Contra Costa County Grand Jury • 2011-2012 • Agency Response
Response to: Operational Effectiveness - A Path to Improvement

Recommendation(s):*

Published: July 24, 2012 4 pages
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Findings and Recommendations 5 findings

F1
The County's mission statement provides a foundation upon which the County can begin to build a performance management process. Response: Agree that the County's mission statement has provided a foundation upon which the County has begun to build a performance management process.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
The County should review information available regarding the development and implementation of a standard framework for performance management. Response: This recommendation has been implemented. The County routinely reviews information available regarding development and implementation of best practices including those related to performance management. Contra Costa County is a founding member of the Bay Area Regional Benchmarking Project which includes nine Bay Area counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. As part of this group, County Administrator staff participates in evaluating performance, improving management practices, and goal-setting. This review includes significant time reading and evaluating published performance management practices. Additionally, the County Administrator and staff have reviewed the documents recommended in Grand Jury Report No. 1216.
F2
Many of the department goals stated in the County's budget document do not contain measurement metrics needed to establish clarity of purpose and measurability of progress. Response: Partially disagree. Many of the department goals stated in the County's budget document do not contain measurement metrics. However many of these goals, such as the District Attorney's goal to continue efforts with other County justice partners towards design and implementation of a new case management information system, do provide clarity of purpose.
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
The County should adopt and implement a formalized, uniform performance management process, and identify funds to carry out this activity. Response: The recommendation will not be implemented because it is not reasonable. Due to the size of the County and the complexity of developing a formalized, uniform performance management process, the County will not adopt such a program. Instead, as described in the FY 2012-13 Recommended Budget, the County will continue to include Performance Measurement in its long-term planning strategy and participate fully in the Bay Area Regional Benchmarking Project.
F3
Performance management is now a recognized "best practice" in the public sector that can be applied in the County. Response: Agree.
Related Recommendations (1)
R3
The County should assign clear responsibility for managing and monitoring development and implementation of a performance management process. Response: The recommendation has been implemented. The County Administrator is responsible for managing and monitoring the county's performance management process. CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION: None. CHILDREN'S IMPACT STATEMENT: None.
F4
There are numerous reports the County could review that describe possible ways to develop and implement a framework for performance management. Response: Agree.
No recommendations for this finding
F5
No one has taken overall responsibility for implementing a performance management process in the County. Response: Disagree. As described by the Grand Jury, the County Administrator has taken overall responsibility for implementing a performance management process in the County, the results of which are published annually in the County Budget document.
No recommendations for this finding

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.