Beyond the Basics
Sustaining Success Through Performance Management

Testimony of Mayor Anthony A. Williams

Subcommittee on Oversight of Government, Restructuring
and the District of Columbia
Committee on Governmental Affairs
U.S. Senate

May 9, 2000

Introduction

Chairman Voinovich, Senator Durbin, thank you for the opportunity to testify
before you today on performance management in the District of Columbia. In
the first fifteen months of my administration, the District government has
made great strides in instituting a performance management system that
introduces accountability for each and every agency and employee in order
to transform the government into one that is responsive to citizens. This
approach has already shown promising results in my first year in office and
will continue to drive change in years to come.

When I took office, the management challenges my administration inherited
were daunting:

1. Accountability for the District workforce was rare, if not non-existent.
2. A deeply entrenched culture resistant to change.
3. An infra-structure decimated by deferred maintenance and disinvestment
4. Technology needs that were grossly inadequate.

Attacking these underlying issues is a long-term effort, but we needed
immediate successes.

My first priority was to restore faith in government by demonstrating rapid,
visible improvements in basic services. I challenged my cabinet to set an
aggressive Short-term Action agenda. We set concrete objectives with
measurable deadlines, ranging from a month to no more than a year and I am
proud to report that we completed 90 percent of them during 1999.

However, short-term initiatives are only a down payment. They built trust
and confidence, and they gave us a little momentum, but ultimately the
challenges facing the District are significantly greater.

I would like to simply submit for the record the full list of the
initiatives, but I want to highlight a few and describe how we are building
on these short-term successes:

* We restructured electrical and building permit processes,
eliminating a several months-long backlog of electrical permits by February
and completing 80 percent of complex building reviews within 30 days
throughout 1999.

* Today, eighty percent of electrical permits are issued within 48
hours and 95 percent of complex building plans are reviewed within 30 days.

* We established a single phone number for residents to call for
information and service requests with the launch of the Citywide Call Center
(727-1000) in April 1999.

* Today we average more than 2,000 phone calls per day and we can
track performance data on frequently requested services and how long it
takes to resolve them.

* We targeted open-air drug markets in six communities and arrests
increased through stepped-up enforcement. Now, the Police Department is
closely tracking drug activity statistics to document how this short-term
action will show reductions in drug activity over time. Shutting down a
drug market is only the first step in reclaiming a neighborhood for its
residents.

* This initiative has evolved into the Capital Communities program, a
comprehensive strategy to focus a broad spectrum of resources on distressed
communities. The name Capital Community signifies the focus on and
involvement of community, the investment of capital resources, the location
of the community in the nation's capital, and the goal of turning the
community into a first-rate neighborhood.

A Citywide Strategic Plan

In formulating my priorities I decided to do something a little
untraditional, I decided to empower citizens to set priorities for our
government. Our citizens have 20 years of pent up civic pride. They love
the city and they're itching to make a difference in their neighborhood.
For far too long, local government has not been a reliable partner. So I
held a citizen summit in November. More than 3,000 residents answered the
call and came to help me set priorities for the city and their neighborhood.

This wasn't just a feel good exercise. We compiled those comments and used
citizen priorities to put together the budget for next year. I also used
them to develop a citywide strategic plan-with a set of very specific,
measurable goals for every agency of our government. The plan is organized
around five priority areas:

* Building and Sustaining Healthy Neighborhoods
* Strengthening Families, Children, Youth
* Promoting Economic Development
* Making Government Work
* Enhancing Unity of Purpose

Using the citywide plan as a template, throughout 2000-2001 residents will
be engaged in a Neighborhood Action planning process that provides
communities an opportunity to establish their own unique neighborhood
priorities.

A detailed plan is a great way to keep our government focused and to hold
agency directors accountable. But by itself, it's not going to engage the
public. I want our citizens to be able to see the progress we are making on
achieving their priorities. Until they have some evidence that government
will be a reliable partner, they'll have less of an incentive to invest
themselves in their community.

Issuing a Scorecard is similar to the strategy of last year's Short-term

Action Agenda. The District:

* Defined the goals and informed the public what they are;
* Gave agency leadership the resources and support needed to meet the
   goals; and
* Established a system to hold them accountable at the end of the day.

* 2,000 new and rehabilitated housing units under construction by
  December 2000 is well in excess of last year's production.

