Recommended Reading List #41

Caroline Eveleigh uses her blog to evangelise about ways in which the level of performance can be raised in all sorts of unsuspecting areas - including in a recent post discussing the highly-relevant subject of how to measure the performance of local politicians!

It is something of a specialism for her as a company director of Anatec, a local software company which specialises in performance management, business intelligence and "getting the best out of people, teams and organisations."

Caroline offers the useful insight that all statistics are a management tool and as such are a way to measure accountability. She explains that although current public sector performance indicators are "not a perfect measure... they are a lot better than nothing."

Interestingly she raises the idea of a national league table for local politicians, arguing that improvements in tracking and publication of the figures will ultimately drive improvements in political performance as voters gain better information to inform decisions made at the ballot box.

However she signs off leaving a tantalising warning that the risks and opportunities in the use of statistics are the same in politics as they are in business - provided they are used sensibly they can be extremely valuable...

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