Dr. W. Edwards Deming said “if you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.” Over the past year, the Legislature’s Operations and Performance Team (Ops. Team) has done just as Dr. Deming advised, sharing Utah’s efficiency improvement process with several other states. In turn, the team reflected on its own performance, identifying growth opportunities for the future – not least among them streamlined reporting requirements for higher and public education. Through honed efficiency evaluations and improved performance metrics, Utah’s budget is poised for informed decision-making in the new year.
Goal #1: Step on the Scale
A process cultivated through multiple years of legislation (H.B. 326 – 2021 GS, S.B, 296 – 2023 GS, & H.B. 317 – 2025 GS), this year’s efficiency evaluations newly required performance measures to demonstrate how recommended improvements move the needle, either in terms of program output or outcomes. The following example shows the measures developed in the evaluation of the Board of Pardons and Parole’s (BOPP) mental health assessment process:
Included measures are intended to demonstrate how recommended improvements make processes more efficient and effective. Specifically, measures 5 and 6 focus on cost reductions from decreasing re-hearing and mental health re-assessments, improving outcomes by reducing delayed board hearings.
This year’s efficiency evaluations include:
- BOPP—Mental Health Assessments (Released September 2025)
- Medicaid Consensus Evaluation—Part I (Released November 2025)
- Department of Environmental Quality—UPDES Permit Process (Anticipated January 2026)
- Department of Veterans and Military Affairs—Claims Assistance Process (Anticipated January 2026)
Evaluations completed in 2025 will include set of performance measures that will be reported annually in August, as part of the normal reporting cycle with other ongoing measures from state agencies.
Goal #2: Find a Supportive Peer Group
Since the team’s inception, it’s become increasingly clear that Utah’s cross-branch approach to performance-informed budgeting is novel and has been cited as a leading example among peer states. Coordination by the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s (LFA) and Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget (GOPB) was one of the reasons the North Dakota Legislature’s newly created Task Force on Government Efficiency requested a presentation from the Ops. Team on our frameworks and practices, with the goal of developing a similar program in their state.
This December, the LFA Performance Team convened with staff from other states as part of NCSL’s Governing for Results Network. The two-day event created a forum for sharing best practices and identifying growth opportunities in other states’ processes. While Utah incorporates evidence-based budgeting in many steps of its appropriation process, legislators and staff from other states had particular interest in how performance measures for funding items are developed, providing another opportunity to showcase Utah’s level of collaboration across branches of government:
- Legislators Identify Outcomes in Their Requests for Appropriation (RFA): Joint Rule 3-2-701(4)(b)(x) requires legislators to identify “…one or more outcomes the legislator expects the project or program to achieve,” which each submitted RFA form collects and is presented in an appropriations subcommittee.
- Agencies, LFA Analysts, and GOPB Analysts Finalize Measures: Finalizing performance measures for appropriated funding items allows agencies the opportunity to provide feedback on possible measures according to Utah Code 63J-1-903(6)(a) that LFA and GOPB analysts approve.
Utah’s multi-stakeholder approach established in both rule and statute was a major point of interest among legislators from other states.
This event also provided a forum to consider enhancements in Utah’s performance data collection and communication. Examples from other states to increase evidence-based budgeting include:
- Defining Levels of Evidence: Minnesota Management and Budget utilizes standardized ratings of evidence to enhance understanding during the state’s appropriations process about what types of programs have demonstrated success.
- Inventorying Programs and Corresponding Performance Measures: Tennessee’s Office of Evidence and Impact created program inventories, such as this example for its Department of Agriculture, providing a succinct list of agency programs and interventions along an evaluation of corresponding performance measures.
- Enhanced Reporting through Quarterly Submissions: New Mexico’s Legislative Finance Committee highlighted its ‘LegisStat’ system dashboards, which include quarterly reporting of performance data and a central repository for all agency evaluations.
- Modeling the Performance Measures: The Colorado Governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting utilizes an evidence model, ranging from evidence-informed, to promising, to proven as it considers budget requests. This systematic approach could enhance Utah’s current process by focusing investments on programs and projects that are closer to ‘proven’ on the evidence continuum.
Goal #3: Stop Procrastinating
The Funding Item Follow-up Report and Line item Performance measures in COBI are the core deliverables of Utah’s performance measure processes, both of which have undergone several iterations of process improvement. This year’s enhancements focused on improved communication. Our team worked with GOPB and the Division of Technology Services to develop agency- and analyst-specific action items clearly listed within the performance measure collection system that are reinforced with targeted email communications. Ensuring timely reporting of performance information allows analysts to focus on developing recommendations for the Legislature instead of devoting time to following up with agencies.
A recommendation the Ops. Team made to Legislative Management Committee in December was to synchronize the reporting by public and higher education agencies with the rest of state government. The following slide highlights some of the disadvantages of delayed reporting and some of the challenges it presents for these agencies:
The figure above highlights three major issues with delayed reporting:
- if measures are meaningful, then results should be actively used and readily available;
- appropriations subcommittees typically review and act on future measures in October, therefore, information reported on November 1 impacts the workload of subcommittees during session; and
- submission of implementation, spending, and performance data at the end of October interferes with agency budget preparation activities.
Therefore, the Ops. Team recommends Public and Higher Education align performance reporting with fiscal closeout processes in July and August to facilitate timely information for appropriation subcommittees during their final interim meetings in mid-October.