Use of Performance Information to Create Transparency in a Large Government Organization

29 Jan Use of Performance Information to Create Transparency in a Large Government Organization

By Dean Kashiwagi, Jacob Kashiwagi, Kenneth Sullivan, Neha Malhotra

September 2010

Abstract
A large government organization is using a risk management system which depends on the vendors to manage the risk on their contracts that they do not control, and to report on the status of the risk using a weekly risk report (WRR) and a risk management plan (RMP) which identifies how the vendor is minimizing the risk that they do not control. By minimizing the report content to dominant information that is difficult to refute (objective information such as time, cost, status), information is generated that motivates accountability, pre-planning, and performance of all parties. Dominant information minimizes the need for direction and control, identification of exact solution, and management, direction, and control by the client/user/buyers, and motivates the use of quality control/risk management by the contractors and quality assurance by the client/users. The transparency of the system becomes the enforcement of performance and accountability. Interesting concepts developed by the research include the concept that minimizing information flow is more effective than maximizing information flow between participants, vendors can effectively manage and minimize risk that they do not control by use of dominant information and best value concepts of measurement of performance and accountability can be initialized from the bottom up instead of from top down.