| Federal OMB Assistant Director, Governor's Cabinet, State Auditor, Senate President, University President also participate
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Governor Deval Patrick
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The Collins Center hosted a landmark conference, Delivering Results: Implementing Performance in Massachusetts, on February 14, 2012 at UMass Boston's harborview Campus Center. More than 400 attendees spent the day learning about Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's Administration's ambitious Performance Management program. In his keynote speech, the Governor gave his definition of Performance Management: "Asking government to articulate what success looks like, then setting goals to measure success and being accountable for results."
The Administration first established a partnership with the Collins Center in 2010 to lay out a roadmap for its Performance Management project. Since that time, Center associates have been working closely with Executive Office for Administration and Finance (ANF) Secretary Jay Gonzalez and Undersecretary Matthew Gorzkowicz, as well as officials from each Cabinet Secretariat, to create and implement the system. This system will establish goals; develop strategies; collect and analyze data; create metrics; and track progress in each cabinet department as well as for each of the Governor's four priorities: Containing Health Care Costs; Reducing Youth and Urban Violence; Job Creation; and Closing the Educational Achievement Gap in Schools.
The Governor announced at the conference that he had, earlier that day, signed Executive Order # 540, which requires each Executive Office within state government to establish an Office of Performance Management and to publish two-year strategic plans that include goals and measurements to track progress. "Our new fiscal reality demands that we change the way government does business to stretch taxpayer dollars as far as possible," said Secretary Gonzalez. "Instituting Performance Management is not a short-term fix. It requires a long term approach to get measurable results to improve the way government serves people. Our continued partnership with the Collins Center and today's Executive Order are the next steps in making government more efficient and transparent for taxpayers." The Federal Perspective  | |
Shelley Metzenbaum and
Chancellor Keith Motley
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The day's substantive program began with an address by Shelley Metzenbaum, the associate director for performance and personnel management at the White House Office of Management and Budget. Metzenbaum, the founding director of the Collins Center, was welcomed back to the UMass Boston campus by Steve Crosby, Dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies (MGS). Metzenbaum emphasized the cooperative relationship the Federal government wants to establish with states on the implementation of Performance Management, saying, "We're in this together to work to deliver better government." As many of the attendees in the audience have already experienced, more and more Federal grants, discretionary as well as formula-driven, are requiring increased transparency and accountability from their recipients.
Open Cabinet Meeting
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Dean Crosby moderating Cabinet discussion
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A unique component of the conference was an open discussion about how Performance Management was being implemented across state government by each of the Patrick Administration's eight Cabinet Secretaries: Jay Gonzalez, Secretary of Administration and Finance; JudyAnn Bigby, MD, Secretary of Health and Human Services; Richard Sullivan, Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs; Paul Reville, Secretary of Education; Joanne Goldstein, Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development; Richard Davey, Secretary of MassDOT; Mary Beth Heffernan, Secretary of Public Safety and Security; and Gregory Bialecki, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development.
General and Breakout Sessions
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Session on Strategic Planning
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Several panels consisting of expert practitioners in the field of Performance Management gave attendees detailed presentations aimed at helping them use the field's techniques and strategies to develop systems within their own departments or organizations. Undersecretary Gorzkowicz, together with William Kilmartin, former Comptroller of the Commonwealth and Stephen Barnard, the chief financial officer for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, delivered a breakout session on Program Budgeting. Collins Center Team Leader Russ Meekins spoke on common barriers to implementation of a Performance Management system and lessons learned from years of experience. Collins Center Project Manager Ed Burke led a session on Strategy Formulation.
A final plenary session, Paying for Success: Extending Performance Management Principles, was also moderated by Ed Burke and featured ANF Secretary Gonzalez and Assistant MassDOT Secretary Celia Blue. Click here for a link to the presentations and documents delivered at the conference. The State Auditor and the Senate President  | |
State Auditor Suzanne Bump
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Conference participants were also privileged to hear from Suzanne Bump, Auditor of the Commonwealth, and Therese Murray, President of the Massachusetts Senate. Auditor Bump, who began her first term last year, was elected to office on a platform of elevating standards of transparency, accountability and performance in state government. She spoke of her plans for the Office of the State Auditor and of working with the Administration to improve meaningful public engagement with state government.
Senator Murray has championed the use of Performance Management techniques from her position as Senate President and authored reform legislation which passed the Senate last year and the House of Representatives last month. The support of the Auditor and the Senate President for this important initiative will be critical in its successful implementation. UMass Boston and Performance Management  The newly appointed President of the University, Robert Caret, introduced the Governor to the attendees and committed the University itself to the principles of Performance Management. As President Caret stated, "The only way you can prove you're a good steward of state resources is to use data." UMass Boston's Chancellor Keith Motley, who greeted conferees in the morning, told the group, "The University of Massachusetts Boston takes seriously its commitment to serve as a public resource for the Commonwealth. The Collins Center has played an important role in delivering on this commitment, and we look forward to this partnership with the Executive Office for Administration and Finance benefiting taxpayers across the state."
David Sparks, the Center's Executive Director, said, "The conference was a home run for the Collins Center as well as for the state of Massachusetts. To have a standing-room only audience and a star-studded cast of speakers shows the Collins Center's reputation in the Performance Management world." As the Center begins its third year of work on this effort, Sparks further commented, "All of us working on this project are committed to establishing one of the most rigorous and sophisticated state systems in the country. We will be working closely with ANF's new Office of Commonwealth Performance, Accountability and Transparency (CPAT) to develop cross-agency strategic plans to achieve the Administration's goals." All photos courtesy of Harry Brett. |
