According to the Australian Public Service Commission’s findings, “Performance management in the public sector is a fundamentally important tool that can assist agencies to improve organisational capability, to meet broad organisational objectives and to deliver high quality policy advice and program administration for the Government. It provides a means to improve organisational performance by linking and aligning individual, team and organisational objectives and results. It also provides a means to recognise and reward good performance and to manage under-performance.”

Public sector agencies face greater demands for more transparent reporting and accountability of taxpayers’ money. Modern performance management systems must now cope with a variety of requirements, including statutory and regulatory reporting, strategic KPIs, financial statements, program delivery KPIs, project reporting and ad hoc requests. In the past, different reporting requirements have been fulfilled by a “divide and conquer” approach. The accepted ideology was to build separate systems to support each functional area on an as-required basis, particularly from a portfolio perspective. The result has been a proliferation of different performance management ideologies and systems, with few attempts at integration on a design or technology level.

Public sector agencies are looking to technology to help them manage performance with a single, aligned, credible and integrated framework. Technology will not only facilitate compliance with stringent statutory and regulatory requirements, but will also enable the management of performance across all areas of an agency. The key to optimising agency performance is a strategic management system that ties performance metrics, plans, programs, budgets and risks to the agency's strategies, resulting in improved communication, knowledge, and decision-making.

CorVu has gained widespread adoption of its innovative performance management software solution across all levels of the Australian public sector – Federal, State and Local. Some of the agencies that have successfully deployed CorVu include:

• Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Federal)
• Redland Shire Council (Local)
• Department of Treasury and Finance Victoria (State)

Leveraging its extensive experience in the public sector, CorVu designed a packaged government performance solution that allows agencies to measure, benchmark, and report against the relevant performance standards. This configurable and affordable application encourages more effective management of both financial and non-financial resources, improvement of service delivery to local communities, and alignment to community plans.

The CorVu 5 government performance management solution delivers breakthrough capabilities by tying performance metrics, agency programs, the budgeting and planning processes, and risks to the agency’s strategy. It combines the two critical technology components necessary for ensuring successful execution of strategies:

• Strategic Management System – a comprehensive system that manages key strategy-related processes, including objective and initiative management, budgeting and planning, risk management, and incentive management
  
  
• Performance Metrics – a robust business intelligence platform for automated data exchange, reporting, and analysis

CorVu 5 provides a scalable architecture for managing performance across a large and distributed enterprise. Built on a native Web architecture, CorVu 5 is a transactional system and provides a robust security model.