Performance Linking

Performance measurement can mean different things depending on where you work in an organization. Your performance measures will be used internally by your organization and linked to other DOE organizations. Some of your measures contribute to departmental measures. Other performance measures will be used internally by your organization and not reported up to other organizations. Performance measurement information comes internally form your organization or your support organizations.

Your measures that contribute to Departmental measures should flow upwards in DOE. These measures support the Secretary and/or organizations between you and the Secretary. These performance measures may be contained in the Department's Strategic Plan, multi-year budget plans, annual budgets, the Annual Performance Plan, Departmental performance commitments, and performance-based contracts. In addition, the organizations between you and the Secretary also have strategic plans, budgets, and commitments that you support.

Aggregate performance measures are often reported to the Secretary and to external stakeholders, and use information across several programs and organizations. Typically, they are cross cut measures to which almost everyone contributes. For example, measuring the worker-to-supervisor ratio for the Department requires information from all DOE organizations. In this case, the information comes from existing Department databases and requires little additional effort on your part. Others, such as customer satisfaction, will require extra effort from most DOE organizations.

Some measures are used exclusively within your organization and do not involve other organizations, that is, have no external linking. These measures are entirely defined, designed, and used locally within a DOE organizational level. An example is your staff's report on actual versus planned costs for your projects.

You may also develop and used performance measures that are linked to support organizations. A contractor's report on actual versus planned costs to a DOE office is an example. These measures, if not coordinated with parallel organizations, may be duplicative or burdensome on your support organizations.

Finally, some performance measures involve only a very small number of organizations, possibly one, reporting information vertically that represents the entire Department. These measures are typically counts of products instead of outcome measures, but are nonetheless important. For example, the number of nuclear weapons dismantled may constitute a major Secretarial commitment. The commitment may involve only one DOE locations. In this situation, your organization my only pass on information contributing to the performance measure.