Past studies of federal, state, and local governments have found that performance measurement can help enhance the communication among departments and between the budget office and other departments. It also provides useful information to the budgetary discussion between the exe- cutive and legislative branches, even though performance results cannot be linked linearly and significantly with appropriation outcomes (Broom and McGuire, 1995; Lee, 1997; Willoughby and Melkers, 2000; Willoughby and Melkers, 2001; Willoughby, 2002). Furthermore, performance measurement
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can contribute to the practice of strategic planning and the culture of public accountability (U.S. GAO, 2000; GASB, 2001).
Since it may take years to change organizational culture and practices to integrate performance measurement into the decision-making process of government, it may be premature to make any conclusive statement about the impact of CIPA. However, we expect that CIPA should have an effect similar to what previous studies of performance measurement have shown. Through field observations, interviews with citizens and city officials, and survey studies, we have found that CIPA helps strengthen the customer-orientation of many city officials and challenges them to re-think the operations and delivery mechanisms of city governments.1 In the daily operations of many departments, many city managers tend to focus only on the technical details of getting the job done. They are also concerned about the bottom line — how much a task costs and how many people they need to finish it. Citizens, on the other hand, are more concerned about the ultimate results and their relationship and interaction with city officials in service delivery. The ‘‘performance’’ of government is often not determined by objective measures of cost-effectiveness, but by personal experiences and perceptions of the city government. For example, in the discussion of police, fire, and emergency medical services, many citizens wanted the city governments to measure not only the response time and successes of these services in resolving cases, but also the officers’
professional outlook and their manner in interacting with citizens. External appearance and the ‘‘perception’’ of professionalism in citizen-official inter- actions were important aspects of ‘‘performance’’ to citizens, especially those in cities with volunteer officers, even though these factors might not contribute directly to the efficiency and outcomes of these services.
Similarly, in the areas of planning and zoning, neighborhood development, and public works, several performance teams wanted to measure the performance of departments in communication with citizens. These citizens expected public officials not only to work on a case request diligently and cost-effectively, but also to communicate what actions had been taken or would be taken within a specific time frame after a request had been made.
In the course of the discussion, citizens explained that they could under- stand why a request might need a lot of time to be resolved because of legal constraints and other technical difficulties. However, they had the greatest frustration with city governments when city officials did not explain what was going on after a request was made and left citizens in the dark about the status of a request after weeks or months.
Discussion like this in the CIPA project helped many city officials realize the differences between the citizen’s perspective and the internal, manage- rial perspective on ‘‘performance’’. Many officials realized that they often focused only on the technical details of performance measurement and
overlooked the importance of customer relationships and public commu- nication. In response to this problem, several cities in the CIPA project began to introduce innovative reforms. For example, one city decided to give notification cards to citizens after a public work request is finished and to survey them about their satisfaction with the quality of work. Another city decided to track all citizen requests and complaints in their computer system and allow citizens to browse case status online.
Besides strengthening the customer orientation of government, CIPA also reinforces the culture of performance measurement, contributes to the practice of strategic planning, and enhances communication between elected officials and departmental staff. Based on the results of CIPA, several cities held special work sessions between the city council members and the CIPA performance teams to discuss the performance data and the implications for service delivery and departmental management. City council members and departmental staff in these cities also held separate meetings to discuss how they could use the information to establish strategic goals, budget and personnel policies, and changes in program management.
A survey distributed to Iowa elected officials in city governments with populations above 10,000 toward the end of the CIPA project in 2004 shows that officials in CIPA cities were more likely to discuss performance results in meetings than officials not in the CIPA program (see Table 19.3).2 In addition, departments in CIPA cities were more likely to present performance targets to the city council annually or biennially than depart- ments not in the program (see Table 19.4). Hence, CIPA has also shown some preliminary positive effects on internal management and has reinforced the results orientation of city governments.
At the time of this writing, it is not yet clear how CIPA might impact the budgetary decision-making of the participating cities because most of the cities have just begun to integrate the performance measurement results into their strategic planning and council decision-making mechanisms.
Table 19.3 Frequency of Discussion about Performance Measurement Results
Number of respondents
No performance measures collected
Once a year
Occasionally during a year
Frequently during a year CIPA cities 24 3 (12.5%) 8 (33.3%) 6. (25.0%) 7 (29.2%) Non-CIPA
cities
78 23 (29.5%) 16 (20.5%) 24 (30.8%) 15 (19.2%)
Note: Six officials did not respond to this question.
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Based on field observations and interviews with officials, we expect that the results of citizen-initiated performance measures will be used and discussed in budgetary decision-making. Several budget officials and city council members have expressed strong commitment in using the information in the budgetary process, and several city managers have also expressed interest in reporting the results in their budget and policy documents to communicate more effectively with the public about what the government has accomplished with taxpayers’ money. However, it is already apparent that CIPA information is only part of the input in the budgetary process.
Other factors, such as the pressure to stimulate economic development, the political influence of constituency groups, federal and state mandates, and rising health care and pension costs, will continue to dominate the agenda of local budget discussions and influence how tax money is used. Hence, how much influence CIPA may have on local budgeting is likely to vary significantly, depending on the dynamics of these political, economic, and organizational factors.