Defining the role that the program is intended to fulfill with respect to strategic objectives provides a basis for establishing program targets and performance measures. The department's sustainable development strategy should identify the department's significant sustainable development aspects as well as its strategic objectives for addressing these aspects and the measure that will be used to indicate progress. While this work step focusses on establishing objectives to redress identified undesirable outcomes, it is possible that positive effects can also be further reinforced or improved. The next four work steps are intended to assist the user in establishing sound performance measures as well as accountability and resource requirements for implementation. Therefore, performance measures should correspond with performance targets and indicate the extent to which the organizaton is achieving these performance expectations.
Performance measures are an important source of feedback for effective management.
HOW well the program was managed. Other measures will reflect WHAT was achieved for WHOM . These measures will generally focus on the intermediate effects of program outputs and activities. Finally, some measures will allow a judgment to be made on whether the long-term objectives, which provided the rationale for WHY the program was funded, were met. These measures involve monitoring long-term phenomena occurring in society, the environment, and the economy that can plausibly be linked back to the program initiatives, outputs and intermediate effects.