Learning & Growth Perspective
The Learning and Growth perspective should be designed to support the objectives of all three other perspectives. This perspective identifies the City’s needs to ensure that employee skills and technological capabilities allow for successful strategic action. Learning and Growth also indicates the types of training, skills, and technology that are needed to carry the organization forward.

Internal Process Perspective
The Internal Process perspective encourages the city to change and improve the way it delivers services, specifies certain strategy-related objectives, and encourages productive use of resources geared toward achievement of the City’s mission and vision. This perspective deals with strategic objectives emphasizing not only “how to” but also “through what means” the City pursues the adopted focus areas.

Customer Perspective
The Customer perspective as the “top line” perspective represents a structural departure from the Balanced Scorecard structure of the private sector. The Customer perspective in this “top line” position on the scorecard reflect the fact that the City is a service delivery organization and typically should contain objectives representing key strategy-related services delivered to citizens.

Financial Resources Perspective
The financial perspective identifies and enables resources needed to achieve the City’s Customer perspective. While the Financial perspective is always the “top line” perspective in the private sector, its location in balanced scorecards for governmental application reflects the reality of the environment in which it functions. For example, a “top line” Financial Perspective would indicate that certain activities or programs, which are not profitable, and not contributing to profit should be discontinued.

In the governmental application, the scorecard structure recognizes the fact that profitability of most governmental services is not the driving force behind the reason for providing services. In fact, profitability is not a part of the mission of the governmental unit. The Financial perspective, however, remains vitally important to the City in all of its activities. It should measure and identify deliverable services at a good price, support maintenance of sound financial position, identify funding mechanisms, and support accountable and responsible use of funds in citywide strategic scorecards. In more limited scope scorecards such as the communication scorecard (or departmental scorecards) the financial perspective may be more likely to identify objective-specific resource requirements and identify resources needed to support the internal process and customer objectives.