The challenge was to develop a system of performance reporting that helps both groups to better manage the county's operations. Dallas County developed a four-volume performance reporting system that encompasses virtually every county department. These reports are made available to the Commissioners Court before budget deliberations each year. The performance reports are valuable tools used by the county's Commissioners Court, where commissioners routinely discuss the results of the reports and focus on apparent problem areas that are revealed to prevent them from becoming major issues. In addition, report preparation continually fine-tunes the skills and depth of staff members' knowledge of each of the areas studied.
Staff regularly investigates ways of making their program areas more efficient and effective.
There was no explicit cost to this program. The time spent by budget analysts and program managers in creating and implementing this program was deemed invaluable because of their depth of knowledge of the issues involved in each department. Va. Chesterfield County has a long history of data collection and performance measurement in all 45 county departments. However, there was a missing piece from this performance measurement picture. The problem was that the county did not possess a county-wide strategic plan and departmental goals, and thus, performance measures had no organizational linkage.