More and more municipalities are researching and turning to shared services.  There are a number of benefits to shared services:

• Cost reductions
• Greater effectiveness
• More efficiencies
• Better service levels
• Improved quality of services and citizen satisfaction
• Better management or operating infrastructure
• Economies of scale

We want to know if you are considering shared services, or if you have already adopted shared services with one or more local governments.  The results will help us identify and share with you how prevalent shared service agreements are in local governments, the benefits your peers are seeing from shared services, the most common departments that participate in shared services and the challenges of shared services agreements.

Please take a few minutes to fill out our quick survey on shared services before Friday, April 19, 2013.  The survey should take only 3-5 minutes. We will publish the results of this survey on our website on Friday, May 10, 2013 or you can register for our webinar, The Current Stance...

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The post Revelstone Wants to Hear Your View on Shared Services! appeared first on Revelstone.

Companies like SeeClickFix and Public Stuff are most well-known as apps that allows citizens to report potholes.  It’s not just that potholes capture the imagination of citizens – it’s that citizens are largely unsatisfied with the streets, sidewalks and infrastructure of their towns and cities.

ETC Institute recently conducted a national survey on how satisfied citizens are with the services their towns and cities provide.  The survey shows many citizens are largely satisfied with how their municipalities are performing.  Here’s a quick look at the some of the findings:

• Citizens are least satisfied with public transportation (47%) and streets/sidewalks/infrastructure (48%)
• Citizens are most satisfied with trash/yard waste services (77%) and police/fire/EMS (80%)
• The majority of services received satisfaction rates between 50% – 75%
• Most services’ satisfaction ratings improved or remained the same from 2011 to 2012; the exception was parks and recreation, which went from 71% satisfaction to 69% satisfaction

The good news is that some of a municipality’s most...

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“For years, people at our council meetings have asked what our government does,” said Mayor Timothy P. Dougherty of Morristown, New Jersey. “We realized we needed to do a better job of showing what we are doing and to do that, we needed to establish goals, build metrics and measure our performance so we can communicate the results to our citizens.”

Morristown, New Jersey is working hard to transform its government into one that focuses on citizen services and sustainability. As Mayor Dougherty mentioned in his 2013 re-organization address, “The Morristown Office of Sustainability continues to champion ‘Morristown Performs’ – the Administration’s performance management initiative. It manages the relationship with our Dodge Foundation-funded consultants from FDU’s Institute for Sustainable Enterprise and the inter-departmental integration of data collection and new technologies to better measure, assess and improve government operations and budgeting.”

One of the goals of Morristown’s performance management initiative is to overcome the pervasive and negative sentiment of how local governments typically operate. The Mayor established goals and...

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What can happen if you bring municipalities, all with the common goal of wanting to manage better, together for a full day of learning and networking? The short answer…a lot. And a lot took place took place on the picturesque campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University just a few weeks ago during Revelstone’s Second Annual Customer Interaction Day.

For the second year in a row, municipalities who subscribe to Compass, Revelstone’s web-based performance analytics and benchmarking platform, gathered for a conference-style event of education, networking, best practices exchange and more. Filling the room were municipal managers and department heads eager to hear what others are doing with their performance initiatives and to discuss the challenges and successes that go along with it. Sessions ranged from the latest updates on Compass to open discussions and interactive workshops on implementing a performance management culture and creating a 2013 performance plan.

The event provided a forum for municipalities, several of...

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The success of performance management in big cities is well documented – the Boston About Results program, Charlotte’s Performance Management and Strategic Planning initiative and Baltimore’s use of CitiStat. But increasingly, smaller cities and towns want the same insightful information that bigger cities are gleaning from using a performance management system so they too can gauge how well they are delivering services to citizens.

