EEDA - East of England Development Agency

Accountability

EEDAs performance management and reporting operates at several levels; in addition to government reporting requirements on our key activities in relation to outputs and utilisation of resources, stakeholder accountability is enforced through:

• regular liaison panel meetings with the East of England Regional Assembly (EERA)
• high-level meetings between senior EEDA executives, the Government Office for the East of England (GO East) and EERA
• regular accountability meetings within the sub-regions where EEDA is held to account for its performance.

Our key performance management tool

EEDA employs a scorecard approach as our key performance management tool, and over a period of time we have developed the traditional balanced scorecard methodology to meet the specific needs of EEDA.

Our 'performance scorecard' covers all areas of EEDAs organisational activities and links the key areas of activity identified in our business plan to a detailed set of action plans. These action plans are based around our internal directorate structure and are supported by a series of 'enabling' goals.

To complement the action plans, we monitor our performance against a number of key 'areas for improvement' to ensure that not only do we achieve our key aims and objectives for the year, but we continually improve the ways in which we work. EEDA also employs staff and customer satisfaction surveys to measure our performance across a broad range of areas. The results of the surveys are used to inform EEDA management to ensure that the organisation continuously improves.

Reporting and sharing our progress

The performance scorecard is used as a framework to document progress in achieving key targets for the year and also in implementing improvements in priority areas. The EEDA board and the executive receive monthly reports on progress against the actions set out in our performance scorecard and where appropriate these reports are used to re-focus our resources to ensure that our corporate targets are met. The monthly reports are also shared with all EEDA staff as well as GO East and EERA.

Performance in both financial and output delivery terms is summarised in the following tables.

In addition, EEDA incurred non-cash costs (depreciation, write-downs and cost of capital charges) of £1,661K against an allocation of £7,158K.

The overall level of net spending in 2007/08 was around £5 million lower than the previous year as EEDA received reduced cash resources to deliver the existing programmes that were set out in the corporate plan 2005-08. The vast majority of the expenditure was incurred delivering the four core products and individual commentaries earlier in the report set out more detailed analysis of the expenditure incurred and the outputs delivered within each product area.