The Nature of Measurement

Curiosity 

I have always been curious.  If curiosity killed the cat - I have been dead a long time! I now think that curiosity is linked to a desire to learn and I have been a proud life long learner.  It was with some excitement that a few months ago I signed up for Curiosity Stream as part of my Prime firestick subscription. Curiosity Stream is an online streaming service that specializes in documentaries from around the world.  This past week I was watching a BBC commissioned series on the history of measurement called Precision: The Measure of All Things.  It is a fascinating three part series on how we have developed greater precision in our core measurements and the tremendous impact such increasing precision has had on economic and social development. At one point the host says; "Without measurement, there is chaos."  It stopped me cold and may become the motto of this blog.  

Without measurement there is chaos.

What is so incredible about this thought is how true it is.  We need standards of measurement in all facets of life to be able to guide our activities, produce consistent outputs and contribute to outcomes that have impact.  Imagine trying to follow a recipe if we did not have standard measurements?  The recipe would not come out at all if we don't have consistent and standard messages. 

In Chaos there is Measurement

I shared this measurement quote with a colleague, who is a specialist in public sector performance measurement reporting, to get the reply; "In government it is the opposite: in chaos there is measurement!" How true in so many cases.  In the public sector we use a plethora of measurements to report on what we do.  Government is expected to be accountable and transparent - yet the measurement systems we use are anything but.  When we go to evaluate government programs and policies, how often does the report read that there is insufficient evidence or data to support any conclusions about the effectiveness or efficiency of an initiative?

Data, data where's the data?

The fact is that government is awash in data - it exists everywhere and is growing at an exponential rate. Government lags other sectors in the economy in understanding and analysing that data. Furthermore, because analysing data is sometimes hard to do, we tend to focus on analysing the data that is readily available and hope that will suffice.  Government is amazingly good at measuring outputs - the stuff we produce - but has greater difficulty measuring the impact on society and stakeholders an intervention is designed to achieve.  We need to do a better job and move from "in chaos there is measurement" to mastering the chaos through effective measurement and data analytics.

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