Office Of Performance Improvement

Q1. The most prevalent issue in the case above is the misrepresentation of the departmental performance information, which grossly affects the welfare of the residents of Copper Springs city. This misrepresentation of departmental performance data originating from the mayor’s office trickles down the entire system, effectively nurturing unethical conduct in the affected public offices.The installation of the performance management system, referred to as Office of Performance Improvement (OPI) originates the ethical and budgetary concerns of the entire office, as the lack of adequate resources in the police department causes a correlated spike in police response time. This prompts the mayor to instruct the Director of OPI to skew the data in
to show favorable statistics in favor of the OPI system for his own interests. This prompts a chain of unethical behavior which ripples through the entire system.
Q2. The city of Copper Springs has many stakeholders. These can be categorized into two broad groups of internal and external shareholders in respect to the installation and implementation of the OPI system. The main shareholders include;
Internal Shareholder
Interests
The Mayor
The successful implementation of the OPI system would guarantee his tenure in office for a second term.
The staff of the OPI
The success of the OPI would ensure that the entire staff of the OPI would be employed
External Shareholders
Interests
Members of the City Council
The efficient utilization of the city resources
Members of the Public
Efficient delivery of essential services such as security
The Police
To ensure the safety and efficient delivery of essential services to the residents of Copper Springs city.
Q3. The Mayor: - His decision to allow OPI to operate despite the fact that there might not be enough funds to keep it afloat in the next year’s budget. Additionally, his decision to instruct the director of OPI to alter the administration’s performance statistics is unethical
The director of OPI;- Her decision to alter the administration’s performance statistics so that she can keep her job is unethical and betrays the public trust that is bestowed upon her position.
The Police Chief;- His decision to keep quite despite the fact that he notices that the information posted on the OPI’s website is incorrect and fictitious because it does not match the information on the Data Submittal Form he had previously signed.
The Administrative Analyst;- She notices that the comments on the OPI’s website are fictitious, yet she does not raise alarm, since she fears that such action would reflect badly on her next performance
evaluation.
Q4. The mayor needs to come up with a long-term strategy on how to deal with the problems arising with the implementation of the OPI system. He needs to devise a plan to ensure that the residents of Copper Springs city get the best service delivery, with an equally efficient performance appraisal system.
The director of OPI also needs to come up with a plan to deal with external pressure originating from the mayor’s office to ensure that her office reports accurate and trustworthy departmental performance information both in the short-run and long-term.
The police Chief needs to evaluate the responsibilities that come with his position and aggressively advocate for an increase in policing resources to ensure efficient service delivery for the residents of the city.
Q5. The current situation plaguing the residents of Copper Springs city could be avoided if every person in the respective departments executedtheir mandate and responsibilities to the full capacity of their respective offices. The police chief could aggressively seek for more resources by using the response time statistics as proof. The director of OPI could have ignored the mayor’s selfish demands and reported the true information as it is collected. Finally, the administrative analyst could have reported about the fictitious nature of the account posting public reviews on the OPI website.
Q6. The manipulation of data is most likely going to nurture a culture of laxity in the execution and delivery of public services, resulting to wastage of public resources by the people in office. A further increase in police response time is likely to be expected given the growing population increase which is not at par with the increase in policing resources. Crime rates are likely to go higher as the stretched police resources cannot effectively cover the entire Copper Springs city
population.
Q7. The new initiatives have stretched the budgetary capabilities of the small city, and these costs will be recurrent in every financial year for the entire term the mayor is in office. This increased budgetary obligations have thus siphoned resources from other essential functions such as policing, effectively making it very hard for the residents of the city.
Q8. As the director of finance for Copper Springs city, I would recommend the scaling down of the operations of the OPI office by substantially limiting their budget to the vital operations of the office. The OPI office plays a vital role in Copper Springs city by ensuring the public offices perform optimally, thus, continuing their operations is in the city’s best interests. Therefore, scaling down the operations of the OPI office to the size of the city is essential, as it will foster optimal allocation and utilization of public resources. This will encompass the downsizing of the OPI staff in such a manner that will ensure the central functions are manned with an option to increase their budget based on their future performance. This will ensure that the public resources are utilized optimally and in the best interests of the city’s residents.