MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY - The county's agricultural service board (ASB) members been updated on ways being considered to enhance strategic plan reporting.
ASB’s strategic plan has recently been revised. The plan focuses the efforts of the board and provides a process to align short-term decisions with long-term goals.
“The strategic plan provides the high-high-level strategies and objectives of the ASB which provides direction to administration on the establishment of operational programs and associated budget to accomplish those goals,” said Jane Fulton, assistant director of legislative, community and agricultural services.”
During the recent review of the strategic plan, ASB members requested a review of the reporting tools used to document activities under the plan.
In response administration has set out seven proposed key performance indicators (KPIs).
The role of the KPIs in the strategic planning process is to provide measures used to gauge performance, track progress, success of meeting objectives or provide the basis to implement change, she said.
The KPIs are as follows: financial metrics; strategic alignment activities; agricultural impacts; environmental impacts; operational excellence; collaboration/partnerships; and public engagement.
During the board’s recent meeting, Fulton said regarding financial metrics: “We always provide financial information, but we can start breaking that down based on the strategic priorities.”
Regarding strategic alignment priorities, she said, “This is sort of a way of talking about different workshops or different one-offs that we do that meet some of those strategic priorities. So we could be reporting that annually.”
Regarding environmental impacts, she said, “We are capturing and have some metrics to those. So we can talk about how many acres we’ve put under an ALUS project or an REEP project (land conservation programs).”
Regarding collaboration and partnerships, she said, “It seems like everyday we are partnering with so many different organizations that we could start providing that information of how we collaborated with all our different partners for each priority.”
Regarding public engagement, she said, “We are always providing how many people attend our workshops. We could actually start reporting some really great information on just how many people take advantage of our programs or our funding and things along those lines.”
Members passed a motion instructing administration to come back with a sample report using the KIPs.
The ASB is made up of county councillors and appointed public members from the region’s agricultural community. It advises the county and the province on agriculture-related issues and concerns.
