Administration for Community Living

Performance Strategy

2018

**Introduction**

The Administration for Community Living (ACL) performance strategy presents a high-level approach to the planning, conduct, and implementation of performance management.  This strategy represents ACL’s commitment to providing rigorous, relevant, and transparent performance data highlighting all the programs and initiatives ACL supports.  It also reflects ACL’s continuous effort to build and enhance its repository of data and evidence including high quality performance data in support of our mission and vision.

The Office of Performance and Evaluation (OPE) provides and promotes high quality transparent information to support sound decision making to advance the agency’s mission. OPE will implement the performance strategy by continuously providing consultation to ACL programs. The performance strategy requires close collaboration with various partners, with a vested interest in ACL’s performance including senior leadership, program offices, budget officials, and external stakeholders.

**Role of Performance Management**

· Increases public confidence in the federal government by holding federal agencies accountable for program results.

· Tracks and reports program effectiveness, service delivery, improvement, and accountability by focusing on results, the quality of service, and customer satisfaction.

· Enhances Agency/Departmental, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and Congressional decision-making.

**Primary Goals**

OPE will ensure the ACL performance strategy is communicated across the organization with clarity and transparency to staff and there is a strong familiarity and shared ownership of the strategy.

The ACL Performance Strategy has six goals, to build and enhance ACL performance management.

**Goal 1:**  Create and sustain a culture of continuous learning, improvement, innovation, and growth through the understanding and use of credible, valid, and reliable performance data.

**Goal 2:**Develop****and maintain****a repository of high quality and robust performance data of all ACL programs and business lines to demonstrate the impact of programs and services ACL supports. 

**Goal 3:** Align ACL’s performance measures with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and ACL strategic plans and priorities, pillars, legislative requirements. 

**Goal 4:**Encourage the utilization of the performance strategy and data in policy and practice to enhance planning and decision-making enabling ACL to easily track goals, objectives and performance across the agency.

**Goal 5:**Build strong partnerships and collaboration to advance the performance strategy and enhance awareness, transparency, and ownership of ACL’s accomplishments.

4.1 Internally: Across ACL centers, offices, and programs 

4.2 Externally: Across HHS OpDivs, Aging and Disability Networks, and stakeholders

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**Goal 6:** Establish and maintain a strategic, consistent, and documented approach to performance management. 

**Approach**

ACL’s performance data is reported and tracked for three primary reasons: 1) to monitor the administration’s progress towards achieving our departmental and agency strategic goals, objectives, and priorities 2) to support ACL’s budget justifications; and 3) to monitor program performance and support improvement. 

The Office of Performance and Evaluation will use the following cross-cutting approaches to improve ACL’s performance management strategy.

ACL’s Performance Management Approach

1. Provide annual presentations on the results of the ACL Performance Strategy to ACL leadership, and internal and external stakeholders 

2. Align all performance measures to the HHS and ACL strategic plans and priorities, pillars, and legislative requirements. 

3. Build ACL staff capacity regarding the goals for performance management and reporting.

4. Convene bi-annual meetings with ACL senior  staff to: 

· Discuss OPE’s efforts to oversee performance management and the benefits of performance management and reporting;

· Enhance collaboration and partnerships with ACL senior staff, center and office directors, and program staff;

· Identify a performance liaison in every office, program, and center to work with OPE on performance measurement;

· Discuss performance mapping (mission, goals, objectives, legal requirements); and 

· Review ACL’s performance measures (GPRA, budget, and strategic performance measures).

5. Convene quarterly or ad hoc meetings with ACL performance liaisons to: 

· Facilitate logic model development with program managers as a tool to help identify performance measures

· Provide training, technical assistance, and guidance on accessing, interpreting, and utilizing  performance data for decision-making

· Review and refine performance measures and targets with a focus on continuous quality improvement

6. Review and explain request for performance data (i.e. OMB, HHS, aging and disability network) 

· Request programs specialists to provide performance explanations to performance liaisons

7. Hold annual meetings with ACL staff to report performance measure data and results

· Incorporate performance and evaluation findings into the discussion of performance results.

· Use performance and evaluation data as a basis for developing and informing decisions

8. Develop and encourage the standardization of ACL data elements and reporting when possible with the review of

· Data collection tools (i.e. encourage common data elements); 	

· Data quality (i.e. data accuracy, reliability, consistency, credibility);

· Data analysis (i.e. interpreting, assessing, adjusting, and tracking);

· Data visualization; and  

· Performance overviews, narratives, and exhibits. 

9. Improve external stakeholder engagement 

· Convene ad hoc meetings with stakeholders to discuss:

· ACL’s approach to performance management;

· The impact and results of ACL’s performance data; and

· ACL’s approach to enhancing the quality and streamlining data reporting tools.

10. Increase information dissemination

· Develop issue briefs, quarterly reports, and external data-sharing approaches 

· Create a “year in review” report for leadership, stakeholders on  ACL’s performance

11. Coordinate Agency performance measurement and program evaluation activities

**Common Terms**

· **Goal**: A statement of the level of performance to be accomplished within a timeframe, expressed as a tangible, measurable objective or as a quantitative standard, value, or rate. For the purposes of this guidance and implementation of the GPRA Modernization Act, a performance goal includes a performance indicator, a target, and a time period. The GPRA Modernization Act requires performance goals to be expressed in an objective, quantifiable, and measurable form unless agencies in consultation with OMB determine that it is not feasible (OMB A-11, Section 200, 2017).

· **GPRA.**Refers to the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. Note that the GPRA Modernization Act refers to the update of the law in 2010 (OMB, 2017).

· **Objective**: the outcome or management impact the agency is trying to achieve and generally include the agency’s role. Each objective is tracked through a suite of performance goals and other indicators (OMB, 2017).

· **Outcome:**the desired results or impact of a program (OMB, 2017).

· **Output:** Quantity of products or services delivered by a program, such as the number of inspections completed or the number of people trained (OMB, 2017).

· **Performance management:**Use of goals, measurement, evaluation, analysis, and data-driven reviews to improve results of programs and the effectiveness and efficiency of agency operations. Performance management activities often consist of planning, goal setting, measuring, analyzing, reviewing, identifying performance improvement actions, reporting, implementing, and evaluating. The primary purpose of performance management is to improve performance and then to find lower cost ways to deliver effective programs. 

· **Performance measurement:**the ongoing monitoring and reporting of program accomplishments, particularly progress toward pre-established goals,” where a program is defined as “any activity, project, function, or policy that has an identifiable purpose or set of objectives (GAO)

· **Performance measures**: particular values used to measure program outputs or outcomes. They represent the data and information that will be collected at the program level to measure the specific outputs and outcomes a program is designed to achieve.

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