Improving Public and Third Sector Performance with the Public Sector Scorecard

Most public and third sector organizations are struggling with two major problems: improving outcomes for service users and stakeholders without increasing overall cost; and developing measures of performance that help them improve and assure quality without motivating staff to achieve arbitrary targets at the expense of poor service to the public.

As an integrated service improvement and performance management framework designed for the public and third sectors, the Public Sector Scorecard is ideally placed to help organizations address both these issues.

This paper discuss a number of factors which are important in managing and measuring performance - focusing on outcomes and evidence-based drivers of outcomes; working across organizational boundaries; integrating risk management, capturing the voice of users and other stakeholders; and developing a performance management culture based on improvement, innovation and learning rather than a top-down blame culture.