Hobart City Council’s Strategic Measurement System (SMS) arose from the desire to accurately measure progress in achieving the overall strategic direction for the City and to be able to communicate that performance in a simple and meaningful way.
Strategic and Executive Support Manager, Gary Randall, said sustainability of an organisation and its relevance to the community are based on the ability to achieve the directions set through the strategic planning process.
“Traditional measurement systems can assess performance at the action or strategy level but performance becomes more subjective and less quantifiable at the high level outcome or vision level,” he said. “However, it is performance at the outcome and vision level where the community interest lies and where management performance is essential. “
Gary Randall said the SMS is built on a suite of measures focused on the results that are be achieved as the strategic plan is implemented.
“Each individual measure has a target and annual performance is measured against that target and expressed as a score of performance,” he said. “The unique feature of the SMS is that it applies a methodology developed to standardise the various data types and present them as a percentage score against the target. This allows disparate and individual indicators to be grouped together and the scores aggregated to provide an overall score of performance against target for each key strategy area. The same logic is applied to aggregating the strategy scores into the relevant high level outcomes and the vision.
“The end result is a quantitative measure of performance against a defined target at each level of the planning framework using one set of measures. The results are reported to the community, provided to the employees to show their contribution and analysed for improvement.
“The SMS provides a quantifiable assessment of performance at the highest planning level and ensures the overall corporate focus is properly targeted.”
For more information contact Gary Randall, email randallg@hobartcity.com.au or call (03) 62382746.
