Tags: city services | performance measurement
Tags: city services | performance measurement
July 20, 2007
Tags: city services | performance measurement
Linking public spending with performance is essential to developing a results-oriented government – and, thus, an essential prerequisite is having a system to accurately assess how well a city provides services and manages its resources. Since 2000, Baltimore has embraced the results-oriented approach by radically transforming the way it runs its city government. Baltimore’s leaders are making decisions based on facts and operating with a level of transparency and accountability rarely seen in municipal government; and the rest of the nation is taking notice. Not only does Baltimore know how well services are being provided, it is able to improve results. As a result, the city has been lauded as forward-looking, innovative, and highly responsive to the needs of its citizens. How is Baltimore doing this? The answer is through a relatively simple operations management tool called CitiStat.
What is CitiStat?
CitiStat is a database system that allows municipalities to track and review every element of city government. CitiStat is based on the CompStat system pioneered by the New York City Police Department to reduce crime through better-managed personnel and resources. The goal of CitiStat is to use information technology to improve service delivery in every city department. The success of the CitiStat model of municipal management is built on four pillars:
More than just a management system, CitiStat is an accountability tool that ensures that failures in services delivery are acknowledged and amended in a timely fashion.
How does CitiStat work?
Every two weeks in Baltimore, the Mayor, the First Deputy Mayor, the Director of CitiStat, and key cabinet members meet with the department heads of all participating city agencies to review the most recent departmental data. Tables and graphs detailing the service data are projected on a large screen, and any trend or event that seems troublesome or praiseworthy is discussed. Department heads answer questions about why the data says what it says, and if there is a problem, what is being done to fix it. For instance, the Department of Public Health might need to explain a rise in the number of health code complaints at city restaurants, or the Department of Transportation might discuss the number of potholes filled or not filled. While CitiStat is a useful tool for tracking the state of the city, it is most valuable as a performance measurement tool. In CitiStat meetings, the Health Department is asked not only how many health violations there were but also how the Department responded.
How much does CitiStat cost?
Part of CitiStat's success is its inexpensive startup cost and exceptional return on investment. According to the Center for Urban and Regional Policy, the technology necessary to run CitiStat cost Baltimore $20,000 dollars in off-the-shelf software plus $285,000 for staffers and space for the first year of operation. The Kennedy School of Government notes that “The financial effectiveness of the program has been estimated as a total aggregate savings of $100,000,000 for its four years of existence.” Because city departments are held accountable for their performance on a bi-weekly basis, operations become more streamlined and efficient and save the city money on unnecessary overtime and project costs.
For extra utility, Baltimore chose to establish a 311-call center. This system gives residents a single number to call to request a service, and it tracks that request until it is resolved. In Baltimore, the centralized call center costs around $4 million annually. Although not necessary to implement CitiStat, cities with a 311-call center are far better equipped to manage and monitor constituent service requests. The data derived from the 311 call logs and service request tracking are also reviewed at the bi-weekly meetings.
The effectiveness of CitiStat relies on a confluence of factors that sets it apart from existing performance management models: the frequency of performance reviews, thoroughness of the questioning process, and the use of objective real time data.
The CitiStat program was awarded the 2004 Innovations in American Government Award by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in part for its transformative ability to provide instant information about the city’s most pressing concerns and provide city officials with the opportunity to devise strategic solutions before problems escalate.
According to the Kennedy School, the specificity and rigorous nature of the questioning of city department leaders is what really makes CitiStat unique. In fact, it described the bi-weekly encounters as “nothing short of confrontational.” This process is not designed to assign blame but rather to hold departments accountable for their performance and to strive for an efficient and responsive delivery of essential city services.
Real-time data collection also makes CitiStat powerful. After the Scottish government commenced their pilot phase of the CitiStat model in 2006, they declared that “the enhanced data quality and analysis are key to the process and set it apart from other performance models. CitiStat provides a focus on actionable data, rather than available data.” As the Scots also discovered, using real-time data brings immediacy to performance management and provides quicker feedback on the effectiveness of city programs.
What kind of results has CitiStat produced in Baltimore?
Since Baltimore introduced CitiStat in 2000, city officials have been able to accurately target under-performing areas and propose strategies to amend them on a scale unparalleled in other major cities. This ground level understanding of the city’s departmental performance has allowed Baltimore to make great strides in many of the areas that its citizens care about, such as increasing recycling collection. Moreover, CitiStat allowed Baltimore to make decisions based on credible facts, rather than political ploys or pet projects of special interest groups. As the Center for Urban and Regional Policy stated, “CitiStat turned Baltimore from a spoils-based system of local government to a results-based system, moving Baltimore from patronage politics to performance politics.”
The scrutiny of departmental proceedings has resulted in significant savings due to reductions in worker absenteeism and overtime. Yet the benefits of CitiStat have proved not just to be financial: a 2004 Seattle Times article on CitiStat observed “…Performance is up. The backlog of cleanup projects is down. Ninety percent of potholes get fixed within 48 hours. The city has planted more trees. Drug-treatment services are up. Lead-paint poisoning — a chronic and tragic problem for children in a poor city with old housing — is being attacked with 478 court complaints filed, compared with just one case in the '90s. Citywide, employment is up 10,000. Violent crime is down 29 percent.”
Satisfaction surveys of residents and business owners attest to the improvements in service delivery. Neal Peirce of the Washington Post Writers Group notes, “CitiStat’s computerized system doesn’t know if a neighborhood is black or white, rich or poor, democrat or republican.” What’s more, by publishing CitiStat statistics on the city’s website, Baltimore’s city officials made the facts behind their decision-making an easily accessible part of the public record.
Have other cities begun to implement CitiStat?
The striking improvements made in the governance of Baltimore since the start of CitiStat have not gone unnoticed. Government officials from such cities as Boston, Edmonton, Chicago, Austin, Tokyo, Belfast, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Detroit have visited the CitiStat offices in Baltimore on fact-finding missions to observe first hand how the system works. In all, more than 50 North American cities – including Philadelphia -- have sent delegates to Baltimore to learn from the CitiStat model of operations management.
What conditions need to exist for a city to implement CitiStat?
CitiStat is adaptable and potentially useful to most urban cities. All that is necessary is simple computer technology, a staff of three to four, and minimal startup funds. The most important factor is the will and commitment of senior level leadership to the process.
Could CitiStat work in Philadelphia?
A city government that has been criticized for its corruption and inefficient delivery of essential services, Philadelphia appears to be a ripe environment in which CitiStat techniques could create positive change. The new administration taking office in 2008 could implement it to benchmark its achievements. Testimonials from other cities indicate that implementing CitiStat would be relatively easy; especially as the Philadelphia police department is already employing the CompStat system on which CitiStat is based. And, the commitment to outcomes-based governing and fact-based decision-making already exists in Philadelphia, as city officials have prepared quarterly manager reports – complete with performance data — for more than a decade. All of the tools necessary to implement CitiStat in Philadelphia appear to be in place, and doing so could usher in an era of efficient, outcome-driven government and increased transparency and accountability.
So while the performance results and financial savings that CitiStat has delivered to Baltimore are noteworthy, it is the philosophical change in approach that focuses on accountability and transparency that truly makes CitiStat remarkable. CitiStat is important because as Mayor (now Governor) O’Malley himself said in an address to students at the Kennedy School of Government, “It has allowed Baltimore to replace a culture of delay and avoidance with a culture of accountability and results.”
Resources:
The Center for Urban and Regional Policy
The Kennedy School of Government
The Scottish Executive Neal Peirce, A more Efficient Approach to Governing our Cities, The Seattle Times, Editorials & Opinions, January 19th 2004.
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