The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (NYC DCA) is a department of the Government of New York City. This particular department’s job is to enforce New York’s laws to protect the rights of consumers, to deal with consumer dissatisfactions, procedures of licensing businesses, and to promote the consumer education while serving the needs of New York City’s business owners. The Small Business Relief Package launched in July of 2014 is one of the DCA’s programs oriented to responding to the interests of small businesses in New York City (NYC DCA, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to review the agency’s functions and the program’s objectives; to create the mission statement referring to Harry Hatry’s principles; to build the Logic Model; and to determine the performance measurement indicators related to the program.
The NYC DCA and the Small Business Relief Package Program
The NYC DCA is a department that works to meet the interests of both consumers and business owners in New York City in order to guarantee that both consumers and businesses perform within a “fair and vibrant marketplace” (NYC DCA, 2014). The NYC DCA’s goal is to empower the city’s consumers and businesses with the focus on their rights, needs, and interests. The agency’s programs and initiatives support the city’s laws and contribute to creating the environment in which businesses are licensed and inspected to avoid consumers’ complaints and fines, and consumers are satisfied because of the high quality of the provided services (NYC DCA, 2014). Thus, businesses are empowered to work in the legal environment, and consumers are educated to protect their interests.
In this context, the Small Business Relief Package program is a complex of about two dozen reforms directed to meet the interests of small businesses in relation to reducing fines, decreasing “the number and cost of violations” and to contributing to small businesses’ education (NYC DCA, 2014). The Small Business Relief Package program aims to empower small businesses to reinvest the costs saved as a result of fine reductions into the businesses’ progress and improvement of policies. This initiative is discussed as contributing to the city’s economic growth. The program works to improve the consumer protection with the focus on improving the quality of services provided by such small businesses as, for instance, supermarkets, grocery stores, hair and nail salons, laundries, and dry cleaners (NYC DCA, 2014). The focus of the program on reducing fines for small businesses is the NYC DCA’s response to the issues of inspection and consumer protection.
Mission Statement for the Small Business Relief Package Program
The mission statement for the Small Business Relief Package program is not clearly formulated, and the program is launched with the orientation to completing such goals as to “reduce the number and cost of fines, increase transparency and fairness, and greatly expand the education of and outreach to businesses” (NYC DCA, 2014). Referring to Hatry’s approach to formulating mission statements, it is possible to state that the effective mission statement should clearly identify customers who benefit from the program’s implementation and clearly identify the major results or outcomes of the program (Hatry, 2006, p. 39-41). From this point, the effective mission statement should include two parts, where the first one presents multiple objectives oriented to improve the situation and quality, minimize negative effects, reduce unmet needs, and provide efficiency, and the second part identifies the means with the help of which the objectives can be reached (Hatry, 2006, p. 39-41). The discussed aspects should be used to formulate the successful mission statement for the Small Business Relief Package program.
Thus, customers who can benefit from the program’s implementation are small businesses and the city’s citizens because of the contributions to the city’s economy. The important objectives to be mentioned in the mission are the goals to reduce fines, increase transparency and fairness, and expand the education as well as outreach to small businesses. These objectives are associated with the expected major outcomes of the program and they address the necessity to focus on results in minimization of negative affects as well as results in contributing to the improvement and quality growth. The activities developed to achieve the identified objectives are the reforms that include “curable violations, warnings instead of violations for signage, reduced settlement amounts”, and inspection reforms (NYC DCA, 2014). Focusing on these aspects, it is possible to formulate the mission statement for the Small Business Relief Package program according to Hatry’s recommendations:
Improve regulation for small businesses in New York City, while reducing the number and cost of violations and fines, increasing transparency and fairness, empowering small businesses with education, and fulfilling a commitment to serving interests of New York City’s small business and public community with the help of a package of developed reforms.
Logic Model for the Small Business Relief Package Program
Outcome-sequence charts or logic models proposed by Hatry are helpful in order to identify outcomes or the program’s expected results and present the necessary activities to achieve the outcomes in the logical consequence (Hatry, 2006, p. 53). The activities necessary to reach the expected outcomes are the reforms developed by the commissioners of the NYC DCA. These reforms are developed separately, and to achieve the goal in reducing fines such reforms as Reduced Number of Violations, Reduced Settlement Amounts, and Curable Violations are proposed (Figure 1; NYC DCA, 2014). To reach the goal in increasing transparency and fairness, Inspection Checklists and Inspections in Preferred Language are proposed. Reforms in legal assistance are proposed to reach the goal regarding the small businesses’ education (Figure 1). The provided figure demonstrates how outputs of the discussed activities are closely connected with the intermediate outcomes of the program (Figure 1). The achievement of the intermediate outcomes directly leads to receiving the large end outcomes presented in the figure and mentioned in the mission statement, improved regulation for small businesses and increased opportunities for the economic progress in New York City (Figure 1; NYC DCA, 2014).
Figure 1. The Logic Model for the Small Business Relief Package Program.
Performance Measurement Indicators to Support the Logic Model
Performance measurement indicators that support the created logic model are identified with references to Hatry’s recommendations. These indicators are outputs as the quantitative results of the completed activities or reforms, intermediate outcomes, and end outcomes presented as the quantitative measures (Hatry, 2006, p. 102). Realizing the Small Business Relief Package program, officials focus on changes in amounts of costs and expect the following outcomes: (1) the number of violations will be limited to 1 for each missing piece of determined information; (2) the percent of fine costs for businesses that choose to settle the violation will be reduced; (3) the number of signage violations for corrections will increase; (4) the number of inspector checklists available for businesses will increase to 41; (5) the number of counseled businesses will increase by 50% (NYC DCA, 2014).
Therefore, performance measurement indicators for intermediate outcomes are the percent of reduction in the number and cost of violations and fines; the number of checklists available for the use by small businesses associated with increases in transparency and fairness; the percent of small businesses used counseling services and legal assistance by the end of 2015; and the number of resources saved by small businesses for reinvesting into business to promote the growth by the end of 2015. The expected intermediate outcomes are the 21% of reduction in the number and cost of violations and fines; 41 inspector checklists available for the use by small businesses; the increase by 50% in the number of small businesses using counseling services and legal assistance; and $5 million of saved resources for reinvesting into the small business of New York City (NYC DCA, 2014). Referring to the above-mentioned performance measurement indicators, it is possible to determine the indicators for the end outcomes that are the percent of reductions in regulatory violations by small business by the end of 2015 to measure the outcomes in the regulation of small businesses in New York City and the percent of financial resources saved to be reinvested into small businesses to contribute to the economic progress of New York City’s business community.
Conclusion
The Small Business Relief Package is a program developed by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs in order to improve the regulation procedures used in the community to control small businesses. The objectives of the program are formulated in the mission statement developed with references to Harry Hatry’s principles. The provided mission statement includes the customers, and intermediate and end outcomes. The logic model is developed in the form of a chart to determine activities and outcomes leading to reaching set intermediate and end outcomes. The realization of the program’s end outcomes depends on the completion of a set of activities or reforms that are designed to address the major issues associated with the regulation of small businesses in New York City. The proposed reforms are developed to reach the intermediate outcomes that directly lead to achieving the general end outcomes. The success of the program’s implementation depends on the reforms’ outcomes that are measured according to proposed performance measurement indicators. In addition, certain performance measurement indicators are provided to measure the success in achieving intermediate and end outcomes of the program.
References
Hatry, H. (2006). Performance measurement: Getting results. New York, NY: The Urban Institute.
The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (NYC DCA). (2014). Web.