citizen initiated performance assessment
TRANSCRIPT
INTRODUCTION
• Citizen involvement in the design and implementation of performance assessment is necessary to give performance measures political relevancy and significance. However, many cities have reservations about the concept.
• It emphasizes collaboration among citizens, elected officials, and city staff in developing performance measures, thereby enhancing the political credibility of performance measurement and increasing the likelihood that the information will be used in the decision-making process
• It emphasizes the citizen perspective in the development of performance measures so that performance measurement is not totally oriented toward managerial needs
• It emphasizes the dissemination of performance measurement information to the public so that citizens can use the information to hold their government accountable
• Since the mid-1990s, there have been two major movements in the field of public administration. The first movement is a renewed effort to promote performance measurement. Since the early 1990s, many professional organizations, such as the American Society for Public Administration, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, and the International City/County Management Association, have been promoting various programs to encourage government agencies to adopt performance assessment, so that public officials and citizens can evaluate the inputs, outputs, and outcomes of public services effectively.
• The second major movement has been the movement toward citizen governance and reinventing government through citizen participation (Nalbandian, 1999; King and Stivers, 1998; Schachter, 1997).
• The original reform of reinventing government started with a business perspective and viewed citizens as customers (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). The more recent effort to reinvent government views citizens not only as customers but also as the owners of government. This value is especially important in city governments, which provide many direct services and have a tremendous impact on the daily lives of citizens.
OBJECTIVESTo address five developmental needs for government performance measurement and reporting, which are:
•Developing and improving measures of performance for decision making, •Making those measures available to the public and other users, •Developing methods for state and local governments to communicate performance measures, •Teaching users how to work with performance measures to assess the service efforts, costs and accomplishments of a governmental entity, •Ensuring the relevance, comprehensiveness, understandability, timeliness and reliability of performance measures.
LIMITATION TO CIPA
• The lack of sufficient attention to performance measures by elected officials starves performance measures of needed political support. Many administrators view their efforts to collect performance data and report the measures as a fruitless and wasteful exercise.
Why are Cities (Not) Interested in CIPA?
• Cities with a larger population are more likely to participate in the CIPA project. Larger cities tend to involve citizens more because of their need to address diverse demands (Ebdon, 2000).
• Cities with greater organizational stability are less likely to participate in the CIPA project. Without major governing crises, significant economic downturns, or social disorder, public officials tend to treat business as usual, and have very low incentives to make changes in the existing process or managerial system.
• Cities with greater organizational openness are more likely to participate in the CIPA project. Openness is especially important in engaging citizens in performance measurement. Epstein, et al. (2000) suggest that if a local government does not have an open organizational culture, it is unlikely to sustain citizen engagement and use innovative approaches to measure performance of public services.
• Bureaucratic norms, such as the emphasis on professional expertise, organizational control, administrative stability, and efficiency, are generally contradictory to the value of citizen involvement (Kweit and Kweit, 1981).
• Cities that are concerned about the information from performance measurement being used politically in elections are less likely to participate in the CIPA project.
What it Entails• It emphasizes collaboration among citizens, elected
officials, and city staff in developing performance measures, thereby enhancing the political credibility of performance measurement and increasing the likelihood that the information will be used in the decision-making process,
• It emphasizes the citizen perspective in the development of performance measures so that performance measurement is not totally oriented toward managerial needs,
• It emphasizes the dissemination of performance measurement information to the public so that citizens can use the information to hold their government accountable.
CIPA Activities• Formation of citizen performance teams in each pilot city• Selection of service area(s)• Solicitation of citizen input about selected service area(s)• Development of citizen-based performance measures• Integration of performance measures into budgeting• Data collection and establishment of activity-based management• Performance reporting using citizen-initiated performance
measures• Regularization of citizen performance teams and CIPA in the budget
process• Expansion of CIPA to other service areas• Performance benchmarking based on citizen-initiated performance
measures• Project Evaluation
How it Works
• Citizens identify the programs to be measured,• Citizens state the purpose and desired outcomes
of the programs,• Citizens select the measures or indicators of the
programs,• Citizens set standards for performance and
outcomes,• Citizens monitor and report results and program
accomplishments.
First-Year Lessons • The first year of the CIPA project confirmed the
significance of citizen involvement in performance measurement. The project team has found that although citizens do not negate the usefulness of traditional performance measures (e.g., cost efficiency, program outcome, and impact measures), they almost always suggest the need to measure the quality of customer service, including the professionalism of public employees. This element is often ignored by municipal performance measurement systems, with the exception of police departments.
Group Work
• As a government employee, what do the citizens expect from you?