Qualityworld

• Knowledge portal
• FAQs
• Information
• Qualityworld
  • Current issue
  • Reader survey
  • Editorial comment
  • Free Qualityworld
  • Past articles
  • Advertisers
  • Subscribe to Qualityworld
  • Advertise in Qualityworld
• Journal of Quality
• Jobs
• Press
• Links

Green card

In July 2006, UKvisas implemented the first internal pilot of its balanced scorecard, using a comprehensive 'traffic light' rating approach.Why was the decision taken to implement a balanced scorecard across such a complex global infrastructure? What were the aims and expectations and, crucially, did it work? Nicola Wooldridge reveals all

UKvisas is a joint Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office Directorate which runs the UK's visa service through UK embassies, high commissions and consulates abroad, collectively known as diplomatic posts. Its goals are to bring communities together and improve the UK's competitiveness as a destination for travel, trade, migration and investment through programmes which prevent immigration abuse, deliver value for money and earn public confidence.

It operates a network of over 150 visa offices across the world, with 4,000 UK-based and locally engaged staff. During the financial year of 2005/06 it received over 2.5 million visa applications - of these it issued 81 per cent and refused 19 per cent.

In terms of structure of the overseas network, regional directors of visa services oversee the larger visa operation. Each director has responsibility for a geographical region and provides support and advice to entry clearance managers in their region. Their aim is to ensure that posts provide a high standard of customer service, while maintaining the integrity of immigration control. The directors of visa services also encourage more effective communication and collaboration between posts. More recently, deputy directors of visa services have been appointed to provide additional support to posts within their region, encouraging best practice, identifying and meeting training needs and ensuring consistent, high quality decision-making.

The global profile

The many challenges faced by UKvisas on a day-to-day basis are complex. Globalisation is a dominant theme for both government and public discourse and is also an issue raised regularly in the UK press. Increased international mobility is a significant aspect of this challenge. In 2005, 100 million people crossed the UK's borders, including:

• residents
• tourists
• investors
• business people
• international students and researchers
• visiting academics, family visitors
• skilled migrants and workers
• sports and entertainment professionals

The majority were either British or European economic area nationals who have freedom of movement within the European economic area. Of the rest, 12 million were from other countries whose nationals do not require a visa to come to the UK, such as the US and Japan. Two million came from countries whose nationals are required to have valid visas for entry to the UK, such as Nigeria, Pakistan, China and India.

Britain clearly needs this international business in order to sustain its economic viability and competitiveness in the future. It needs the right numbers of skilled migrants, and needs to increase its share in the global market of overseas tourists, business investors and international students and researchers. Without these visitors Britain cannot expect to retain its position as a world leader in international education or to position itself at the forefront of the global knowledge economy.

This puts two concurrent pressures on UKvisas. On the one hand it is operating in an increasingly competitive market for the people that Britain wants to welcome, particularly students and tourists. But at the same time, UKvisas is subject to significantly more determined attacks on the integrity of its borders by organised criminal groups, people traffickers, and those who want to come to the UK to stay and work illegally.

This issue is exacerbated by factors such as cheaper travel, identity theft, cheaper and higher quality forgeries, and illicit organisational networks enabled by the internet and mobile phone access. Deterring such people before they come to, and harm, the UK is a priority for the government.

Why implement a balanced scorecard?

Prior to March 2006, UKvisas had no strategic performance measurement system in place that was capable of producing a balanced assessment of all areas of business operation.There was, and still is, in place a set of public service agreement targets designed to measure the speed of the visa-issuing service and the number of visa-issuing posts covered by a risk-assessment unit. For example, one agreement stipulates that 90 per cent of all straightforward visa applications should be decided within 24 hours. Monthly reports are generated automatically for each visa-issuing post and public service figures are included on this.

These targets clearly do not provide an all-encompassing snapshot of performance, nor do they drive behaviour or performance in certain key areas such as costs or customer service. Encouraging entry clearance officers to process applications within a particular timescale may well ensure that the customer is happy, but it does not guarantee that a high quality decision has been made on the application. As a result, in March 2006 the senior management team set out, along with consultants from an external consultancy group and the UKvisas performance management, analysis and forecasting team, to devise a new approach to measurement and assessment within UKvisas.

At this stage, the balanced scorecard (BSC) was already being implemented or actually being used by a number of other government departments, including the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office, the government department responsible for immigration policy. As UKvisas works very closely with the Immigration and Nationality Directorate it seemed appropriate to look into the BSC as a possible solution.

