5 Tips for Ensuring On-Time, On-Budget Performance of Government Services

Quality performance management helps to ensure that the affected communities, and state-and-local governments supporting them, operate and manage disaster relief funds with greater efficiency, transparency, and accountability. It helps to ensure on-time, on-budget performance and integrity of government services to citizens in need. Effective quality performance management are not one-time events, but ongoing processes of planning, implementation, communication, and follow-up.

Five tips for ensuring on-time, on-budget performance of government services are as follows.

1) Establish a systematic approach to performance management by:

• Developing a Quality Performance Management Plan based on current applicable contract and regulatory requirements, policies, and statutes helps to establish a systematic approach to performance management, mindful that each program has its own nuances, catering to the highest risk areas, which helps to keep the focus on cost effective quality performance.
• Taking a systematic approach entails deploying best practices and other tools to maximize performance and minimize the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse ensuring on-time, on-budget performance.
• Using a risk-based statistical sampling and testing to verify quality performance helps to reduce costs, provide timely services, and remain within budget.

2) Create a culture of continuous improvement by:

• Creating a culture of continuous improvement by monitoring activities, collecting performance data, comparing this data against standards, and adjusting accordingly to improve performance and service in real-time can lower program costs, increase efficiency, and ensure timely delivery of services within budget.
• Identifying and addressing training and technical assistance needs of program staff, based on performance monitoring results, can avoid costly mistakes and budget overruns.

3) Provide ongoing oversight and monitoring of performance and progress in accordance with grant and contract requirements by:

• Conducting performance assessments, evaluating and comparing actual performance with planned performance, acting on the differences, and monitoring financial consequences per contract and grant requirements helps to catch and correct any discrepancies that could impede on-time on-budget performance.
• Monitoring expenditures to ensure alignment with budget and to verify the costs support records.
• Monitoring achievement of the intended purposes of program activities for which the contractor, grantee, etc., is responsible for can reduce program costs and delays in distributing funds and delivering government services.

4) Monitor the quality performance of all tasks and the development of all deliverables by:

• Monitoring the quality performance of all tasks and the development of all deliverables in real time against performance measures and contract service level deliverables to ensure timely service delivery and budget adherence.
• Continuously reviewing program performance reports and scorecards, identifying areas to improve prior to quality, time, service and budget becoming compromised.

5) Identify additional resources to monitor performance

• Current resources/personnel may lack dedicated time (due to current ongoing responsibilities) to monitor/track performance measures and contract service level deliverables.  Identifying additional resources, such as an independent contractor, to assist in monitoring performance can ensure quality, compliance, and on-time within budget performance

Quality performance management benefits all stakeholders, from the people most in need to the state-and-local officials making the decisions. By realizing efficiencies, government agencies get the most out of their resources when the time comes to allocate disaster relief funds.