PERFORMANCE BUDGETING
- What is the name of the government organization that incorporates your selected activity?
Security intelligence service department of the National Security Agency
- What is the government mission of the organization?
To establish a leading edge of defense against the present network threats and intrusions in the country (Madsen 2013)
- What is the key objective of the activity?
To install an invasion detection system that is sensors across the national project (Madsen 2013).
- What activity flows from the objective for which you will construct a performance measure?
Performing automatic full packet examination of transfer entering or exiting the state
- Define a valid and reliable measure of activity performance?
Once the sensor detects any threat it alerts the US CERT in real time of the malicious detrimental activity in the nations network transfer. This provides the expertise personnel responsible for attending to these threats, they verify the correlation and visualizes the derived data and verifies on the threat. Later they address the issue and the vulnerability and they share the relevant security information with the government network protectors and with security experts both in the American public and the in the government.
- What data will need collection, who will collect it and when?
Technologists on reporting for their shifts they have to cross check on the status of the sensors and verify that they are working properly. Weekly reports and monthly reports are forwarded to the superiors in the NSA where they analyze the data collected and resources are deployed to ensure that the best solution is acquired for solving the most occurring threat.
- What are all the cost components of the activity, including indirect costs?
Some of the costs will be for the payment of all the technical supporters, the supervisors and the managers in the department, the cost of buying of sensors and other equipments. Other indirect costs will be on the outside payment of other specialized security experts who might be contracted from outside the department to help solve a national threat.
- At what intervals will your performance information be communicated to stakeholders?
Weekly threats and monthly reports should be forwarded to the superiors following the chain of command in the department for immediate action after analysis to be taken.
- How will you benchmark the performance measure?
Regular referencing may be conducted for the past attacks probably referring to the records of the past five years with other similar agencies such as the private agencies. The managers of the department may identify some of the similarities in all those threats and may form a pattern in those threats which they may hand over to the government for more handling.
- How will you link the activity performance to the budget?
All costs incurred in enhancing that the network security is attained are compared with previous costs and the report is forwarded to the government for inclusion in the annual budget.
- What are three advantages associated with the performance measure you propose?
It enables the department to supply information that is reliable thus enhancing better decision making
Timely alert on real time allows timely addressing of the issue thus curbing the problem.
It enables the organization to evaluate their performance with that of other agencies especially during bench marking activities thus allowing them to be motivated.
- What are three disadvantages associated with the performance measure you propose?
More experts are required even when there are no threats just in case malicious threat is detected ensuring that the budget is un-overloaded.
Collection of a consistent data that is to be used while benchmarking is difficult to acquire.
Transition from use of a certain level of technology to a high-tech technology is more costly.
- Based on your narrow experience in this exercise, do you feel that the benefits from developing a performance measure outweigh the time and effort involved? How much of your conclusion is based upon the kinds of governmental activities for which you might reach another conclusion about the utility of using performance measures?
Most of all the governmental activities require performance measurement as the benefits of these performance measures are far much more important in any government agency regardless of resources and time taken.
Reference
Madsen, W. (2013). National security agency surveillance: Reflections and revelations 2001-2013. Place of publication not identified: Lulu Com.