Aims and objectives

The overall objective of implementing the BSC was to produce a tool to assist in prioritising strategic initiative and resource allocation and to improve performance throughout the overseas network. This would work by focusing attention on the under-performing areas of the finished scorecard and ensuring that action would be taken to improve performance in those areas. For example, if the number of sick days was high across an entire region, the directors of visa services would need to look into whether there was a lack of morale in that region and ways in which that could be improved. This can be broken down into the following aims:

• to direct focus towards the five high-level strategic priorities of the UKvisas mission statement: controls, competitiveness, capabilities, costs, and confidence - referred to as the '5Cs'
• to identify areas under the 5Cs that require attention in order to improve performance at a post, regional and global level
• to identify areas in which posts or regions are performing well in order to draw on this and communicate best practice throughout the network

The BSC project team set about devising both the technical structure of the BSC and also the content. It wasn't easy to know where to start. Exactly which areas of the business should be assessed and how? The 5Cs are the main strategic priorities for UKvisas and therefore the obvious foundation on which to construct the scorecard:

• controls - preventing immigration abuse and protecting the integrity of UKvisas' systems
• competitiveness - bringing communities together and improving the UK's competitiveness as a destination for travel, trade, migration and investment
• capabilities - developing UKvisas' ability to deliver
• costs - delivering value for money
• confidence - enhancing the reputation of UKvisas

Thus the scorecard was developed to focus on these five areas. In order to be able to assess performance within each of these areas the team produced a short list of three or four strategic objectives, also referred to as outcomes. The outcomes in turn were then broken down further into several detailed measures (see figure 1). Overall there are now 14 outcomes and 21 measures that form the framework of the scorecard.

The detailed metrics are used to obtain specific information on posts overseas. Entry clearance managers are sent a formatted spreadsheet each quarter requesting raw data on staffing levels, sickness absences, training information etc. Where posts do not hold or have access to the necessary information, UKvisas HQ in London supplies additional input. As the scorecard has been designed as a quarterly performance assessment tool, the data gathering exercise occurs at the beginning of every quarter in order to measure performance during the previous quarter. This is carried out by the performance management, analysis and forecasting team, which collates returns from post and liaise with project heads throughout UKvisas.

Data collation - no mean feat

It is important to note that this scorecard has been designed to be entirely data driven and consequently all information that is input is simply raw data. How then is this data gathered and collated on a quarterly basis? For eight of the 21 metrics, each post is able to respond with figures directly - such as the number of sick or training days taken by staff, or the number of applications that have been received with non-genuine supporting documents. Each quarter, the entry clearance managers at post are tasked with completing a return to this effect and sending it in to the performance management, analysis and forecasting team and BSC project team in the UK.

All of these returns are then sorted into regions and the data is manually entered onto the raw data sheet that forms the foundation of the BSC. The various programmes and projects being run back in UKvisas, London, supply all other data that cannot be obtained from the overseas network. Again, this is sent in to the BSC project team which manually inputs the data onto the same raw data sheet. The resulting scorecard

Linked into the data sheet are the four 'heatmaps' which illustrate the scores across each metric, outcome and at the highest level of each of the 5Cs by way of red, amber and green ratings. These ratings on the main summary heatmap are an accumulation of the scores for each post, and each metric. Red denotes a need for significant improvement, amber suggests that there is room for development, and green indicates that there are no pressing issues. Green does not mean, however, that complacency should set in and this is impressed upon the business regularly. Each heatmap displays a different level of detail, ranging from a very high-level summary down to details of post performance against each individual metric. See figures 2 to 5 for examples of this.

Figure 2. The red, amber and green worldwide summary illustrates the ratings for the 5Cs by geographical region.

Figure 3. The outcome summary illustrates the red, amber and green ratings for each outcome and C by region

Figure 4. The red, amber and green decision sheet illustrates the ratings for each metric, outcome and C by region

Figure 5. The post-by-post data sheet allows the business to see the red, amber and green ratings per each individual post under each of the metrics

In addition to the basic red, amber and green ratings, red and green arrows have also been included in some areas of the data sheets. These allow the BSC project team to highlight either where action is being taken to improve performance in certain areas (green arrows), or to signify any problem areas or issues outside the parameters of the raw data (red arrows).

The team has been constantly refining the way in which data is gathered and refining the scoring protocols or benchmarks. For example, UKvisas now matches its own data on visa applicants with data on immigration offenders in the UK produced by the Home Office. This produces much more accurate and relevant results. Systems have also been set up in order to encourage posts to carry out a proportionally representative number of customer surveys to ensure that the sample size is appropriate for scoring purposes. Each metric has its own scoring boundaries for the data collected, some of which are based on global averages, and some of which are based on percentages. For example, under the 'customer survey' metric, an 80 per cent customer satisfaction score is a green rating, a 50-79 per cent score is amber and under 50 per cent is red.

