http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/
http://www.gov.scot/About/Performance/scotPerforms
Edit 18/05/2020: Now to be found at https://nationalperformance.gov.scot/
The above two links show the accountability and transparency initiatives of the Scottish and the Virginian State governments. I am heavily impressed by these initiatives. The idea is to choose a number of broad goals that everyone agrees on as target outcomes for the government, e.g. that people are more healthy; then to divide the broad target outcome into more specific aims - e.g. access to health services should be easy, people should smoke and drink less, there should be awareness of mental health issues - and then a number of specific, measurable indicators are chosen to show progress towards these aims - e.g. average waiting time in the A&E room or for a gyneacologist appointment; amount of cigarettes and alcohol sold on average per month per 1000 inhabitants; I am just coming up with random examples here when in fact you should look for yourself on the website. The point to take home is that it is a complete upheaval of the way that governing is thought about.
In Northern Ireland at the minute they are thinking about setting up something not dissimilar, called Outcomes Based Accountability. I think it's a very interesting initiative because it could be seen as an attempt to depoliticise politics. Instead of focusing on the heavy symbol politics regarding flags and language legislation that normally goes on, the focus is shifted to these goals that are so generally desirable that even Sinn Fein and the DUP do not disagree about them. A whole army of statisticians and social researchers finds employ in deciding on good indicators and diligently measuring their progress. Then the debate, in this fantasy future Northern Ireland, is about why the indicators did not go up, and what measures could be taken to make them go up in the future. No more symbol politics needed, unless it in some way is relevant to the indicators at hand.
N.B. I wrote the above a while ago. In fact then, as now, the Northern Irish government is non-existent, let alone actively setting up any new form of accountability. They've recently taken over the record for longest period without a sitting government from Belgium. This while Northern Ireland plays such a key role in the Brexit negotiations - of which all I can say is that based on the information available to me, my mind has decided it is a botched process. Alas, I have exiled myself from the Northwestern-European Archipelago, in search of better work opportunities there where the statisticians already have a firm grip on politics.
Edit January 2018: Here's a blog written on the topic by Aongus O'Keeffe of Inspiring Impact NI, about the factors that need to be in place to transfer to outcomes-based governance.
