How Effective Are Your Community Services?

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

Accountability is core to high-performance government, efficient service delivery, and taxpayers' confidence in local government. In turn, performance measurement is key to accountability. Performance measurement is the subject of How Effective Are Your Community Services?

This book highlights the practical steps necessary to select measures of service quality and use them efficiently. It enables you to assess whether you're doing the right things and how well you're doing them. How Effective Are Your Community Services? features seven areas of local government:

• Solid waste services
• Crime control
• Fire protection
• Parks and recreations services
• Library services
• Transportation services
• Call management

In each of these areas, the authors provide very specific measures and detailed procedures for using the measures—so that you and your staff derive the most benefit out of performance measurement.

This newly revised edition builds on almost three decades of experience and process improvement. The authors combined input from managers in communities across the United States with expertise and examples from ICMA's Center for Performance Measurement (CPM) to produce the most comprehensive and practical guide to performance measurement available for local governments.

How Effective Are Your Community Services? is the result of ongoing collaboration between ICMA and The Urban Institute. The Urban Institute has long experience in developing and fine-tuning outcome measures, and ICMA, through its CPM, has built a community of local governments that are learning how to use performance measurement routinely, year in and year out. They are demonstrating that comparative performance measurement is one of the best ways to help staff and employees reach higher standards of service and make the most of scarce resources. ICMA's CPM is working with cities and counties of all sizes to make comparative performance measurement integral to professional management. This book builds on CPM's work.

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Disclaimer: The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Copyright of the written materials contained within the Urban Institute website is owned or controlled by the Urban Institute.