Using Revelstone Compass, Oakland, New Jersey is an example of a small town that is embracing performance management to systematically gather and examine detailed department data such as:

• Police: Oakland can dive into when and where speeding tickets and citations are issued, correlate traffic enforcements hours with summonses issued and accident rates.
• Public Works: The borough can measure how quickly services are rendered and how much those specific services cost.
• Construction Code Permitting: Oakland can measure the percentage of inspections that are done on schedule, how much inspections cost and the average cost per permit.

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“To succeed in an era of scarcity, public agencies must do more than just measure their performance.  Success requires a focus on larger organizational goals that lead to questioning longstanding practices and structures,” writes Charles Chieppo in Governing.

Chieppo’s article, Giving Public Workers the Tools for Efficiency, provides an overview of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’ Peak Performance initiative, which is designed for each city agency to “understand who its customers are, how it delivers value to them, and most important, areas for potential improvement.”

This initiative is part of a nationwide trend: examining the state of services in order to find efficiencies.  The approach to this is different than in the past.  Identifying efficiencies is not about simply cutting services blindly—it’s about looking at real, empirical data to find ways to deliver higher value to citizens.

Denver, like many cities and towns, examined the data on its police department—a common starting place...

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When I hop in my car, I don’t give much thought to it.  I know with a lot of certainty that my car is equipped to take me where I want to go.  Now,  I imagine if my car was stripped of its dashboard, I would  quickly find myself  asking questions such as:  How fast am I driving?  Do I have enough gas?  Is the engine too hot?  And I would surely be lost without my trusted GPS.

Just for fun, imagine yourself driving to work with no dashboard.  You get in and quickly realize that you have no way of knowing if there is enough gas in the tank to get you there.  What options do you have?  You might start driving and hope you get there before running out of gas.  You could call the fleet department (aka your spouse) and ask when was last time he/she put gas in the car and how many miles the car...

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Thank you, Mayor Ed Koch.

He served three terms from 1978 to 1989.  I was fortunate early in my career to work on a seminal project, New York City’s Project Scorecard, that later became one component of the Mayor’s Management Report.  The work was developed as a system for rating the cleanliness of New York City’s streets and sidewalks by the Fund for the City of New York and was later adopted by the Mayor’s Office of Operations.

Our metrics were outcome-based and measured cleanliness, not the amount of curb miles swept (that’s an output measure).  With increased attention from the Koch administration, the efficient delivery of municipal services during one of the greatest periods of fiscal stress was addressed.  Project Scorecard was expanded in the 80’s to measure the services of the parks department, the division of school building maintenance, and the Midtown Enforcement Project.

Scorecard operationalized Koch’s iconic greeting within the halls of local government.  The...

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Shared services amongst and between municipalities is a growing trend with meaningful impact on citizens.  It all comes down to increasing the effectiveness and efficiencies in local governments.  As the government of New Jersey looks for ways to best rebuild the devastated parts of our state, it’s advocating a move to shared services.

The New Jersey Senate recently passed a bill on the issue.  Senate President Steve Sweeney commented, “The bottom line is that the taxpayers of this state need a break and shared services is one way to give it to them.”

There are pros and cons to the NJ bill, but the value of shared services is unquestionable.  Large cities can afford their own departments for every aspect of government services.  Smaller municipalities may not be able to afford everything.  And when that happens, the most common reaction is to cut services.  Whether it’s reducing the number of trash pickups per week, or reducing staffing at government...

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While Mythbusters found that Christmas tree lights do not cause house fires, the National Fire Protection Association can prove otherwise. The Association reports that U.S. fire departments responded to an annual average of 240 house fires started by Christmas trees between 2005 and 2009 alone. These fires resulted in:

• 13 deaths
• 27 injuries
• $16.7 million in property damage

Although Christmas tree fires are not a common occurrence, the numbers prove they still happen and preparing for these fires is something towns need to be doing every year.

To start, municipal officials can educate their citizens. Wishing your town a safe and happy holiday season is no longer enough. A simple fact sheet distributed to citizens and/or posted on your town website could be a great way to bring awareness to holiday season fires. For example, did you know that Christmas tree fires don’t just happen around December 25? Actually...

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