Going forward into the next financial year as the BSC becomes business as usual, these red, amber and green rating boundaries will remain fixed. In this way UKvisas can use the BSC to compare performance of posts, regions or countries quarter on quarter and subsequently assess whether the appropriate steps are being taken to drive behaviour and improve performance. The UKvisas network operations team will be responsible for ensuring that this work is taken forward and for communicating best practice across the network.

Honing the scorecard

The implementation of the UKvisas BSC has not been without its problems. However, development of the project has come a long way over the past year, and it is important to note that this first year of implementation was very much a pilot project before the BSC goes live with effect from April 2007.

The very first BSC data collation exercise in quarter one of 2005/06 certainly provided a steep learning curve. Given the sheer volume of data that needed to be entered into the raw data sheet there was a great deal of room for manual error. This became evident in the form of some very strange statistics, or a post scoring red even though it had hit most of the targets. In addition to this, posts and programmes across the London office were returning their data in a variety of different numerical formats, making it time-consuming for the team to rationalise the data and then enter it onto the data sheet. A further drawback during this first exercise was that not all of the more than 150 visa-issuing posts submitted their BSC returns on time. This may have reflected either a lack of effective communication or understanding of the importance of the BSC. This, to an extent, was to be expected in the early stages. However, it was also something that could be resolved through effective marketing of the BSC within UKvisas.

In order to overcome these teething troubles a 'lessons learned' document was drafted prior to the second quarter BSC data gathering exercise. This was not too lengthy a document but highlighted the main areas for improvement. These included, among others, the need to have a simple formatted post return form so that vague comments could not be sent in instead of raw data. Similarly the team identified the need to draw up a definitive list of visa-issuing posts.

Extraordinary as it may seem, the occasional country was missed off the scorecard altogether in the early stages. In the following months the business saw a great deal more buy-in to the concept of the UKvisas BSC. At the end of the third quarter of this financial year, all but a handful of posts sent in their returns on time, a significant improvement on previous quarters.

Even more significant, some of the processes measured by the scorecard are being carried out more effectively or more often. This is evident in the figures that are being recorded now on a quarterly basis. The quality of the data being entered onto the scorecard has also been improving over the past year and guidance has been sent out to posts on how to record certain information, such as numbers of complaints or letters responded to within deadline, on an ongoing basis.

A formatted protected worksheet is now sent out to posts for completion on a quarterly basis, thus removing room for manual error. For 2007/08, the remaining capacity for manual error will be further reduced by the introduction of a new fully automated scorecard that is in the process of being developed.

What's the outcome?

Any business tool must have its limitations. While the tool helps UKvisas measure and track its performance, it is not able to propose solutions. Furthermore UKvisas needs to work on a strategy to follow when the scorecard turns green. Will it mean that the organisation is at its peak performance or will the bar need to be raised? Another limitation could be seen to be buy-in or understanding from areas of the organisation other than management. Do people really see how the scorecard applies to them or how their behaviour may affect it? After quarter three, a dialogue about the UKvisas BSC was initiated between managers and staff in order to encourage discussion and feedback. It is clear that there is still room for improvement on this front.

'The BSC has focused attention on key areas: directors of visa services are able to concentrate their efforts on the red areas within their regions, where perhaps they were not previously aware of there being a region-wide issue'

Many other positive outcomes are being seen, though, as UKvisas moves into the next financial year. The BSC has focused attention on key areas: directors of visa services are able to concentrate their efforts on the red areas within their regions, where perhaps they were not previously aware of there being a region-wide issue. An example of this is the IT systems reliability in certain parts of the world.

Quarter on quarter the business is able to identify and applaud improvements where ambers are turning to greens, and equally posts are able to see that their actions are transparent and that their behaviour does have an impact on the global picture. The scorecard has also enabled UKvisas to establish stronger links with the Immigration and Nationality Directorate through the sharing of data on immigration offenders in the UK and the number of refusals of valid visa holders at port.

There are great benefits yet to come during 2007/8, as this project becomes business as usual. What UKvisas has seen so far is more focus on the five main strategic priorities and initial identification of areas for improvement. It is safe to say that the BSC is now the major strategic performance assessment tool for UKvisas' business. The next challenge is to act on the results

Biography

Nicola Wooldridge joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in June 2006 and is currently working within the performance management, analysis and forecasting team in UKvisas.