THE PLAN
A Brief Look Back
Municipal Service Performance Statistics
Municipal Performance Measures began to take shape in the late 1980's as municipalities began to work with indicators that describe service value. Many municipalities identified the need within their own organizations to cost and track over time the efficiency, effectiveness and community impact of a particular service or program. In this way, the municipality could gauge the impact of an increase in effectiveness on the unit cost of a particular service, and/or the actual community impact of the service.
The early success of corporate performance measures increased accountability. The statistics on services gave staff a service planning and management tool to make improvements and celebrate incremental successes. It gave politicians the basis for a 'contract' with their constituencies showing value for the tax dollar that had previously not been as clear.
Activity Based Costing (ABC) is a tool to use performance measures. For every service, there is a definable set of activities that can be mapped and costed. For every support service, there is also an activity map and cost for a unit of service. When these are combined, municipalities have the full cost of a service to the public.
The cost to repair a watermain break would include the portion of payroll, human resources, facilities, technology and other indirect costs that it takes to support that service. If this is clear, then municipalities have a costing methodology that enables them to develop efficiencies within their organization. We can also match outputs against other municipalities and the private sector equivalents on a level playing field.
The success of this effort has been hampered somewhat by a lack of consistency between municipalities for operating and financial practices reporting, but it has and continues to yield benefits that include heightened accountability, new efficiencies and innovations and better resource planning. In short, municipal government is getting better and the possibilities for new gains through analytical and competitive processes are on the horizon.
The CAO Benchmarking Project began in the late 1990's as an extension of this work. In partnership with the Province, the Chief Administrative Officers of the Regions and the Cities of Toronto, London and Thunder Bay worked on a number of pilots in an early phase, and then regrouped to focus in Phase II on four different municipal services: water, waste water, solid waste management and land ambulance. Participants also examined indirect or support services.
Participants agree that the process has been a valuable networking opportunity where ideas and information have been shared. We have laid important groundwork for a next phase that will focus in on some of the challenges identified over the last several months in creating credible data comparisons for services. We have also created a stronger project management framework to accommodate the complexity of this endeavour.
The work continues to be iterative and we are learning and adjusting as we go. Service benchmarks are about best practices learning, and are not by themselves an indication of the need for change in an individual municipality. They mark the beginning of a dialogue among colleagues who believe government must continuously seek to enhance accountability and performance.
|
