Description

A shared services organization within a federal government agency needed to provide quarterly performance reports on the recruiting, personnel security and retirement services it provided to its customers.

The performance reports needed to show actual performance against baseline and target performance levels.

The organization’s existing systems provided inaccurate performance data due to inconsistent usage of the systems by staff members and customers.

The organization had access to multiple external systems that provided accurate data on specific aspects of the services but there was no accurate end-to-end source for the data.

Approach

We first established and secured leadership buy-in on the performance measures that would be captured in the quarterly reports as well as the overall template of the report.

Once the report template was designed, we established a historical baseline of performance by reviewing and reconciling data from all available and relevant systems. Where the systems’ data could note be reconciled, we sat down with managers, staff members and customers to walk through a subset of actual cases to document baseline performance levels.

To prepare the first quarterly report, we employed a multi-tiered approach to gather the necessary data:

  • Secured access to all the relevant data available through existing system
  • Conducted weekly check-point meetings with key staff members to review status of open recruiting, personnel security and retirement actions
  • Conducted bi-weekly meetings with key customers to review status information on open actions and capture any additional knowledge they had of the actions
  • Used invoices the agency had received from OPM (for capturing data on personnel security actions)

To compile the report, we integrated all the data captured from the above sources and presented the information in a clear, concise manner based on the template that had been approved by the agency’s leadership.

Results

Using the quarterly reports, agency leadership was able to present a clear and accurate representation of actual performance against its baseline and target performance levels.

The quarterly reports became a management tool that agency leadership and functional managers used to proactively monitor staff performance.