Government and Community

National Civic League
For communities to respond to their challenges, they must resolve, for themselves, that their capacity to solve problems requires revitalization. Outside consultants can make recommendations, but without local ownership of a strategy and implementation plan, it is not likely that the community will take action. The Civic Index, a twelve point community self-evaluation tool, helps communities develop their problem solving capacity by providing a method and a process for first identifying and recognizing their strengths and weaknesses, and then structuring collaborative approaches to solving shared problems. Today's column discusses the Civic Index component of Government Performance.
Local Government Can't Solve Problems Alone, But Must Do Its Part Efficiently and Effectively
As discussed in the previous column, the growing number and complexity of issues faced by localities demand that government, business, and the nonprofit sector work closely together in setting common goals and working together to achieve them.
As Drew O'Connor, assistant director of the National Civic League's Community Services reports from his work with communities throughout the country, "Communities that succeed today, recognize that power can't be concentrated in traditional government leadership positions such as mayors, city managers and board chairs. They have a place at the table for citizens and for neighborhood groups as well."
While government cannot solve all community problems by itself, it must be a positive force in addressing community needs. Government must perform well in regard to the functions over which it maintains responsibility.
The issue of government performance ultimately can be boiled down to the answer to two questions:
How responsive is a government to the needs and desires of the community it serves?
How valuable to the community are a government's services?
The first question encompasses government effectiveness and the second, government efficiency.
NCL's Measuring City Hall Performance: Finally a how-to guide defines efficiency as "[T]he relationship between inputs and outputs, that is, between the amount of resources used and the amount of service produced. An organization is said to be efficient if it minimizes the resources it uses to achieve that output."
Measuring City Hall Performance continues, "Effectiveness refers to the level of satisfaction with the services being delivered or the extent to which pre-determined goals and objectives have been reached. If a service or activity receives a high satisfaction rating from the public or achieves most of its goals, it is considered effective."
For a local government to be both effective and efficient, it needs to also be responsive, professional, accountable, equitable, entrepreneurial, and free of corruption. These characteristics can be evaluated by asking the following qualitative questions:
Is the government free of corruption?
Does government address qualitative concerns about services?
Is government professional and entrepreneurial?
Is government responsive and accountable?
Are services provided equitably?
Does government consider and utilize alternative methods of service delivery?
Is government a positive force in addressing community needs?
Yet, many communities today have found that these qualitative questions only provide the beginnings of a full evaluation of their local government's performance. They seek both a clear statement of governmental objectives and hard evidence upon which they can evaluate their government's success in attaining these objectives.
Certainly, when evaluating local government, subjective judgements are indispensable. But any decision or evaluation is stronger when supported by factual evidence. Performance measurement provides the means for improving local governmental actions and decisions by establishing a basis for a quantitative evaluation.
Measuring City Hall Performance provides this example: "[A] council may set as one of the municipality's goals, a 10 percent reduction in crimes committed. The police chief will develop an array of objectives designed to meet this goals. One of these objectives may be to clear 58 percent of reported crimes by means of arrest, on the theory that incarceration of criminals prevents them from committing more crimes, at least during their imprisonment. Thus, the police chief would deem his operation effective if the 58 percent clearance rate were achieved."
The full value of a performance measurement program could be realized if performance measurement were undertaken in all municipal departments. But performance measurement can also be applied to any individual service or on a service-by-service basis.
Some U.S. communities have already adopted performance-based programs, and are reaping the benefits. Communities such as Sunnyvale California, Dayton Ohio, Dallas Texas and Phoenix Arizona all have full-fledged systems for documenting evidence that can then be used to evaluate governmental performance, such as saved tax dollars and levels of service, as well as many other quantifiable measures.
However, despite the growing evidence of the benefits of developing performance-based measurement systems, relatively few communities throughout the country have implemented systems for measuring the performance of their government. The cities that have are at the vanguard of a movement that might possibly probably revolutionize public sector decision making. The National Civic League strongly encourages other communities to follow suit.
Performance measurement will not supplant political judgement and profession experience, but it will supplement them. Performance measurement, therefore, is not offered as a panacea for municipal ills but rather as a component of good management.
For information on how the concepts and techniques presented in this column can be applied in your community, or for a copy of the 1999 Revised Civic Index or a copy of Measuring City Hall Performance: Finally, A How-To Guide, contact the National Civic League by e-mail at ncl@ncl.org; on the world wide web at www.ncl.org; or by phone at (303) 571-4343.