The following RAAP report is a demonstration of how we might classify our community's projects (programs/initiatives): what they try to achieve and how their progress might be measured.
Please note that the report (as well as all the contents in the CAP site) should not be taken as authoritative or official. It is provided as food for thought to inspire conversations with the hope that we may one day implement a community-wide dashboard.
The structure of the report is based on the book: Trying Hard is Not Good Enough by Mark Friedman . The information provided for each of the metrics is a personal, subjective reading of the publicly available documents of each of the plans and do not represent official positions.
Definitions of the metrics columns:
1. A result is a condition of well-being for people in a place, stated as a complete sentence. For example, "All babies in Vermont are born healthy."
2. An indicator is a measure that helps quantify the achievement of a result. Indicators answer the question "How would we recognize this result if we fell over it?"
3.A strategy is a coherent collection of actions that has a reasoned chance of improving results. Strategies are made up of our best thinking about what works, and include the contributions of many partners. Strategies operate at both the population and performance levels.
4. A performance measure is a measure of how well a program, agency or service system is working. The most important performance measures tell us whether program customers are better off.
They are customer results to distinguish them from population results.
Accountability uses three types of performance measures: How much did we do? How well did we do it? Is anyone better off?
