The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Volume ll, Number 3, 1996
Issue Topic: Results-Based Accountability
Theory & Practice
State Results-Based Accountability Initiatives
Diane Schilder and Anne Brady of Harvard Family Research Project summarize the challenges noted by the policymakers, practitioners, and program directors interviewed in Minnesota, Oregon, and other states developing new results-based accountability systems.
States are facing opportunities and challenges in the development and implementation of results-based accountability initiatives. To address the questions posed by state policymakers about the opportunities of these new systems, we present our preliminary findings from our case studies of Oregon and Minnesota. We summarize the challenges noted by the policymakers, practitioners, and program directors we interviewed in Minnesota, Oregon and in other states developing these new systems.
Opportunities of Results-Based Accountability Systems
1. To engage citizens, program providers, and policymakers in building a broadly shared vision of state goals and the strategies required to achieve them. Minnesota and Oregon both emphasize the importance of involving the public in strategic planning. In Minnesota, Minnesota Planning was the state agency responsible for involving citizens from throughout the state in the development of the state vision. To ensure broad participation, the agency developed an extensive communication process including press releases, letters of invitation to citizens from the governor, and postings on community college campuses. Meetings were held throughout the state with extensive citizen involvement. This process of developing the Minnesota Milestones helped to build a broadly shared vision of the future. State and local agencies are now developing specific indicators to measure the progress toward this vision.
The Oregon Benchmarks were established through a broad participatory process intended to focus people on a shared vision. In the 1989 legislative session, the Oregon Progress Board, a panel of leading citizens, was established with the responsibility of translating the state strategic plan, Oregon Shines, into specific objectives or indicators of progress. With the aid of several citizen steering committees and more than 200 organizations and individuals statewide, the Progress Board refined and adopted the Benchmarks. Localities are now using these Benchmarks, adding to them and refining them, in the planning and prioritizing of child and family services.
Minnesota and Oregon have found that top-level commitment is necessary to engage different stakeholder groups around the vision once it is articulated. Support from the governor, the legislature and citizens groups is important. It is also important that leaders publicly and repeatedly voice their commitment to the new accountability system.
States also informed us that the legislature can often be the hardest institution to involve in the results-based accountability initiative. To overcome this challenge, some states are taking steps to educate the legislatures. For example, some states are disseminating documents and planning meetings with legislators to provide information on the types of data results-based accountability systems can generate and how these data can be used to inform the legislative process.
2. To focus service planning and development on specified priority areas and to measure the results of these services. Minnesota and Oregon are using the results-based accountability initiatives to focus planning on priority areas. In Minnesota, the Department of Human Services has changed its strategic plan to focus on results and the priorities it has determined through a planning process. The newly created Department of Children, Families, and Learning is focusing its work around Graduation Standards, which measure progress toward specific desired results. It is also expanding the early childhood indicators which will help guide agency work in the early childhood area.
Local collaboratives in Minnesota which receive grants from the state are also using the results orientation as a tool for community planning. The collaboratives report goals consistent with state-wide goals and establish their own indicators of progress. Each locality chooses its own measures. The locally defined goals are being used for community planning to prioritize activities. One collaborative reported focusing more on reducing out of home placements after examining baseline data from the last 8 years. The community realized that out-of-home placements were escalating and that reducing them was consistent with the community mission of helping communities build strong families.
In Oregon, the Benchmarks are a tool for planning and prioritizing spending. In 1993, the state encountered a revenue shortfall and every agency had to submit a budget with a 20 percent spending cut. Agencies that could prove their programs were tied to the Benchmarks received only a 13 percent cut. Agencies and programs in the state have used the Benchmarks for strategic planning. For example, the Adult and Family Services Division has shifted its emphasis from focusing on eligibility and benefits issuance to helping families become self-sufficient. Benchmarks are also used by local Commissions on Children and Families to make contracting decisions; the Commissions fund only those programs that appear to have the ability to produce short-term outcomes that are consistent with locally selected Benchmarks.
Some of the groups in Minnesota and Oregon found that using trained facilitators for the consensus building process and providing technical assistance can be useful ways to overcome the challenge of prioritizing goals—a difficult and time-consuming activity for many states.
Policymakers in Minnesota and Oregon are also using the results-based accountability data to ask questions that evaluation and research can address. They are aware that in the absence of research or evaluation data, indicator data cannot be used for accountability because changes in indicators may not be a result of state programs or services. However, evaluation and research can explain why changes occurred.
3. To transcend traditional categories and boundaries and to think creatively about solutions to some of the states' most pressing problems. The local collaboratives in Minnesota report transcending traditional categories and boundaries to think about solutions to community problems. One community reported that some of the most effective solutions are surprisingly simple: paying for child care so that low-income mothers can have a peer support group without their children present or giving money to poor children so they can join the Boy Scouts. These solutions have been possible because the collaboratives are focusing on the results rather than regulating the process that leads to achieving the results.
In Oregon, multiple collaboration efforts exist around the Benchmarks. One effort is the local Commissions on Children and Families. Each county has a local Commission which chooses priority Benchmarks and controls the allocation of some funding for services that will address those Benchmarks. Local service providers are expected to work together toward the realization of the goals embodied in the Benchmarks. Focusing on wellness and on achieving community-wide goals fosters collaborative, comprehensive planning. Everyone in the community can contribute to moving the Benchmarks.
Minnesota and Oregon have found that focusing divergent groups on the goals, rather than focusing on the process, and allowing for multiple strategies to achieve the goals, helps to overcome turf battles. Many state policymakers we spoke with highlight challenges in transcending traditional categories. Agency and program participants in collaborative bodies can be very protective of turf. Some stakeholders are perceived as reluctant to embrace comprehensive, collaborative planning; they may want to continue to do what they have always done and may feel it is important to concentrate on serving clients rather than spending time collecting data. They may resent the “new kids on the block.”
A related challenge is that state staff may not have a history interacting with one another around common goals and objectives. In Minnesota and Oregon, the groups most successful at collaborating are those that have a history of working together. The trust and relationships that have been built have facilitated the success of these results-based initiatives.
Diane Schilder, Project Manager, HFRP
Anne Brady, Research Coordinator, HFRP