Frequently Asked Questions
The following are answers to frequently asked questions. If your question is not answered with the information presented on this site, please contact a member of GOPB's Management section via email, or by calling 801-538-1027.
Q: What is Utah Performance Elevated?
Utah Performance Elevated is a comprehensive initiative seeking to improve performance and efficiency within state government. The four central pillars to this initiative are performance management, strategic planning, collaboration and training, as well as enterprise innovation.
Q: What is the Balanced Scorecard?
The Balanced Scorecard is a small, but vital aspect of an overall initiative to improve performance and efficiency in state government. The Balanced Scorecard is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. When fully deployed, the Balanced Scorecard transforms strategic planning from an academic exercise into the nerve center of an enterprise.
Q: What is Enterprise Planning?
In the context of this initiative, the term 'enterprise' refers to state government as a whole. There are some issues that belong exclusively to one agency, but there are others that require the collaboration of a number of agencies. For example, the responsibility to "regulate health insurance providers" belongs to the Department of Insurance, but the goal of "promoting health systems reform" involves public sector input from economic development, insurance, and health departments, as well as input from private sector providers. Enterprise plans, initiatives, and innovations attempt to eliminate organizational boundaries.
Q: Does Utah benchmark against other states?Utah is consistently recognized as a leader in many areas for its efficiency and performance. Benchmarking is an improvement process whereby an organization measures itself against the 'best in class'. (Governing Magazine provides a great benchmarking resource here). It is a productive exercise in situations that are generally equivallent (i.e. local administration of a federal program such as Medicaid). However, it hasn't been the State's primary approach to performance improvement because benchmarking doesn't always consider local situations (i.e. Utah's unique family size, geography, etc). Each agency maintains industry benchmarks, and state-level benchmarks are monitored internally by GOPB's Management section (for more information, please contact via email or by calling 801-538-1027).
Q: What is Utah Tomorrow?
Utah Tomorrow was a very broad based approach to state-wide strategic planning and the implementation of performance measurement across state government. Utah Tomorrow initially began, in 1990, as a creation of the Utah State Legislature and was guided by the Utah Tomorrow Strategic Planning Committee. The Utah Tomorrow Strategic Planning Committee was charged with setting strategic goals and associated performance metrics for the State of Utah. Each year the Committee produced a document, titled Utah Tomorrow, detailing strategic vision and performance metrics to support that vision. Utah Tomorrow was ultimately discontinued by the 2004 Utah State Legislature.
Q: In what ways are Utah Tomorrow and Utah Performance Elevated different?
The Utah Performance Elevated Initiative began as an executive branch initiative, whereas Utah Tomorrow began as a legislative initiative.
Utah Performance Elevated is focused on the areas of strategic planning, performance management, state agency collaboration, and discovering enterprise innovation opportunities within state government. On the other hand Utah Tomorrow maintained a primary focus on strategic planning and performance measurement that was very broad based in its approach.
The purpose of the performance management portion of Utah Performance Elevated is to serve as an internal management tool for individual state agencies. The performance metrics used in Utah Tomorrow were meant to serve as an external indicator of the success in reaching the goals outlined in the strategic portion of the Utah Tomorrow document.