| Accountability | This means telling people about how effective your individuals or teams are at delivering services. Usually, this means providing information (giving an account of your performance), and being held to account |
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| Action plans | These are sets of actions (usually written down) that help you to get results. A good action plan covers who will do what, and when they will do it; what resources they will use; and how you will judge their success. |
| Aim | An aim or a vision is a 'high-level statement of broad intent' or a summary of overall objectives. It is a statement that 'embraces the desired future that the organisation is working towards. It doesn't have to be measurable; it should just quickly outline what you are trying to do. |
| Appraisal and staff development | Appraisals are usually used in terms of staff management. They are regular reviews of individual or team performances and are used to monitor achievement of targets and to agree new targets. Appraisals may be linked to pay. It is the people themselves who improve performance, not systems or processes, so performance management needs to include appraisal and staff development. |
| Baseline | This is a performance figure that you take from a given point in time as a starting point to track your progress or to set future target levels. |
| Basket of indicators | This is a collection of indicators that all refer to a particular service. Usually these will form a balanced set. If you are monitoring your whole service or activity you will need more than one indicator, so you would use a 'basket' or group of them to balance cost, quality speed, accuracy and so on. |
| Benchmarking | This is a process of improving your services by learning from those organisations with better performance. |
| Best Value Performance Plans (BVPPs) | These outline authorities' approaches (progress, successes and other issues) to best value and general improvement, including performance information. |
| Corporate plan | This is a plan that outlines what an organisation as a whole is aiming to achieve and how it intends to get there. It brings together internal plans (such as serviced or team plans), and links them with external or partnership plans (such as community strategies or local strategic partnerships). |
| Cross-cutting indicators | These are indicators that measure a service where two or more organisations or teams within an organisation, are jointly responsible for delivery. |
| Floor targets | A floor target is a national minimum performance standard that all relevant organisations must achieve, for example, in literacy, numeracy and GCSEs. |
| Golden thread | A few councils use this to describe the link between the different plans within their organisation. This helps to make sure that individuals' contributions are directly linked to overall objectives and strategies. |
| Input | Inputs are 'resources that contribute to production and delivery, or the resources (staff, materials and premises) employed to provide the service'. In other words, they are what go 'into' a service or activity. |
| Milestones | Rather than just working towards a final objective or target, milestones outline 'steps' towards it. They help you to assess your progress along the way and to identify issues as they arise rather than at the end. |
| Mission statements | These are brief statements that summarise an organisation's key strategies and aims. A good mission statement quickly and accurately explains why an organisation exists and what it hopes to achieve. |
| Monitoring | Active monitoring is not just about receiving information; it also involves tackling the issues it raises, as well as making decisions or re-organising resources or action plans. |
| Objective | 'An objective is a succinct statement of the key goal(s) being pursued over the medium to long run. Objectives reflect the key components of the intended strategy. |
| Outcome | This is the effect that our activities have on the community or other target group. It's important that activities make a difference and that we don't just do them for the sake of it. |
| Output | Outputs are 'the goods and services produced by the organisation'. For example, they include how many bins a local council empties and the percentage of Council Tax it collects. They can link inputs to outcomes so it's worth using them with other sorts of indicators. |
| Peer review | Basically, this means getting other people to look at what you are doing, ask questions and make suggestions. Questions can help you to make things clearer; look into what you could do differently; and check that you have left nothing out. |
| Performance indicator (PI) | PIs measure how you are doing in a given activity. You will often see the terms 'performance indicators' and 'performance measures' both used to describe 'how well a service is performing against its objectives', or 'the measure of a[n] authority's performance in exercising a function'. Examples include the number of invoices that a local council pays on time or the percentage of Council Tax it collects. |
| Performance management (framework) | This can be 'managing the performance of an organisation or an individual' or 'what you do to improve and maintain good performance '. It involves you understanding and acting on performance issues at each level of your organisation, from individuals, teams and directorates, through to the organisation itself. |
| Performance measurement | This involves deciding what you want to measure and why; setting up the individual performance measures with definitions and relating them to individuals or teams; collecting the relevant data, including past current performance, forecasts and targets. It helps you to monitor your services and products and allows organisations to identify good performance, learn from others, and focus on their priorities and any areas of poor performance. Performance measurement is, however, only part of a bigger performance management framework and is an ongoing improvement process which involves not just systems but people and whole organisations. |
| Performance standards | A performance standard is a 'minimum acceptable level of performance, or the level of performance that is generally expected'. |
| Priorities | Priorities are issues that you consider more urgent than other things. Priorities can be national and set by the Government. They can also be local, agreed between local organisations or communities, or decided internally. |
| Risk Management, Definition | The planned and systematic approach used to identify, evaluate and control the whole range of business risks, which might prevent a service or organisation from achieving its objectives. Think of it as making the most of new or developing issues and existing situations by managing the things that get in the way - the barriers and obstacles - to delivering the objectives of the organisation, service and staff (in their day to day activities). |
| Risk Management Process | A framework developed to help identify the barriers, obstacles, threats and areas of vulnerability and provide the basis on which any subsequent issues and risks can be recorded, evaluated and controlled. |
| Robust | Any performance management framework must be able to cope with change, such as restructuring or individuals leaving. Systems can fall apart if not enough people are involved, or if responsibility is left to just one person. You can make your frameworks more robust by using procedure notes, and continual monitoring and good communications. |
| Service Risk Assessment, Process or Exercise | Risk management process, included as part of the service planning framework, to identify, evaluate and manage significant service level and organisational issues and risks facing the service and council. (exercise could also highlight some further Corporate and Cross Cutting items). |
| SMART (in respect of target setting) | Specific, Measurable, Action-orientated, Realistic and Timely. |
| Step change | As opposed to incremental change, step change is about making major changes in your services and activities within a limited timescale. |
| Strategy and strategic objectives | These are our overall objectives or those of the partnerships we are involved with. They focus on high-level political and long-term issues, and often look at 'why' rather than 'how'. |
