Towards a line-of-sight, implementation of performance measurement by road agencies

Abstract

This paper is the result of an international, explorative study of the alignment of government and road authority goals from different European countries and Western Australia. The goal of the study is to advance the understanding of the development of performance management of road agencies. Agencies around the world are using performance management to direct transportation investments, support their governments’ priorities, and provide greater accountability to the public. The focus of this study is on the alignment of performance management between government and the road agency. In order to compare the alignment between the different countries a reliability, availability, maintainability, safety, security, health, environment, economics and politics (RAMSSHEEP) categorisation based on systems engineering was used. Special attention was paid to the analysis of a ‘line-of-sight’ and possible criteria to use for the alignment. We find that in most cases the government objectives are not clearly aligned with agency objectives and performance areas of the agency. This limited line-of-sight is a complicating factor in the determining the effectiveness of the performancemeasures at government level.