This month’s featured Web site is that of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), which can be found at www.npr.gov. The NPR is the Clinton-Gore Administration’s initiative to reform the way federal government works. Its mission is to create a government that “works better, costs less, and gets results that the public cares about”. Begun in the early days of the current administration, with Vice-President Al Gore at its helm, the task force is the longest-running government reform effort in U.S. history.
NPR has created a substantial body of knowledge that is useful across all industry sectors, and for both private and public sector initiatives. The site features numerous downloadable publications on various management subjects at www.npr.gov/library. While NPR is understandably focused on supporting government departments, much of its material relates to Leadership, Service Delivery, Planning and Project Management, and Reengineering and Reforming Management Practices — all of which is extremely relevant and timely for the IT profession.
Finally, NPR’s section on Web links — www.npr.gov/links — provides further leading materials from all other areas of the U.S. government, NPR-related initiatives, and other resources supporting management reform.
Feature Report
The NPR report entitled Balancing Measures: Best Practice in Performance Management was developed to help create high-performing organizations. By establishing clear performance targets and goals, and defining performance measures for these goals, management can encourage world-class organizational performance.
The report presents a comprehensive description of best practices in performance measurement. This information was obtained through an extensive undertaking of surveys and individual interviews with various agencies and companies from all levels of the U.S. government as well as from international agencies and the private sector.
Some ways that I see CIOs applying this report include: encouraging senior management to more formally define their performance goals and related performance measurements; ensuring that all IT initiatives include a performance measurement component (including both the business and IT project perspective); and implementing an IT performance measurement system for the business’s functions.
The full report is available at www.npr.gov/library/bkgrd/balmeasure.html. While you’re downloading the performance management report, consider adding NPR’s Best Practices in Customer-Driven Strategic Planning report to your collection. Various benchmarking reports are found at the NPR’s library at www.npr.gov/initiati/benchmk.
Leading Informative Web Sites
Reinventing Government
www.policyworks.gov
www.npr.gov
www.npr.gov/links
www.npr.gov/library
www.npr.gov/initiati/benchmk/
Best Practices for IM/IT
www.cio-dpi.gc.ca
www.ec.fed.gov
www.sei.cmu.edu
www.itpolicy.gsa.gov
www.cio.gov
IT Security
www.cse-cst.gc.ca
csrc.nist.gov
www.auditnet.org
www.isaca.org
www.ifac.org
IT Strategic Planning
www.itpolicy.gsa.gov
www.fcw.com/ref/cio.htm
www.ifac.org
www.cima.org
Dan Swanson is a management consultant with LGS Group in Winnipeg. He specializes in audit and management consulting and can be reached at dswanson@lgs.ca
