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Weekly UpdatesThe City of Salisbury, North Carolina, with a population of 28,480, is committed to performance measurement--but that wasn't always the case. The cornerstone of the city's program is the University of North Carolina School of Government's North Carolina Benchmarking Project, which introduced Salisbury to performance measurement and allowed it to compare itself with other communities in the state. Since joining the benchmarking project, the city has also become involved in other regional performance measurement efforts through the North Carolina League of Municipalities and the Community Research Council. Performance measurement has become an important part of the city's organizational culture.
COMMITMENT AND FOLLOW-THROUGH
Salisbury got involved with the North Carolina Benchmarking Project in the late 1990s through the efforts of the city manager. A few years later, the city created a full-time performance-measurement position: budget and benchmarking analyst. The post was added, despite a citywide reduction in staff, because of a real and meaningful commitment to performance measurement on the part of city officials who realized that an effective performance management effort could not be achieved as an afterthought. They recognized the value of performance measurement as a tool to help overcome the obstacle of "not knowing what you don't know." The city's goal in this initiative is to be a responsible steward of community resources and to report back to citizens.
After the first few years, city officials decided they wanted to take another step and make performance measurement, which had been a part of the city's annual goal-setting process, an established component of the city's operations. Staff is now expected to be able to answer questions about effectiveness and efficiency, so there has to be a system for making that information available.
Salisbury regularly collects workload, efficiency, and effectiveness measures. Both the data and the data-collection measures are audited annually to ensure their accuracy and validity The data are then compiled into an annual performance document, which reports on the service areas that are of primary interest to the public, and a report for the benchmarking project, which includes extensive graphs and text outlining departmental performance. The city also takes part in an annual data-cleaning process with the other participants in the North Carolina Benchmarking Project to assure an "apples-to-apples" comparison of data, verifying that everyone is using the same collection processes and definitions.
Salisbury's process for gathering performance information has been determined largely by its participation in the benchmarking project. The city attempted to track as much specific information as possible in areas where it would be able to take action.
RESULTS
Over time, city staff members have become more comfortable with the data they collect and have come to rely on it, increasingly using performance measurement to improve city operations. One example of this is recycling services, for which Salisbury uses an outside contractor. Upon conducting follow-up inspections to look at the percentage of recycling, the city discovered that its 30 percent reported recycling rate was being grossly inflated, and that the actual rate was 18 percent. This data allowed the city to see the real level of participation in the program and act accordingly, increasing citizen awareness of the program and monitoring the vendor's usage data more closely The city also used performance data to discover that its rate of false alarm calls to the police and fire departments was higher than that of its peers. In response, the city adopted a false alarm ordinance, which resulted in fewer wasteful deployments of police and fire staff and also saved the city money.
Another improvement is in the area of external reports. Salisbury has produced annual performance reports since the mid 1980s, but in 2004, the focus of the report was changed to include performance information. In 2005, the city developed citizen focus groups with neighborhood associations, non-profit organizations, and members of the business community to help it identify ways of improving citizens' interactions with city government and determining how citizens would like to see performance information reported. The city is preparing to embark on another round of focus groups, this time with the intent of identifying performance metrics that measure community livability and character.
Taking a global outlook, Salisbury would like to see performance measurement become a part of the organizational culture in municipalities throughout its region. The city is part of a project with the North Carolina League of Municipalities, a federation of cities, towns, and villages that promotes excellence in municipal government. It is one of six jurisdictions in the state that the league has characterized as having a performance measurement culture that will allow it to serve as a mentor to other municipalities, with the goal of getting the "performance measurement ball rolling" throughout the region. Through this kind of outreach. the league hopes to encourage even the most resistant jurisdictions to adopt transparency and engage its citizens in municipal government.
In addition to its efforts with the league. Salisbury is also one of seven municipalities with the Community Research Council in Chattanooga, Tennessee. to standardize performance measurement processes and roll them out to a broader community. One of the council's primary objectives is to draft metrics for jurisdictions in the southeast region of the United States and create a standard for external reporting.
The city has also learned several lessons through this process of becoming more focused on outcomes:
* Salisbury stresses the importance of a recurring audit process and consistent reporting back to citizens. The quality of the data has to be certified in order to create trust in the process and confidence in the results. This factor is important not only for Salisbury's internal performance measurement processes, but also in the North Carolina Benchmarking Project, where verified, cleaned data is imperative in making inter-jurisdiction comparisons.
* The city also encourages its departments to embrace performance measurement without being forced to do so by upper management or the budget or finance departments. Departments can begin to quantify workload and effectiveness even without a formal, organizationwide system. When employees embrace performance measurement at the ground level, they can take ownership of the practice, instead of it being just another task imposed from the top down.
North Carolina Benchmarking Project
The North Carolina Benchmarking Project began in September 1995 in response to demand from local government officials who wanted to collect and compare service-delivery data. The project allows state municipalities to compare themselves with other participants, and to compare their own results over time. The benchmarking process includes compiling service and cost information, cleaning the data for accuracy, calculating the selected performance measures, and comparing the results.
Following a three-phase pilot stage over the course of four years, the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina (now the School of Government) and the project steering committee decided to operate the program on an annual basis starting in July 1999. Currently, 17 municipalities participate, and the project publishes a final performance and cost report each February. It measures city services in the following areas: residential refuse collection; household recycling, yard waste collection, police services, emergency communications, asphalt maintenance and repair, fire services, building inspections, fleet maintenance, human resources, and water services.
The annual reports on municipal services present the performance and cost results for each service area. Using three types of performance measures (workload, efficiency, and effectiveness), each report compares a jurisdiction's performance with the group average. The reports also include explanatory information and profiles on each municipality, including: a municipal profile, which displays general characteristics; a full cost profile, which shows the cost of providing each service; and a service profile, which identifies methods of service delivery.
The North Carolina Benchmarking Project has achieved some overall goals and produced some valuable lessons regarding performance measurement, benchmarking, and cost accounting, in addition to specific results for participants. The project's success has been directly related to participants agreeing on specific service definitions and measurement statistics, and understanding the importance of data availability and quality. Municipalities have used the performance data for service improvement, especially in the areas of residential refuse collection and household recycling.
Desired Outcomes
The Salisbury City Council has identified 12 outcomes it is working toward through its performance measurement efforts. Each desired outcome has at least one associated goal that specifies how that outcome will be reached, and one or more staff member is responsible for each goal. The outcomes are:
1. Create a culture of excellent customer service within the city organization.
2. Improve neighborhoods and safety for all areas of the city.
3. Enhance and support a creative enterprise economy with the best-educated workforce, the most competitive infrastructure, an environment that encourages creativity and innovation, a positive business climate, and a supportive government in both Salisbury and Rowan County.
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