Analytics in public sector decision making.

• Author: Williams, W. Anderson
• Position: The Bookshelf

Tools for Decision Making: A Practical Guide for Local Government

Published by Congressional Quarterly Press

(866) 427-7737

www.cqpressbookstore.com

2002; 252 pages, $29.95

Public managers and finance professionals are often pressed for time and resources. As a consequence, they often make decisions based on their own intuition, the availability of information, and political palatability. While this rather haphazard approach to decision making may have been considered adequate in the past, the complexity of government operations and mandates for increased accountability to stakeholders now demands otherwise. Today's climate necessitates the use of analytic techniques to make informed decisions about a host of challenges facing public managers.

Tools for Decision Making: A Practical Guide for Local Government describes a number of analytic techniques for tackling common public sector issues. Techniques of particular interest to finance professionals include using performance standards, making investment calculations, identifying full program costs and go-away costs for privatization decisions, and life-cycle costing, among others. Unlike other publications that address this topic, Ammon's book intentionally leaves out abstract, impractical, or mathematically complicated equations.

The author uses creative and practical case studies to illustrate each technique. These are local government predicaments that public managers are called upon to resolve on a regular basis. For instance, Ammons thoroughly explains the process for implementing fleet maintenance standards in the fictitious City of Armadillo, Texas, employing actual work standards for automotive repair as found in work standards manuals. Other illustrations incorporate attention-grabbing dialogue between characters wrestling with productivity issues: "This is crazy! Do you realize what we're doing? Each year we make our equipment replacement decisions mostly on the basis of how tight the budget is. The age and condition of our vehicles and other equipment is a relatively minor consideration. If we are short of cash, we expect our mechanics to perform miracles." Ammons infuses life into topics that many would consider to be dry and overly technical.

Particularly helpful for the busy finance professional is the summary chart of analytic techniques at the front of the book and...