Management and Accountability?

Results-Oriented Management and Accountability (ROMA) is a set of tools and practices that support the management of programs enabling the poor to become self-sufficient. Central to ROMA philosophy is the understanding that the effectiveness of a Community Action Agency like Chautauqua Opportunities, Inc. (COI) is not measured solely by the services it directly provides but, more importantly, by the improvements it achieves in the community’s attitudes and practices toward the poor and by mobilizing antipoverty resources. ROMA also insures the community changes Community Action Agencies promote are responsive and relevant to its community’s low-income citizens.

The ROMA process involves identifying, documenting and using outcomes or results. It deals with developing community-specific mission statements and needs assessments, writing and implementing logic models, as well as creating outcome measures and outcome scales.

Logic models are planning tools which can be used in evaluation and monitoring. They provide a linear format for developing outcomes. An outcome is the benefit or change a client or community achieves during or after participation in a program or activity.

Outcome Scales reflect local norms and are used to assess movement along the self-sufficiency continuum. The scales make complex ideas less complex while allowing for uniformity and commonality, even measuring incremental change and other concepts which often are not easily quantified or measured.

Outcome Matrices are used for assessment, allocation of resources, accountability and overall management by providing a quantifiable means to measure change in a visual format. They capture change over time and include the results of multiple interventions. Matrices are powerful tools for aggregating data to assess both client and agency performance.

Analysis of data from ROMA tools helps Community Action Agencies like COI determine who benefits from programs and services, how long it takes to achieve goals, where overall barriers exist in the community, what interventions work and where interventions are needed or are not necessary. Ultimately, use of ROMA tools will strengthen COI and the agency’s customers as the agency moves toward centralizing services and continually works toward improving quality and performance.

Two COI staff members, Patty Hammond and Elizabeth Cardona, are currently working toward earning national certification to teach “Results-Oriented Management and Accountability (ROMA) for Community Action Agencies and CSBG Subcontractors”. Funded by the US Department of Health & Human Services: Office of Community Services and sponsored by the Community Action Association of Pennsylvania, this certification training is being conducted by The Center for Applied Management Practices in Philadelphia and Baltimore.