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Grading the Cities introduction THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT How the Grading Was Done
Like most teachers (and most students, for that matter), we dislike grades. The best methodology in the world for evaluating a city’s performance is bound to disappoint many of the people who live and work there. That’s not fun.
What’s more, we know in advance that much of the coverage devoted to this project will focus exclusively on the grades, not on the accompanying text. That will also disappoint local officials. And it will disappoint us.
Consider Columbus, Ohio’s grade in financial management. The city has triple-A bond ratings from both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service. That’s a very impressive sign that Columbus is running its finances effectively. If you were simply looking at the city’s bond ratings, it would get — well, a triple-A. On the other hand, managers there function under extremely stringent financial controls that curtail their ability to make intelligent decisions. Balance the criteria against each other, and you come out with B-. Will that satisfy every reader who knows the city? No. The important thing is to read the report. Will everyone do that? No. We realize that.
In that case, why grade at all? The answer to this one is simple. Absent some kind of clear-cut evaluation, short write-ups about municipal management would have little impact. And most of our sources would agree that the topics covered in this issue are of vital importance. So, on the theory that the perfect is the enemy of the good, we use grades, try to make them as fair as possible — and swallow the fact that they’re never going to be perfect indices.
The methodology is reasonably straightforward: We began, several years ago, developing a list of criteria upon which to base our conclusions. We chose to divide the world of municipal government into five essential enterprises: financial management, human resources management, information technology, capital management and managing for results. We continue to use expert input to massage the criteria and improve them, all the while trying to keep them sufficiently consistent so that year-to-year comparisons will be meaningful. Some cities may disagree with some of the choices, but the criteria themselves are no mystery. They are published here for anyone to examine.
Massive surveys were sent out to the nation’s 35 largest city governments (as measured by total revenue). It might have been easier to ask for simple multiple-choice answers, but when one is dealing, say, with strategic planning in New York, no short cluster of words comes remotely close to describing the process. So, we called upon the governments, in many instances, for rather lengthy responses. In addition, the cities sent in piles of supporting documents to illustrate their points.
Confronting this mass of data is a daunting task in itself. And here, our partners at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University are invaluable. Professors and graduate students pore over the surveys and supplements, explore additional materials and come to preliminary conclusions about management in each of the cities. In the area of information technology, B.J. Reed, chairman of public administration at the University of Nebraska, was brought in to help flesh out the team.
Finally, hundreds of in-person interviews were conducted by GOVERNING staff, not just with the people who completed the surveys but with many others in and out of state government. These interviews serve to clarify and update the survey information.
Our personal reporting gives us the chance to press the cities on inconsistencies in their responses, and gives the cities a chance to help us place troublesome areas in context. It also educates us about situations in which the cities are actively addressing a problem. And we give credit for such momentum. A city about to replace a 20-year-old human resources computer system is obviously much better off than one still proceeding happily on the basis of obsolete equipment.
The final grades are arrived at through a joint effort by the journalists at Governing and the academics at Maxwell. Wherever possible, we reach a consensus based on the two different types of research.
Might some of the grades be too high or too low? Of course. That’s inevitable. But one promise can be made: None was reached without a great deal of time, effort and consideration. Any city official who participated in the process can vouch for that.
In the end, though, the validity of the grades rests on the criteria used in the first place. For a full list of the major ones, please read on:
2. Mechanisms that preserve stability and fiscal health, including: a structural balance between ongoing revenues and expenditures; countercyclical or contingency planning devices; appropriate management of pension funds; appropriate use and management of debt, and sound investment and cash management practices.
3. Sufficient financial information available to policy makers, managers and citizens, including: accurate, reliable, thorough and timely financial reports; useful financial data for government managers; good communication of budgetary and financial data to citizens; timely budgets; and the capacity to gauge the cost of delivering programs or services.
4. Appropriate control over financial operations, including: control over expenditures; managerial flexibility; and effective management for procurement and contracts for delivery of goods and services.
2. Ability to obtain the needed employees, including: hiring in a timely manner; providing managers with appropriate discretion in the hiring process; conducting effective recruiting efforts.
3. Maintaining an appropriately skilled work force, including: appropriate training to develop and maintain employee skills; retention of skilled and experienced employees; effective discipline and termination policies.
4. A civil service structure that supports its ability to achieve its work force goals, including: a coherent and reasonably sized classification system; appropriate flexibility in the civil service and pay structure; communication of human resource goals and policies to employees.
2. A coherent architecture for information technology systems.
3. Meaningful, multi-year information technology planning, including centralized technology planning, appropriate input from managers into the process and the existence of formal government-wide and agency IT plans.
4. Information technology training adequate for end-users and information technology specialists.
5. Capacity to evaluate the extent to which benefits of an information technology system justify investment.
6. Procurement of needed information technology systems in a timely manner, both for commodity-type items and those that are more complex.
7. Information technology systems that support the government’s ability to communicate with and provide services to its citizens.
2. Monitoring and evaluation of projects throughout their implementation.
3. Appropriate maintenance of capital assets (notably streets and facilities), including the generation of sufficient data to plan maintenance adequately, and the appropriate funding of maintenance.
2. Indicators and evaluative data that can measure progress toward results and accomplishments, with a focus on the following elements of a measurement system: linkage to strategic planning; establishment of baseline data; use of outcome measures; target setting and monitoring; a push toward continuous improvement; benchmarking; and training and validation.
3. Use of results data by leaders and managers for policy making, management and evaluation of progress.
4. Clear communication of the results of these activities to stakeholders.
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