Janet M. Kelly

A multiple-indicator approach to municipal service evaluation: Correlating performance measurement and citizen satisfaction across jurisdictions

Early work on municipal service–quality assessment recommended multiple measures of performance from both providers and users. Citizen satisfaction surveys have rivaled their more quantitative counterpart, administrative performance measures, in adoption, but the implication of survey results for action is not well understood by managers or scholars. To achieve meaningfully integrated multiple measures of service quality, we need to explore the dimensions of citizen satisfaction and review patterns of satisfaction across localities. We also need to understand the relationship between administrative performance measures and citizen perceptions. This cross–sectional analysis of municipal citizen satisfaction and performance benchmark data suggests that citizen satisfaction survey results are useful to managers in conjunction with performance–measurement programs as part of a multiple–indicator approach to evaluating municipal service quality. However, understanding citizen perceptions requires a different perspective than that applied to administrative service performance measurement.

Citizen Satisfaction and Administrative Performance Measures Is there Really a Link

The most recent reform in public service delivery is predicated on an assumption that the kinds of activities that managers can measure are the dimensions of service that citizens value. The link between administrative performance measures and citizen satisfaction with services has been tested within cities but not among cities, owing to data comparability difficulties. This test for a relationship between police and fire service performance and citizen satisfaction with police and fire services across 50 localities does not reveal the result predicted in the public management literature. Some implications and recommendations for future specifications of the relationship are offered in conclusion.

Service quality variation across urban space: First steps toward a model of citizen satisfaction

There is currently a strong focus on alternative service delivery models and improved government service in the urban and public administration fields. A key aspect of this has been the institutionalization of performance measurement and benchmarking as core tools necessary to reinvent government and make agencies run like businesses. However, the focus on performance measurement has been limited to evaluations of inputs and outputs. Advocates have not successfully tackled the more difficult challenge of integrating good internal measures with service outcomes, which can best be measured by soliciting feedback from the customer through citizen surveys. In this article, we examine 96 neighborhoods across 12 cities and counties and find significant variation in the distribution of service satisfaction outcomes. We argue that such neighborhood– level feedback is useful and illustrates the importance to administrators of disaggregating traditional performance measures to the same neighborhood level to target scare resources more effectively where needed.

Why We Should take Performance Measurement on Faith (Facts Being Hard to Come by and Not Terribly Important)

Like most social scientists, we public administrators understand our theory more than practice. I think that perfonnance measurement, as a tool of accountability for outcomes, is the rare situation where we understand the practice more than the theory. We know a lot about how to construct and report perfonnance measures, but we cannot say specifically why we go to all the trouble. According to our best evidence, nothing much changes as a result of adopting perfonnance measurement systems. Why, then, do we have such a high level of commitment to perfonnance measurement in the absence of empirical evidence of its success? I believe it is because accountability for outcomes is such powerful rhetoric for this time in our administrative history that we are squeamish to subject the practice of perfonnance measurement to the same harsh scrutiny we level at other administrative theories. In these next few paragraphs I will suggest that our devotion to perfonnance measurement is really a devotion to the ideal of administrative refonn, and that performance measurement happens to be how administrative refonn is currently packaged. The idea of holding government accountable for perfonnance is so intuitively appealing that it has been a part of the American administrative refonn lexicon for a hundred years. What changes is how perfonnance is defined by the refonn, which can be explained by public opinion toward government at the time of the defining. We do not demand empirical evidence that perfonnance measurement is actually working to affect administrative change that enhances accountability before we commit to a costly and time-consuming process to implement it because we realize that it is more important to look refonned than to be refonned. This position is neither cynical nor disingenuous. It is perfectly congruent with the American refonn culture that constantly reshapes public institutions to reflect public opinion about government and the proper scope of government in society. It is the characteristic of a responsive bureaucracy, one that reflects the values of the people it

Performance Budgeting in Municipal Government

Greater details about how municipalities use performance measures during budget preparation and adoption emerge when performance budgeting is defined as a process rather than a management tool for outcome. Such a definition is justified by the multiple accountabilities associated with public budgeting, including political, financial, and performance accountability. A survey of municipalities with populations of 2,500 and above was conducted in the fall of 2002 to determine the prevalence of performance budgeting in municipal government. This research finds that municipalities of all sizes are building capacity for performance budgeting by adopting performance measurement systems and by augmenting their budget processes with performance results. We also find that performance measures are used to inform budget decisions—especially when the budget request is new or significantly expanded.

