By Bob O'Neill, ICMA-CM

It is timely and appropriate for the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) to focus this issue of PM magazine on performance management. The roots of performance management are solidly established in the profession and in ICMA’s history. »

The organization’s approach has evolved and advanced with emerging trends in local government and management. Most recently, technological advances have ushered in an era of big data, transparency, and visual analytics.

While the environment and techniques of performance management have changed a great deal over time, these principles have changed very little:

• Efficiency and effectiveness are the foundations of sound management, sustainability, and civic health.
• Ensuring that local government services are efficient and effective, they must first be measured to establish a baseline.
• Performance management takes measurement to the next level, where the metrics are put to use by decisionmakers.
• Benchmarking and comparison with peer jurisdictions help communities establish and monitor performance targets, identify best practices, and share innovations.
• An ethical imperative to keep a community informed requires transparency—making performance information publicly available.

In ICMA’s history, performance management stands side by side with the Code of Ethics as a bedrock principle of the local government management profession. As Gerald Young writes in this issue, ICMA’s first inroads came in the 1930s and 1940s.

Since then, ICMA has demonstrated that performance metrics and management are fundamental to each “new” management trend that comes along: continuous improvement, Six Sigma, citizen participation, evidence-based management, data-driven decision making, performance budgeting, and big data, to name a few.

Performance management begins with measurement—the thoughtful development of metrics. What outcomes are we trying to achieve? What are we doing to achieve them? How can we measure our efforts? And how do we define “success”?

The prospect can be daunting, but the effort is worth it for jurisdictions of any size. And it’s possible to start small—with a few key measures such as financial data, crime incident reports, citizen satisfaction ratings—and build from there.

In his feature article, David Ammons explains how performance measurement lays the foundation for performance management, which involves much more than measuring inputs and outputs. We need to collect data that will demonstrate that what we do makes a difference—or that it doesn’t—so that we can make strategic decisions about what to continue, what to discontinue, and what new things to try in order to achieve positive outcomes.

Sharing and Comparing Data

The next level is benchmarking and comparison. Although there’s significant value in tracking performance from month to month or year to year in your own organization, the true power of performance management comes in sharing and comparing data with similar cities or counties.

Comparison can be another daunting prospect, but tremendous value lies in learning from the success of a similar jurisdiction—or discovering that you’ve developed successful practices that can help others do a better job.

To avoid the danger of ad hoc, apples-to-oranges comparisons, ICMA’s performance management and analytics initiatives have emphasized the need for precise definitions of metrics. And we are committed to maintaining a national comparative performance database so that participating jurisdictions can compare their results reliably with others that share geographic, demographic, or other characteristics.

Some regional comparative groups have sprung up as well. In this issue, Brent Stockwell and David Swindell describe the creation and evolution of a systematic approach by the Valley Benchmark Cities, a group of 11 Phoenix-area jurisdictions that seek to compare their performance and learn from each other.

Transparency Is Key

A final responsibility in the performance management cycle is accurate reporting. Performance information should be available to staff and employees, to elected officials, to the media, and to the public. Transparency builds trust.

And if some metrics don’t meet expectations, it’s far better for the local government to provide them along with a plan for improvement than to wait for unfavorable information to be discovered and reported by the local media or an inquiring resident.

Performance management is a lot of work, and staff may complain, particularly at a time of budgetary and staff reductions, until they come to see its value. Measurement and comparison present the risk of revealing shortcomings that managers would secretly prefer not to face.

Elected officials may show only periodic interest. And the public—when it shows an interest at all—may focus on the shortcomings and not the successes. So why is it important and worth the effort?

Performance management is sound management. It demonstrates a commitment to gathering data, learning from it, tapping the experience of others, and making changes that ensure the highest possible level of efficiency and effectiveness on behalf of the organization and the public. That’s the commitment we make together as members of the local government management profession.

This issue of PM recognizes 48 jurisdictions whose hard work has earned Certificates in Performance Management from the ICMA Center for Performance Analytics. Each of them has demonstrated a commitment to collecting, using, and sharing performance data.