Between 2001 and 2004 nine Iowa cities decided to experiment with this CIPA model (see Table 19.2 for a brief profile of these cities). After the initial orientation, the performance teams in each of these nine cities organized a series of meetings to understand the operation of city governments, select the service areas for the CIPA program, identify the critical elements of these services, and develop performance measures. Some cities also provided departmental tours to citizens to give them some hands-on experience about the operations of the selected services. During the discussion of perfor- mance measures, city staff assistance was often needed to provide technical
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Table 19.2 Profile of the Iowa Cities in the CIPA Experiment
City Name Brief Description of the City Sources of Citizen Performance Team Public Services Selected for CIPA Burlington Burlington has a population of about
27,000. It is an industrial town located in the eastern part of Iowa.
Citizen budget committee members, and open invitation to the public.
The police and fire departments
Carroll Carroll has a population of 10,106. It is an economic center of the rural areas in Central Iowa.
Open invitation to the public, and citizen representatives from different citizen committees.
The recreational center, snow removal, public works, water Clive Clive has a population of 12,855. It is
one of the booming suburbs in the Des Moines metropolitan area.
Citizen budget committee and other committee members.
Police, fire, and emergency medical services
Des Moines Des Moines is the state capital of Iowa and has a population of about 200,000.
Representatives from Des Moines Neighbors Association, and recruited members from neighborhood surveys and public announcement.
Neighborhood community develop- ment and nuisance control (which covers multiple departments, including police, public works, and community development)
Indianola Indianola has a population of 13,000.
It is one of the bedroom communities in the Des Moines metropolitan area
Open invitation to the public, members from various citizen committees, and members of
‘‘Friends of the Library.’’
Library and public works (street repairs and snow removal)
gPerformanceBudgetingandManagement
Johnston Johnston is one of the fastest growing suburbs in the Des Moines metro- politan area, with a population of about 10,000.
Open invitation to the public, and members from various citizen committees.
Street services and fire protection
Marion Marion is a suburb outside the metro- politan center in Cedar Rapids, with a population of 26,294.
Open invitation to the public, and members from various citizen committees.
Public works and solid waste management
Marshall- town
Marshalltown has a population of 26,009. It is one of the industrial towns in Iowa. In recent years, it has had an influx of Hispanic immigrants, who work primarily in manufacturing and meat processing industries.
Open invitation to the public, and members from various citizen committees.
Snow removal, street services, and public transit
Urbandale Urbandale has a population of 29,072.
It is also one of the booming suburbs in the Des Moines metropolitan area.
Open invitation to the public, and members from various citizen committees.
Almost all municipal services
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information, such as professional standards, state mandates, and the availability of existing data to measure some of the citizen-initiated perfor- mance measures.
Since the performance teams of the nine cities operated independently, they showed very diverse progress in implementing CIPA. In a few cities, the performance teams adapted to the process quickly and became very comfortable with the idea of performance measurement. Over a period of three years, these cities expanded the process to cover many of the essential municipal services, such as fire, police, road maintenance and construction, traffic control, snow removal, and garbage collection. In other cities, citizens demanded more detailed information and needed more time to go over each service. Also, some performance teams had more schedule conflicts than others and had to meet more sparingly. As a result, these cities could only cover a few services.
Regardless of the pace of progress, all performance teams had open and constructive discussion about city services. Most city staff were genuinely interested in how citizens perceived their work and what concerns they had. When comments and suggestions about specific services were made by citizens, departmental representatives usually responded by explaining some of the legal, fiscal, and managerial constraints they needed to face but would accept any innovative solutions suggested by citizens. Over time, citizens showed greater understanding of the complexities of city operations and respected city officials for what they were trying to accomplish. Some of the citizen participants who had been cynical about city bureaucracy in the beginning of the process even began to understand how much the city government could do and how citizens themselves might take greater responsibility for some of the community problems and concerns.
The performance measures recommended by CIPA were generally well received by departments. Most city officials tried to collect all the data based on these measures and report the results back to performance teams.
The data collection tasks were demanding but not overwhelming because many of the citizen-initiated measures were not significantly different from some of the existing measures collected by the departments or sug- gested by professional organizations, such as the ICMA and the Urban Institute (ICMA, 1979; Hatry, 1980). For example, in evaluating police services, many citizens agreed that crime rates are useful and important information. Also, they were interested in the response time in police, fire, and emergency medical services, as well as the response time for other departments to respond to citizens’ complaints or requests for services.
Many also asked for citizen satisfaction or user survey results to evaluate the effectiveness of programs.
A major contribution of CIPA to the practice of performance measure- ment is the ‘‘citizen perspective’’ on some of the professional measures
(Ho and Coates, 2004a). First, citizens were generally less interested in
‘‘input measures’’, such as the number of city staff employed and the amount of raw materials needed, and were more interested in outcomes, such as whether the job was done well and how satisfied users were with the quality of services. The only input measures that attracted the interest of many performance teams were the training and qualifications of emergency res- ponse officials, such as how many hours and what types of training police and fire officers received annually. These input measures were important to citizens because they were interested in the quality of the officers.
Knowing that these officers were well-trained gave citizens a better sense of security, even though solid training does not necessarily guarantee the actual outcomes of crime and fire protection.
The CIPA experience also showed that citizens want performance measures that they could relate to. In library, park, and recreation programs, for example, measuring the number of users and the extent of user satis- faction through surveys are the standard ways to measure the effectiveness of program delivery. In CIPA meetings, most citizens also accepted these measures as valid and useful, but they demanded that these measures should be broken down by age groups and gender, so that citizens and officials could use the measures to evaluate service effectiveness by user types.
Similarly, citizens wanted to ‘‘localize’’ performance measures so that the measures meant something to them. In police and emergency-medical services, for example, several performance teams recommended that the crime rates and response time measures should be sub-categorized by geographical divisions of a city. In many other services, the number of complaints, citizen service requests, and the efficiency measures of service delivery, should also be reported by geographical areas of a city so that citizens could see whether there was any concern of inequity in service delivery and whether a specific neighborhood had more serious problems that should be addressed.