Management Innovation in Smaller Municipal Government

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION has monitored a quarter-century of evolution in innovative management practices in mu nicipal government. Based on the sample of municipalities from which management surveys were drawn, zero-based budgeting and management-by-objectives gave way to performance measurement and benchmarking during this period. With rare exception, the management innovation studies sponsored by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) have been limited to municipalities with populations of 25,000 and above. Although the survey response rate tends to be higher and innovative management practices more common in larger municipalities (Coplin, Merget, and Bourdeaux 2002), limiting the study of management innovation to the 1,395 municipalities with populations of 25,000 and above is problematic. There are 5,586 municipalities in the population range of 2,500 to 24,999 in the United States, constituting 80 percent of the 6,981 municipalities in the nation with populations of 2,500 and above (ICMA 2002). This article explores management innovation in the 80 percent of municipalities that we know little about, building on the extensive literature established from the 20 percent of mu nicipalities, which have populations of 25,000 and above. Based on a national survey of smaller municipalities, we present the adoption rates of certain management tools and compare them with the rates of larger municipalities obtained from previously published survey results. We then distinguish between adoption and implementation of innovation (see de Lancer Julnes and Holzer 2001) to determine whether the tools that establish the framework of performance management have actually been used to enhance decision-making processes in the core functions of management. Finally, we present the implications of this research and previous studies on management innovation in local government.

Performance measurement: a local government response

Previous research has indicated that municipalities regularly collect performance data. A survey of medium-to-large southeastern cities supports that conclusion, but cautions that limited emphasis is placed on performance during budget construction. Prior-year expenditures drive the budget at the preparation phase. Performance information is added at the presentation phase for explication and to conform norms promulgated by professional budgeting organizations.

A Century of Public Budgeting Reform The “Key” Question

A century of budget reform reflects a century of changing public support for the role of government in American society. When Americans trusted the private sector more than the public sector, budget reform was centered on cost control and improved efficiency. When Americans turned to government to solve problems the private sector could not, budget reform was centered on programmatic effectiveness. We have an answer to V. O. Key’s question about a theory of budgeting. History provides it. A theory of budgeting is a theory of political cycles driven by changing public opinion about the proper role of government. There are two enduring features of budgeting practice that emerged in the past century. Incremental budgeting reflects Americans’ preference for incremental policy change. The traditional or line-item format promotes financial accountability.

Mandate Reimbursement Measures in the States

Local-government associations often advocate constitutional or statutory reimbursement requirements as a solution for unfunded state mandates, predicating advocacy on the assumption that such a requirement will be effective once in place. However, the experience of the states with mandate reimbursement requirements varies widely. Much of the variation can be attributed to legislative flexibility in implementation language and by technical exemptions courts offer. Rather than offering a solution for one of the more contentious issues in state-local relations, mandate reimbursement requirements can sometimes create a new set of problems.

Budget theory in local government: the process-outcome conundrum

Local government budget processes have changed substantially since the early 1990s, due in part to an expanded emphasis on performance accountability and the availability of information technology. We present evidence that local government budget outcomes also have changed over the same time period when disaggregated at the functional level. Though we do not assert a causal relationship between the two, our findings indicate that the normative-descriptive gap in budget theory described by Rubin (1990) deserves new scholarly attention. Our profession’s attraction to incrementalism may have blurred the success of budget reform in local government.