* Reduction of 911 response times to 8:00 minutes for 90 percent of
  critical medical calls for service. Right now, only 42 percent of calls
  meet that standard.

* Reduced wait-times at Department of Motor Vehicles to 30 minutes or
   less for 80 percent of drivers license and inspection transactions. With
   average transaction times of just under an hour, DMV's recent operational
   changes have yet to impact overall performance.

This Scorecard is very different than the DRAFT Scorecard I shared with you
last spring. At that point in time, we were developing a set of indicators
with an independent community organization, but as we continued our
development efforts the District and the organization recognized several
flaws in our approach:

* The DRAFT Scorecard was preceding the development of the Citywide
   Strategic Plan;

* Many of the indicators were not within the power of the District to
   impact through government action;

* For instance, the home ownership rate is an excellent indicator of
   the economic health of a community, but so many factors external to the
   government determine home buying decisions that the District could not set a
   realistic target based on government resources or programs.

Simply put, we decided to suspend the Scorecard under discussion last spring
and develop Scorecards that clearly state the District's commitments in
response to the citizens' priorities that emerged through the Neighborhood
Action Citizen Summits.

The Scorecard's Place in the Performance Management System
The Scorecard is only one element of the broader performance management
system we have in place to evaluate our Deputy Mayors and our Agency
Directors. It is a public statement of a few commitments we are making, but
it is not an exhaustive list of everything in our Citywide Strategic Plan.

I've set up performance contracts based on these agency plans with my Deputy
Mayors and Agency Directors so that they know exactly what they are
responsible for delivering and their job security depends on their
effectiveness. I'm going to be evaluating their progress twice a year and
after the formal year-end evaluation, directors will be rated as meeting,
exceeding or below expectations. (Attachment II: DMV Performance Contract)

However, we are not waiting for mid-year and year-end evaluations to judge
agency success. We are tracking the performance contract commitments on an
ongoing basis. Let me give you a flavor of the type of commitments and
results we are seeing this year:

* Department of Motor Vehicles: DMV is one of our highest profile
"customer service" operations. Almost every resident has to register their
car, have it inspected and get a driver's license. Sherryl Hobbs Newman set
an ambitious year 2000 target of 80 percent of license and registration
transactions within 30 minutes as new data systems were revealing the extent
of the problem with average process times of an hour or more. The District
just announced aggressive strategies to move us towards that target by
December 2000: 1) additional personnel and additional counter-bays at the C
Street main facility, 2) customer service training developed and provided by
US Air, 3) temporary trailers as we explore sites for additional facilities;
and 4) site designs that address parking needs of residents visiting DMV.

* Office of Contracting and Procurement: Elliott Branch's initial
analysis of his agency's workload indicated that nearly half of agency
transactions were for less than $2,500, but less than one percent of the
District's contract dollars were spent on those small transactions. He
proposed an innovative strategy to establish purchase cards for those small
transactions. Piloted at the DC Public Library in November, nine additional
agencies will come on-line by July 2000. In addition, OCP is working with
the DC Public Schools to deploy purchase cards as part of the broader
initiative to empower DCPS with its own procurement authority. As the
Purchase Card program is expanded, contracting personnel can focus their
time and energy on large dollar contracts.

Creating a Culture of Accountability within the Government
With performance contracts in place for the directors at mission critical
agencies, the D.C. Office of Personnel is rolling out a comprehensive
Performance Management Program throughout the Summer of 2000. Our agencies
are developing performance agreements for every District employee aligned to
the Citywide Strategic Plan and their agency's goals and objectives. These
agreements will be in place by October 2000.

This is part of my goal to create a Unity of Purpose. I want all employees to

* Understand the City-wide Strategic Plan
* Accept and adopt own role in supporting and executing the plan
* Incorporate those goals and objectives into their day to day work

Ultimately, I want this system to stand up to outside verification. I'd
like our Inspector General to provide an audit some of our scorecard items
at year-end. Agencies will have provided documentation of how they present
performance data, and the Inspector General can determine whether they
followed their methodology and whether it was a valid approach.

Remaining Work in Performance Management

My administration has made significant progress in performance management in
its first year, linking strategic planning, budget formulation, performance
expectations and evaluation. But I recognize the need to do more.
Sustaining progress, ensuring valid and reliable data, and benchmarking
progress against other jurisdictions are among the District's objectives in
2000.