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Intended Result: Preparing discrete decision-units that produce a clear result for evaluation. Think about evaluating these decision-units against each other and not necessarily about evaluating departments against each other. S. Score Of against Results. Once the organization has identified its priority results and more pre- cisely defined what those results mean in terms of meeting the unique expectations of the community, it must develop a process to objectively evaluate how the offers/programs achieve or influence the priority results. Scoring can be approached in several ways, but the system must ensure that scores are based on the demonstrated and measurable influ- ence the offers/programs have on the results. In many organi- zations, such as the cities of Lakeland Nalnut Creek, and San Jose, programs were scored against all the organization's pri- ority results.The idea was that a program that influenced mul- tiple results must be a higher priority — programs that achieved multiple results made the best use of taxpayer money Alternately organizations such as Mesa County City of Savannah, Polk County, and Snohomish County matched each offer with only one of the priority results and evaluated it based on its L) III id,g et I� In g. degree of influence on that result. Using this scenario, a jurisdiction should estab- lish guidelines to help it determine how to assign an offer/program to a priority area and how to provide some accommodation for those offers/programs that demonstrate critical impacts across pri- ority result areas. Both of these approaches have been used successfully in PD B. against their ability to influence the priority result. Owners of offers/programs submit them for review by the committee, which in turn scores the programs against the result.The PLEB process becomes more like a formal purchasing process based on the assumption that those doing the evaluations might be more neutral than those proposing the offers/pro- grams. Committees could be made up entirely of staff, includ- ing people who have specific expertise related to the result being evaluated and others who are outside of that particular discipline. An alternate committee composition would include both staff and citizens to gain the unique perspectives of both external and internal stakeholders Regardless of who is evaluating the offers/programs and assigning the scores, there are two key points. To maintain the objectivity and transparency of the PLEB process, offers/pro- grams must be evaluated against the priority results as com- monly defined (see step 3). Also, the results of the scoring process must be offered only as recommendations to the elected officials who have the final authority to make resource allocation decisions. Pl-i(DIrity ... driver) L) III dgebr),g I�s a natur-a�] a,[ter-r)a'b've ti(D There are two basic approaches to scoring offers/programs against the priority results. One approach is to have those who are putting forth the offers/pr grams assign scores based on a self-assessment. This approach engages the owners in the process and taps into their unique understanding of how the offers/programs influence the priority result.When taking this approach, it is critical to incorporate a peer review or other quality control process that allows review by peers in the organization and external stakeholders (citizens, elected of fi- cials, labor unions, business leaders, etc.). During the peer review, the owner of the offer/program would need to provide evidence to support the scores assigned. A second approach to scoring establishes evaluation com- mittees that are responsible for scoring the offers/programs �14 Government Finance Review IAF)ril 2010 Organizations should establish the elected governing board's role at the out- set. In some jurisdictions, the board is heavily integrated into the PLEB process, participating in the scoring and evalua- tion step.They can question the assigned scores, ask for the evidence that supports a score, and ulti- mately request that a score be changed based on the evi- dence presented and their belief in the relative influence that an offer/program has on the priority result it has been evalu- ated against. In other organizations such as Snohomish County, Washington, the PLEB process is implemented as a staff-only tool that is used to develop a recommendation to the governing body Intended Result: Scoring each unit of priloritizatilon in a way that indicates its relevance to the stated priorities. 6. Compare Scores Between Offers/Programs. A real moment of truth comes when scoring is completed and the information is first compiled, revealing the top-to-bottom comparison of prioritized offers/programs. Knowing this, an organization must be sure that it has done everything possible prior to this moment to ensure that there are no surprises, that the results are as expected, and that the final comparison of offers/programs in priority order is logical and intuitive.