Miami-Dade County: Becoming a Results-Oriented Government with ActiveStrategy Enterprise (p.5)

As the growing overall citizen satisfaction rate for the county indicates, these types of improvements are not just being seen at departmental levels. One reason that overall county results have improved is that this performance management effort has helped the organization become much less silo-oriented, because the system helps shed light on the cross-functional issues that contribute to higherlevel performance. By making these issues visible, the county's operating units can more clearly understand priorities and see how their focused efforts are impacting critical outcomes. Mr. Burgess explained that the ASE-enabled strategic review meetings have "facilitated inter-departmental collaboration and provided a forum for identifying cross-cutting strategic themes and operational issues."

The use of ASE has also significantly improved performance data collection and reporting, as individual departments are inputting data in a systematic, standardized fashion, and have retained historical performance measurements in a centralized database. The executive staff is now able to query information at various levels of detail within specific strategic areas or by individual departments. ASE has also enabled more comprehensive analysis of data collected by strategic areas and by individual county departments. This capability has enhanced performance improvement through the implementation of an "initiative process" that can more quickly address performance gaps of underperforming measures.

The Journey Continues
Performance excellence is often described as a journey, rather than a destination, since any organization – no matter how good – will always find opportunities to improve. Building upon the major progress made to date, Miami-Dade County has already mapped out next steps in their own journey. The county continues to cascade Balanced Scorecards within ASE down to all applicable business units. Additionally, Miami-Dade has continued working with the ActiveStrategy strategic management consulting team to strengthen the understanding of performance management concepts to all levels of management. Meanwhile, more of the county's departments are applying the Florida Sterling/Baldrige criteria and expect to apply for future awards. As Jennifer Glazer-Moon, Director, Office of Strategic Business Management explained: “We have made such incredible progress in our results-oriented journey. It is exciting to think about what we will accomplish next!”