Scorecard Best Practices

City Of Boston

Boston, first incorporated as a town in 1630 and as a city in 1822, is one of America's oldest cities with a rich economic and social history. What began as a homesteading community eventually evolved into a center for social and political change. Boston has since become the economic and cultural hub of New England.

As the region's hub, Boston is home to nearly 590,000 residents, many institutions of higher education, some of the world's finest inpatient hospitals, and numerous cultural and professional sports organizations. Boston‐based jobs, primarily within the finance, health care, educational, and service areas, numbered nearly 660,000 in 2002. Millions of people visit Boston to take in its historic neighborhoods, attend cultural or sporting events, and conduct business.

Background

The impetus for implementing Boston's new scorecard system came from the city's top officials who wanted to increase responsiveness in delivering services to its constituents. They wanted to align resources to achieve the appropriate results of their strategy. The city had been tracking performance measures for a number of years, but they wanted to shift the culture of the departments to focus on performance as a priority. Matching funding with achieved outcomes and tracking performance for department goals had become a priority.

To renew their focus on performance they needed to:

Make strategy everyone's job.

Communicate strategy to everyone simply and clearly.

Be better able to measure ...