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Like many councils, performance management within Rochdale Council was very dependant upon spreadsheets and email. Spreadsheets for the input and manipulation of data and email as a method of communication. Within the spreadsheets were lists of performance indicators - lots of them.

But as with all things, change came. Performance was becoming less about measures and scores and more about context, commentary, activity, planning and outcomes.

How to capture and monitor this greatly increasing burden of information? How to collate the information in meaningful and timely ways and communicate the vast amount of information?

Throw into the pot that the council was having to work and perform together with others within the various partnerships and it soon became clear that spreadsheets and email soon become part of the problem.

The problem

Rochdale Council needed something that would help support the Performance Framework, and push accountability throughout the organization.

It needed to improve visibility of information, and provide it when needed, on demand.

It needed to reduce the manual burden of capturing all the data, collating it, and calculating scores.

It needed to model the numerous plans and objectives at local and partnership level.

It needed somewhere the Chief Executive could go to see the single, up to date, accurate, picture of performance across all aspects of the Council that would help the people within the council provide better performance.

The Solution

Performance Manager provides a web based online performance community workplace. Personalised access helps deliver relevant information to the user by surfacing ?heir?performance information.

Data is gathered within the tool (or imported) and workflows help control data approval and quality.

Performance manager does not just focus on metrics. It provides the ability to create and manage all key aspects of performance improvement such as risks, corporate plans, actions and scorecards.

A key part of Performance Manager is the ability to manage the relationships between all these elements. So a Corporate Plans objective can be linked to a service, KPI?, actions and risks. All aggregation of scores is handled by the applications intuitive "traffic lighting" system in a simple to understand way.

The Chief Executive and the Executive Leadership team now use Performance Manager to help support their Performance Framework.

Scorecards are used in one to one meetings between the C.E. and the Executive Directors, and between the E.D? and the heads of service. Information from Performance Manager including missing data, targets, actions and commentary is reference by the C.E. to make sure he is fully aware of all aspects of performance during these meetings.

" Performance Manager, the foundation for building successful performance " Information Systems Officer, Anthony Ward