In today’s Pathway to Stabilization Tip, we’re sharing 4 questions for your consideration. Answering these questions will help you not only prepare to create your FY 2024 Program Review content but also to plan for how to meet your department mission for the long term.
To help you prepare for FY 2024 Program Review
1. What are our current service levels? Hint: the last time you may have defined your current service levels may be in the FY 2020 Program Review. Review yours here: https://www.loudoun.gov/5283/Program-Review. If your program is new since FY 2020, where have you defined your current service levels?
2. What changes have you made to your service levels through subsequent budget processes? Remember: we were creating the FY 2020 Program Review document in 2019. Subsequent budget processes may have caused your service levels to be enhanced or degraded. As you answer this question, summarize those changes and what impact they’ve had on the program and the community.
To help you plan for the long term
3. What do you want your service levels to be in the future? Think beyond this moment. Think out to 2040 when projections show Loudoun County’s growth is stabilizing. Might your service levels change? How?
4. What adjustments might you make to your service level over the years? If you can project what your service levels might be when growth has stabilized, you can take steps between now and then to get to those levels—through either reductions or additions along the way.
Wait, what’s a service level?
Service levels describe what we are doing and how well we are doing it. They generally involve a commitment to someone or some group to deliver something at a certain level of quality, for some benefit. Read more about how Loudoun defines its service levels in the one-page attachment.
Why is this Tip important right now?
It’s time for us all to start creating our FY 2024 Program Review, a comprehensive catalog of the County’s departments and programs. The Program Review is a critical communication tool for the Board of Supervisors and the public about what we do and how the public benefits from our work. We will release the final FY 2024 Program Review in November of 2023, but we have already started this important work. We will jumpstart our FY 2024 Program Review with the work we did in FY 2020, and—especially because of the many changes we’ve seen in the past 2 years—we will use these next few months to validate our prior decisions as well as create anew where necessary.
