Cal/EPA Strategic Vision July 2000

Terms and Definitions

Goals: Goals establish a desired result that the Agency is working to achieve.

Objectives: Specific and measurable targets for accomplishment of a goal. Objectives mark interim steps toward achieving an agency’s long-term mission and goals.

Strategies: Strategies are multiple activities and tasks that are organized and employed to address one or more key issues. Strategies sometimes involve more that one program and often affect multiple environmental media (i.e., air, water).

Milestones: Milestones provide short and mid-range targets against which we measure progress toward environmental and operational goals. Milestones are by design reasonably ambitious targets for improvement within a specific timeframe. Each of the boards, departments and office of Cal/EPA will include milestones for each goal in their Strategic Plans.

Indicators: Indicators summarize large amounts of complex information in a concise, easily understood format to provide tools that measure progress toward achieving milestones.

Performance Measures: Performance measures are management tools that measure work performed and results achieved. They describe what is to be measured and the methods of measurement. Performance measures are workload oriented and are used to properly allocate resources for specific tasks.

Agency-wide Synthesis: This is a virtual document, created on the Internet to link the board, department and office Strategic Plans with the Cal/EPA Strategic Vision. Combined, the documents represent the strategic agenda for Cal/EPA and its boards, departments and office into the future. When fully developed, there will be linkages with other state agencies, as well as local and federal agencies.

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