Étienne Charbonneau

Performance Measures and Parental Satisfaction With New York City Schools

The public administration literature has consistently questioned the validity of satisfaction surveys as a measure of government performance, particularly in comparison with more objective official measures. The authors examine this objective-subjective debate using unique data from a large survey distributed to nearly 1 million parents of children in the New York City public schools along with officially reported measures of school performance for about 900 schools. Their results suggest that the official measures of school performance are significant and important predictors of aggregate parental satisfaction, even after controlling for school and student characteristics. They conclude that public school parents form their satisfaction judgment in ways that correspond fairly closely with officially measured school performance. The results can also be interpreted as suggesting that the official performance measures reflect, at least in part, aspects of public schooling that matter to parents.

Benchmarks and Citizen Judgments of Local Government Performance: Findings from a survey experiment

Government agencies can provide various benchmarks when reporting their performance to citizens, but not much is known about how citizens understand and respond to benchmarking information. Thus, this study aims to test what performance benchmarks appear most salient and persuasive to citizens. We conducted an online survey experiment in which n = 595 respondents were randomized to different benchmarking information concerning fourth-grade reading proficiency of an elementary school. Our findings suggest that better school performance relative to the overall state average influenced respondents’ ratings more than did performance relative to last year or similar schools. Improvement over last year, moreover, appears to be the least influential benchmark. The implication is that citizens find broad, comparative benchmarks to be the most persuasive and view reflexive benchmarks as less impressive, although confirmation of this conclusion is needed because of limitations in the design of the experiment.

Blame Avoidance in Public Reporting

Public managers operate in an environment characterized by a negativity bias fostering blame avoidance. In public reporting, blame avoidance can take the shape of omission, discretion, and arguments for limiting blame. Unique data on reporting from Quebecs Municipal Management Indicators regime are used to study the occurrence of a reporting strategy of blame avoidance whereby public managers provide justifications with their indicators so as to report their performance in a favorable light. The study tests two hypotheses that the use of justifications in reporting is more frequent with lower-performing public agencies. Municipalities with lower performance (internally benchmarked) tend to provide stakeholders with justifications in their reporting on indicators significantly more often than do other municipalities. Blame avoidance behaviors on the part of public managers are witnessed even in a regime with few incentives, no consequences linked to performance, and limited transparency to citizens.

Mapping the Terrain of Public Service Quality Improvement: Twenty-Five Years of Trends and Practices in the United States

The quality movement in the United States has been characterized as an impetus for organizational effectiveness and responsiveness since the late 1970s. ‘Quality’ can be a subjective term as each organization has its own definition and boundaries. Three emphases are evident in the field of quality improvement: quality circles, total quality management, and citizen satisfaction. Practices of quality improvement in the public sector have been driven by demands from citizens for more effective services, outcomes that require the implementation of suitable quality models and standards. Points for practitioners This article presents major intellectual trends in the practice of service quality improvement. Practitioners will be able to comprehend the most fundamental concepts of ‘what is public service quality improvement’. Practitioners will also obtain useful insights into defining quality criteria and assessing organizational improvement models based on substantive principles of quality management for promoting organizational effectiveness and responsiveness.

Beyond the Usual Suspects: An Analysis of the Performance Measurement Literature on Social Equity Indicators in Policing

This article provides an analysis of the empirical and theoretical research on performance measurement in the field of policing. The primary purpose is to ascertain the degree to which measures of social equity are relied on as performance indicators. The literature tells us that social equity indicators do exist, but they remain marginal. Rather, performance measures for effectiveness are largely prominent, whereas efficiency indicators occupy a less influential place. Relying heavily on effectiveness as well as efficiency indicators at the expense of social equity has serious repercussions, particularly in policing. Suggestions for future research are offered that stress the importance of the need for a balanced mix of performance indicators that includes social equity.

A comparative study of municipal performance measurement systems in Ontario and Quebec, Canada

This paper is an analysis of the municipal performance measurement systems in Ontario and Quebec affecting about 2/3 of all Canadian citizens. The article describes these two systems; how the systems came to be, their goals, types of indicators, accountability and reporting requirements, data analysis, and requirements for performance reporting. After a discussion of the broad literature related to municipal performance measurement both globally and in Canada, the two cases are described in terms of political background, system components, measurement requirements, and reporting requirements. Analysis of these systems then follows comparing the two systems which are similar but unique in significant ways. This analysis has implications for these provinces as well as other jurisdictions with, or considering, mandated municipal performance systems.

The Self-Reported Use of Social Equity Indicators in Urban Police Departments in the United States and Canada

This exploratory study examines the extent to which police departments across the United States and Canada report that they have factored social equity into their performance measurement programs. The results of a survey administered to 148 randomly selected police departments and a content analysis of their public documents provide a preliminary look at the degree to which social equity is reported to be an indicator of performance. Also examined are the potential factors that lead police departments to adopt social equity indicators.

Performance improvement, culture, and regimes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to better understand the performance improvement outcomes that result from the interaction of a performance regime and its context over more than a decade. Design/methodology/approach – A series of partial free disposable hull analyses are performed to graph variations in performance for 13 services in 444 municipalities in one province for over a decade. Findings – There are few examples of mass service improvements over time. This holds even for relative bottom performers, as they do not catch up to average municipalities over time. However, there is also little proof of service deterioration during the same period. Research limitations/implications – A limitation results from the high churning rate of the indicators. The relevance of refining indicators based on feedback from practitioners should not be dismissed, even if it makes the task of proving performance improvement more difficult. It is possible that the overall quality of services on the ground improved,...

Talking Like a Tax Collector or a Social Guardian? The Use of Administrative Discourse by U.S. State Lottery Agencies

Aside from higher education, lotteries are probably the most important state product provided directly to the public. In the United States, revenues from lotteries finance directly one or a few socially desirable causes. Lotteries are depicted as a well-focused quest for increased revenues that also takes into account a liberal respect for consumer sovereignty. State lottery agencies have two goals: a main taxing goal and secondary societal welfare goals such as protecting compulsive gamblers and funding charitable or welfare programs. As such, lotteries are often advertised as a way to earn proceeds for some social cause (often Education). Analyzing the administrative discourse provides a window inside the balancing act of the two missions. The tax-collector/social guardian positions taken by the different U.S. state lottery agencies will be scrutinized. Efforts to understand the determinants of the ideological positions revealed by administrative discourse will be presented. In this chapter, administrative discourse will be used to estimate how state lottery agencies balance their dual missions. The results will shed light on the nature of state government and its bureaucratic apparatus.

How Citizens Respond to Outputs, Outcomes, and Costs: A Survey Experiment About an HIV/AIDS Program

ABSTRACT Government performance measurement is often faulted for focusing on outputs, while citizens are said to demand more information on outcomes to hold government accountable. To compare the influence of these measures, we randomized 774 participants to receive outcome or output information about a real HIV prevention program, with or without cost information, in a survey experiment. Citizens expressed less support for spending on the program when shown outcomes (infections prevented), rather than outputs (people served). Showing participants the high cost of treating HIV/AIDS boosted support for program spending, but did not make outcome information more persuasive. We interpret these results as partly a reaction to the high per-unit cost of an outcome in an HIV prevention program. But it may reflect a tendency of citizens simply to misinterpret less costly outputs, including serving more people, as if these were outcomes. This bias has implications for performance reporting and accountability.