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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the Performance Center? The Performance Center coordinates and promotes ODJFS performance management efforts. It provides the research and analysis that allow the agency's leaders to make informed decisions about the day-to-day operations of ODJFS. It also helps them shape plans for the future and influence state and county priorities. By maintaining the ODJFS Strategic Plan, the Performance Center ensures that all work the agency performs aligns with its core mission, vision, and values, and is aimed at clearly defined performance targets. The Performance Center staff maintains current, detailed reports on the status of all key ODJFS performance measures, and presents these reports at regularly scheduled management meetings. The reports and meetings allow the agency's top decision-makers to more easily track performance, address potential problems, and collaboratively arrive at solutions. 
2. Who decides what will be measured? The director, assistant directors, and deputy directors identify measures based on new initiatives, strategic plans, and operational and program priorities.
3. How and to whom is the information presented? The Performance Center provides reports to the director, assistant directors, deputy directors, and occasionally to the county family services agency directors. Prior to all Performance Center management meetings, Performance Center staff distribute detailed analytical reports to all attendees on the status of measures to be discussed. These reports include background information on the measures, along with charts, graphs, analysis, definitions, and possible questions and discussion points. The appropriate deputy directors present the reports and field questions from all attendees.Performance Center meetings are typically led by the director and attended by the assistant directors, deputy directors, and occasionally other government officials, legislators, and shareholders. Afterward, information is made available to all employees and the public on this website, http://odjfsperformancecenter.ohio.gov.
4. How is the information used? The information that the Performance Center provides is used to communicate best practices and accomplishments, to measure improvement and progress, and to identify areas in need of improvement. It helps establish priorities, facilitate strategic planning, manage resources, and influence state and county priorities.
5. Who creates the charts, graphs and reports? The Performance Center team is comprised of data and business analysts, project managers, and communication specialists, who work with business and data experts from each office. Together, they define business rules and data sources for ODJFS's performance measures. The Performance Center team obtains data from a variety of electronic and paper systems, develops charts and graphs, analyzes the results, writes reports, and creates presentations for each meeting.
6. Is the information accurate? Each time a new measure is created or updated, a series of quality checks is performed. The results are then sent to a business expert for final review and sign-off. The business expert also reviews the report overview, background information, definitions, and business rules. Any data quality issues that are uncovered during the development process are reported back to the data source or responsible business unit and noted in the report documentation. |