Performance Improvement Framework Glossary

Agency Model - A framework that delivers a view of an agency's capability, performance and ability to deliver government priorities, its core business and a range of organisational management elements.   

Cluster Model - A framework that delivers a view of a sector's (and cluster's or sub-system's) capability, performance and ability to deliver government priorities. 

Four-year Excellence Horizon - This is a recent innovation.  It is a distillation of the critical shift in performance that an agency needs to make to be successful in four years' time.  Its purpose is to give the management and staff of an agency a degree of clarity about the most important issues they need to work on to lift their performance, plus a sense of what it might actually look like if they were to achieve it. 

Lead Reviewer - Independent parties who undertake PIF Reviews and PIF Follow-up Reviews for the central agencies. Lead Reviewers are a critical part of the Performance Improvement Framework (or PIF) programme.  They are not armchair critics or academic commentators. They are people of mana and credibility who have lead major change in both the public and private sectors and now hold significant governance roles.

PIF - Performance Improvement Framework; commonly used to refer to an actual review, the models themselves as well as the suite of PIF products and services.

PIF Follow-up Review - This is a recent innovation.  It occurs 12-18 months after a PIF Review. It ensures an agency has an opportunity to take stock, ensure it is realising the benefit of the most recent review and is well placed to deal with the future. 

PIF Review - A review conducted by independent Lead Reviewers of an agency's capability, performance and ability to deliver on government priorities, its core business and a range of organisational management elements. Using the Agency Model, the review assesses what an agency does well and what issues it needs to work on to be more effective in the future.  The agency develops a response to address any matters raised and to indicate what it will do to face the future challenges.

PIF Self-review - Some agencies ­- especially Crown entities - use the Agency Model as a Self-review tool to measure and improve their own performance. A Self-review is mandatory if an agency wants a PIF Review conducted.

ratings - Ratings (commonly referred to as 'traffic lights') are judgements made by the Lead Reviewers against each of the elements in the Agency Model, based on the information gathered in a review.  The greener the traffic light, the better positioned the agency is to deal with the future.  The more red the traffic light, the more work needs to be done. 

Six Dimensions of System Performance - A framework for delivering a view on a system's capability, performance and ability to deliver Government Priorities.

system findings - These are an aggregate narrative of the ratings from the PIF Reviews conducted to date. 

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