Excluding Outcome as a Performance Dimension

Accountability can mean that those in charge of a program are responsible to someone outside the program for the way they use program resources and the goals they seek. Information from performance measurement can help move accountability from theory to practice.

Before deciding how to measure a program's performance, one should consider:

(1) what is the program impact?

(2) Who is responsible?

These questions arise because the public and their elected representatives want to know if the programs really work and if the public is benefiting.

For example, is the public safer because of crime control programs: are air and water cleaner as a result of environmental programs: did program participants get and keep good jobs because of manpower training and employment programs? This pragmatic orientation suggests that accountability should focus on the program's impact upon clients or other groups indirectly affected by the program.

Yet, impacts or outcomes are the hardest performance dimension to measure and, therefore, the dimension most likely to be left out of a performance measurement system. Reasons offered for excluding this dimension include the cost of collecting impact data, an agency's lack of control over impacts, and the time required for the impacts to occur. Adverse consequences of excluding this dimension include distorting agency effort and misusing the information provided.