Orientation: Results Oriented Management and Accountability (ROMA)

1. Orientation:Results Oriented Management and Accountability (ROMA) Missouri Association for Community Action

2. What is ROMA? (Results Oriented Management and Accountability) • ROMA was created in 1994 by an ongoing task force of Federal, state, and local community action officials – the Monitoring and Assessment Task Force (MATF)

3. Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) • Created in 1993 • “The purpose of this act is to improve federal program effectiveness and public accountability by promoting a new focus on results, service quality and customer satisfaction.” • The Monitoring and Assessment Task Force, created in 1994, created six goals in their National Strategic Plan

4. Goals • Families: • Low-income people become more self sufficient • Low-income people, especially vulnerable populations, achieve their potential by strengthening family and other support systems

5. Goals • Community • The condition in which low-income people live are improved • Low-income people own a stake in their community

6. Goals • Agency • Partnerships among supporters and providers of services to low-income people are achieved • Agencies increase their capacity to achieve results

7. What does ROMA do? • ROMA provides a framework for continuous growth and improvement among more than 1000 local community action agencies and a basis for state leadership and assistance toward those ends • Improve federal program effectiveness and public accountability by promoting a new focus on results, service quality and customer satisfaction

8. Results-oriented Management • Assesses poverty needs and conditions within the community • Defines a clear agency anti-poverty mission for community action and a strategy to address those needs, both immediate and longer term, in the context of existing resources and opportunities in the community • Identifies specific improvements, or results, to be achieved among low-income people and the community • Organizes and implements programs, services and activities, such as advocacy, within the agency and among “partnering” organizations, to achieve anticipated results

9. Results-oriented Accountability • Develops and implement strategies to measure and record improvements in the condition of low income people and the communities in which they live that result from community action intervention • Uses information about outcomes, or results, among agency tripartite boards and staff to determine the overall effectiveness, inform annual and long-range planning, support agency advocacy, funding and community partnership activities.

10. Benefits • Board members • ROMA is a strategy that assists board members in their statutory obligations to fully participate in planning and evaluating community action services

11. Benefits • Staff • Focus on outcomes rather than on a particular program • Improve services by clearly being able to see what is working well and what is not • Helps organize, direct and implement resources and activities to achieve positive outcomes

12. Benefits • Families • Empowers families by allowing them to make educated choices about services that will help them achieve their goals • Better to measure one’s own progress or achievement toward their goals