This is probably the hardest thing to accomplish in the Federal Government. The Feds have incredibly diverse missions, the contribution is incredibly hard to measure. A person purchasing paper to run the office has an incredible number of oversight, rules and regulations to achieve her/his job solely because she/he is spending the taxpayer's money. How does the purchase of paper contribute to the mission? How do all the rules supporting small business, fairness, paper quality, etc. come to play in the evaluation of the person's contributions? How will measuring the speed not cause them to cut corners, how will measuring quality not cause them to delay? The solution lies in TRUST. If the organization trusts employees to perform their tasks they take a risk--some will, some won't. But trusting will result in more action than checking. Checking results in the minimalist approach: "Do what will get accepted". Before you can measure contribution, you need to succinctly and directly understand the mission in terms that an eighth grade education can understand. Bureaucratic gobbledygook means that we don't want to measure influence and contribution. Can you explain to your sixth grade child what you accomplished to help the organization today? Then your goals and contributions are well defined. If you struggle to describe your achievements today in simple language, you do not know what you are supposed to do.

Define the mission. For the military: Kill the enemy before they can kill our soldiers. Seems to work for me. For the EPA: Show companies how to produce while lessening the impact on the environment year over year. For the TSA: Make travel incrementally safer while making it easier for the majority. and so on. Publish the goals of each organization and agency and allow seventh grade classes throughout the Country to evaluate and critique the goals for understandability and measurability. Let the kids tell us what to measure so that they know we are accomplishing our job!