Mangaging Performance

No, not a weight lifting session or a business seminar. On Thursday last, I attended a conference called Managing Performance '04, put on by Governing magazine and Governing.com. The coolest part of the day was a session about Chicago's 3-1-1 system, a non-emergency call in for everything from lights out on the street to general information.
It's pretty amazing everything that they are getting from it. It's not just helping citizens but also the agencies themselves by making them more efficient. One example: Citizen X calls in a dark light on the street. 311 tracks the address, and sends out a crew to fix it. Citizen Y, Citizen X's neighbor, calls in the same light out. In the old days, another crew would have been sent out to "fix" a light that is already fixed, wasting time and money. Now, 311 tracks it to know that the light has already been fixed and they need not send another crew, saving time and money, aka tax payer dollars. And there's more, but I don't want to go into that.
The other session I went to was about the legislature's role in performance management. It was after lunch and involved 4 legislators pontificating and I had a hard time staying awake. Should have attended another one I guess.
Overall it was a good day though. Afterward they had free beer, which seals the deal in my book.