Department for Child Protection

The Department for Child Protection (DCP) is one the departments under the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development which works to keep children and young people safe from abuse and harm, in addition to providing a range of other support services to families and individuals.

In December 2017, the head of department asked the strategic planning officer to design and implement a new performance measurement system as the DCP continually strives for maximum efficiency and effectiveness across all its functions.As a statutory authority, the DCP recognise the value and importance of best practice performance monitoring and reporting across the government sector.The DCP is a strong advocate of business transparency, be that performance or decision-making.

To provide the foundation for the new performance measurement system, all of the heads of units in DCP participated in a strategic planning retreat.The heads used Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard to outline a set of objectives according to the four perspectives in which they developed objectives for each perspective.They focused on the balanced scorecard for the performance management, given that it could close the gap between vague mission and strategic goal statements and operational activities and measures, and it could act as a means of shifting the focus away from individual initiatives and programmes and onto the outcomes that such initiatives are intended to achieve.

DCP objectives, based on its balanced scorecard, are given below:

PERSPECTIVES OBJECTIVES

Financial Reduce operational cost

Customer Improve customer satisfaction

Increase public involvement

Internal business processes Improve cost effectiveness

Develop innovation process

Learning and growth Improve environmental knowledge of employees

DCP was recently put under the Department of Community those focus in mainly on child-and-women-related issues and development.The directors, Puan Kamariah, who had no idea of this measurement tool, was amazed by DCP's use of financial scorecard.However, she was concerned about the focus that the scorecard promoted, which she claimed had paid much attention to the departmental cost effectiveness with little consideration to the community and social issues.She advocated that the department's focus should be devoted to resolving the social problems among Malaysians instead.Puan Kamariah believed that the department should 'walk the talk' in all aspects of its operation, and not just in the financial aspects.

Required:

a)Consider the structure of the balanced scorecard that was used by DCP and explain to Puan Kamariah how it could be modified to accommodate her concerns.

b)Used your imagination to add a public sector element to the balanced scorecard.Identify the dimension, objectives and some possible lead and lag indicators.

c Under what circumstances would you recommend that an additional perspective be added to the scorecard to capture public sector aspect of performance?