Managing government like a business has become trendy for the federal government, symbolized by initiatives such as the President's Management Agenda, the Government Performance Results Act and many agency directives.

To coincide with that trend, many government officials have adopted a new mantra: "You can't change what you can't measure." And the measurement tool du jour for many agency executives is balanced score cards, which are a framework for establishing and tracking an organization's strategic goals.

Some federal agencies are finding that their score card investments are paying off.

"People like me who've been [working] for 30 years have often been frustrated when accusations start flying back and forth" about performance problems, said Michael Jackson, chief of the Business Operations Flight for the Aircraft Supply Chain Manager at Hill Air Force Base's Air Logistics Center, Ogden, Utah. The center is responsible for maintaining F-16 fighter planes and older aircraft.

"For the first time, score cards give us empirical data to show exactly where we stand and how to support warfighters," Jackson said. "The information has always been there, but there hasn't been a tool for digging it out."

Hearing the message, many top software companies now offer feature-laden score card programs designed for public and private organizations. Those products usually include management dashboards, which display easy-to-read summaries of performance metrics that executives can use to keep tabs on their organizations. But while score cards are gaining traction, not everyone is willing to pay for high-end, shrink-wrapped solutions.

"The software is really nice, but it just doesn't make sense for us to spend the money on it," said Stephen Logan, program manager of balanced score card performance management at the Energy Department's Office of Procurement and Assistance Management (OPAM).

For the past decade, Logan's department has used score cards built with a basic spreadsheet program. Despite its modesty, the solution has helped the department dramatically improve service satisfaction among its internal department customers.