Municipal Benchmarks: Assessing Local Performance and Establishing Community Standards.

• Author: Leithe, Joni L.

Reviewed by Joni L. Leithe, assistant director, Research Center, GFOA.

Measuring performance, or benchmarking, in government has garnered much interest in recent times. Performance data, like any other data, are most meaningful when they can be compared - to last year's performance, a goal, standard, or the performance of other organizations. For officials who would like to benchmark their government's performance to external norms and standards, but who lack the resources to do it, I believe this book will soon prove itself as a valuable resource, both for the large amount of actual performance data included and for the quality of analysis of the indicators themselves.

The book provides many tables of benchmarks - compiled from professional associations and reported by a variety of governments. Most of the 100-plus municipalities cited in this book were selected from among a list of recent recipients of GFOA's Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. The benchmarks listed are actual performance data or frequently used performance standards - not just descriptions of the measures themselves; i.e., not just "average response times to public safety emergencies," but the actual response times reported by several jurisdictions. Included are primarily effectiveness and efficiency measures; standards for processes and levels of input have been included where available and appropriate to the function in question.

The benchmarks cover 22 functions or services that are commonly provided by municipalities, such as animal control, courts, emergency medical and fire services, finance and budgeting, library, parks and recreation, police, public transit, public utilities, solid waste collection, and traffic control.

While the book focuses on municipalities, other types of government providing any of these functions can benefit from specific chapters. The first two chapters introduce the subject of performance measurement and benchmarking. They briefly review the material usually covered in guides to performance measurement, such as: types of measures, sources of data, criteria for good measures, current use of performance measurement nation-wide, and tips for implementing performance measurement systems.

These 22 chapters present an array of benchmark examples. Research was conducted to determine what national norms or standards of professional bodies existed, and what measures local governments were actually reporting. The tables of benchmarks are...