APPLE Management System (AMS)

System Overview

The APPLE Management System (AMS) simplifies quality and performance initiatives found in local governments. The acronym “APPLE” standards for Accountable Program Performance for Leadership Excellence. The primary purpose of system development was to avoid the high cost of formal, award-based quality programs, which can take years to implement and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff time, while still providing their inherent advantages. This can be achieved through Program Performance Based Budgeting Systems and citizen engagement. This is accomplished by minimizing the focus on factors that already should be present in any local government and especially in high performance local government (“DNA factors”).

The AMS injects the potentially missing element of cost effectiveness into the pursuit of excellence since some local government policy boards and managers may be more driven by the pursuit of the award rather than cost effective program outcomes. The APPLE Management System’s key goal is to pursue and achieve efficiency benefits without the substantial overhead costs of award achievements. Although conceptual elements of quality systems are found in the APPLE Management System, performance, cost efficiency and citizen engagement are key objectives. The following is a list of some of the resources and concepts used in AMS development:

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Program
Governor’s Sterling Award, State of Florida
Government Finance Officer's Association (GFOA) Best Practices
Program and Performance Based Budgeting Systems
Program measures, metrics and service unit cost calculations
Citizen engagement through participation in Program and Budget Prioritization

The key motivator of development of the AMS was to develop a way to make sound policy decisions based on data. The APPLE Management System is, therefore, a performance-based decision making tool that achieves the goal of evaluating competing budget priorities while also considering past performance and costs. The system improves upon performance measurement and management initiatives that are still relatively new to the public sector environment. Although it was created to assist local government policy making bodies in rendering policy and allocation decisions during fiscally constrained periods, it can and should be used under all financial conditions to identify opportunities to enhance performance and cost effectiveness using a continuous improvement philosophy.

Another system feature that is unique to the system is budget program prioritization. The prioritization process occurs prior to the local government’s adoption of their annual operating budget. Inter-department comparisons and prioritization are necessary so that difficult budget policy decisions can be simplified and more efficiently rendered. Given the current economy and emerging efforts to develop citizen-informed performance measures, citizen participation in the prioritization process is recommended, but is optional in nature. Program prioritization can be performed by the city/county/town’s management team, the policy board, and/or combined with public workshops that will allow the policy makers to receive citizen input before their final budget policy decisions are made.

System tools include a general assessment of a local government’s performance via the Local Government Performance Rating (LGPR) process. This unique tool provides a performance assessment rating as a precedent to more detailed evaluation of program activities between and within local government departments. This tool will help a local government identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis), but in doing so utilizes objective and well-defined review criteria.

System Advantages

The APPLE Management System can be used by both large and small agencies and is adaptable for use in cities, counties and towns with established, sophisticated governance processes as well as those jurisdictions with less sophisticated or no current strategic planning or business plan tools or systems. A key value of the system is that it utilizes a local government’s business metrics to determine future activities via the budget allocation process, a concept used by the private sector on a daily basis. The four key advantages of the APPLE Management System over the typical government operating budget approval process are:

It assesses a local government’s general performance based on objective criteria developed from many local government professional organizations focusing on five, key areas:

a. Governance and Performance Management
b. Fiscal Responsibility
c. Public Facilities
d. Public Safety
e. Quality of Life
It provides the executive management team and policy board with the necessary comparative data and performance analysis necessary to render effective budget policy decisions,
It transforms the budget preparation and policy making process into an informed, communicative effort so that decisions and options are sufficiently reviewed before the formal adoption process commences, and
It enhances a local government’s knowledge and ability to implement substantial service level adjustments and organizational structure changes to anticipate and correct inefficiency in order to improve long-term fiscal stability.

Besides providing a general performance assessment tool via the LGPR system, the AMS provides additional tools as well as a methodical approach that moves through various service levels. It is not solely an accountability tool, but is a set of different tools that can be used independently while considering the fact that local government’s management systems range from the very basic to sophisticated.

System Objectives

Many governments measure performance in one manner or another; however, the APPLE Management System is the only integrated, systematic approach to assist a government in achieving a multitude of performance objectives. Use of the system’s tools and methods can help a local government achieve the following five, key objectives:

Program Identification : Know what you do by identifying areas where program unit costs and performance levels have excessive overhead, inefficiency, or under-performance,
Program Performance Evaluation: Assist the chief executive and management team (absent or in conjunction with an existing Business Plan) with general and/or detailed reviews of performance via the Local Government Performance Rating and program metrics development that include financial performance, overhead costs and unit cost indicators,
Program Prioritization: Assist the policy making board with developing a consensus direction in Program Service Areas (PSA’s) that have widely diverse and unrelated program objectives yet are competing for scarce financial resources,
Policy Analysis: Evaluate whether or not the strategic vision is truly representative of the policy board’s current program priorities (when a strategic plan or business plan is in place), and
Efficiency Optimization: Restructure/simplify the government’s organizational structure to enhance efficiency.

The objectives desired by each jurisdiction are selectable and scalable. They are achievable through the various services and tools that are available in the APPLE Management System. The tools and services available are defined in the various system service levels (Level 1 through Level 5).