The aim of the program is not simply to promote the use of performance reports, but to realign performance reporting with the needs of report users. The good practices project is a key component of the program.
Many people contributed to study
British Columbia is widely acknowledged as a leader in Canada in public performance reporting. The British Columbia Ministry of Finance supported this project by providing project funding, recommending jurisdictions for study, suggesting areas to explore in the survey, and offering valuable comments on drafts of the report.
“Many people and organizations deserve thanks for their contributions to this important project,” said CCAF Executive Director Michael Eastman upon the release of the project report.
“We had excellent cooperation from numerous officials in the Government of Canada, not only in the organizations whose reports we studied, but also in Treasury Board Secretariat and the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. We even received assistance from the Canadian High Commissioner to New Zealand, Penny Reedie, who helped us make contact with people in the New Zealand government,” Eastman said.
“In the jurisdictions we studied, dozens of people took the time to communicate with us by telephone or email, to complete our survey, and to direct us to key individuals or documents. Their assistance was invaluable, and I want to thank them all for contributing to this successful project.”
Spreading the message
CCAF is actively communicating the results of the study with key audiences.
- In May 2007, the Foundation shared preliminary study findings at a workshop on public performance reporting during the annual symposium of the Performance and Planning Exchange (PPX) in Ottawa.
- In November 2007, Chris Hyde outlined the good practices at the Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Conference in Rutgers, New Jersey.
- Chris Hyde and CCAF Director of Capacity Development Geoff Dubrow led a PPX learning event in Ottawa in mid-November.
In December 2007, the study will be posted on CCAF’s new performance reporting website www.performancereporting.ca/ or www.rapportsdeperformance.ca/
The study’s main findings
Ideas for central agencies
The CCAF study What can we learn from effective public performance reporting? suggests that central agencies can improve performance reporting by:
- Providing guidelines, principles, criteria or standards
- Producing a government-wide planning document
- Engaging senior managers in the development of standards
- Reviewing and commenting on public performance reports
- Producing a good practices guide
- Encouraging departments to consult experts about performance information
- Involving senior communications managers in reviewing central agency reporting standards
- Encouraging awareness of user needs
- Producing a government-wide performance report
- Engaging users directly
- Establishing a website for legislators to access performance information
Each of these practices is examined in the report.
Ideas for legislators and legislative auditors
Legislators can:
- Legislate a requirement for public performance reports
Legislative auditors can:
- Provide advice on performance measures
Legislators and legislative auditors can:
- Review public performance reports and reporting
- Recognize good public performance reporting
- Encourage improved performance reporting
Ideas for report producers
Report producers can:
- Align internal and external reporting systems
- Use technology to manage performance information
- Engage senior management
- Ensure continuity of membership in the performance reporting team
- Report against explicit targets set out in plans
- Link performance to broader government priorities
- Use performance measures consistently from year to year but maintain flexibility for continuous improvement
- Pay particular attention to relevance and understandability
- Disclose the level of assurance on the reliability and relevance of performance information
- Consult users
- Produce performance reports in formats that meet user needs
CCAF’s Performance Reporting Program moves forward
What can we learn from effective public performance reporting? is one of a number of projects under CCAF’s Improved Public Performance Reporting Program. Others include:
- a Public Performance Reporting website containing CCAF research results, project findings, articles, program information, and links of interest (www.performancereporting.ca/ or www.rapportsdeperformance.ca/)
- a look back at the evolution of performance reporting in British Columbia, one of the most advanced jurisdictions in Canada
- focus groups with citizens, non-governmental organizations and media in Edmonton and Calgary
- a September 2007 roundtable discussion among elected and appointed municipal government officials in British Columbia on improvements needed in public reporting
- Ideas for increasing media use of Public Performance Reports, a report based on interviews with political journalists in Ottawa.
CCAF’s Performance Reporting Task Force
An influential group of experts on public performance reporting has come together as a task force to guide and support CCAF’s new Improved Public Performance Reporting program.
Ed Archer is a Principal in Public Sector Accounting with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.
Wilson Campbell, a project director at the Governmental Accounting Standards Board in the United States, has many years of experience in the area of public performance reporting.
Katherine Graham is the Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs and Management at Carleton University, with research interests in urban and local governance.
Susan Jennings is the Assistant Auditor General of BC, and the BC representative on the Performance Reporting Advisory Group of the Canadian Council of Legislative Auditors.
Lee McCormack, Executive Director of Results-based Management at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, joins CCAF as Director of Research on December 3, 2007.
Graham Steele is the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Halifax Fairview. He has been a member of the Public Accounts Committee since 2002 and served as Chair from 2003-2005.
Chris Waddell is the Carty Chair in Business and Financial Journalism at the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication.