Background

The residents of British Columbia rely on numerous public sector organizations for many of the services they use every day. These organizations receive extensive public funding to deliver their services and are required to report out on the results they have achieved each year in their annual report.  A successful annual report provides a comprehensive picture of organizational performance and is a corner-stone to accountable government. The performance measures, underlying the annual report results, are integral to the effectiveness of the overall report. The Auditor General of British Columbia recently conducted a survey of these performance measures and published its results December 2008 in their “How Are We Doing? The Public Reporting of Performance Measures in British Columbia” report. This survey identified many areas where the provincial public sector is doing well with its performance measure reporting, as well as many other areas where current practices could be improved upon.