National Civic Review articles from March 2008

National Civic Review archives from March 2008

Note from the editor.(Editorial)
March 22, 2008... During the past two decades, local government has started to undergo a dramatic change in its relationship to the public. Many city officials, both elected and appointed, have moved away from the old model of government by expert and mandate to...

Involving the public in measuring and reporting local government performance.
March 22, 2008... Local governments supply basic services to the public that enable us to plan and conduct our daily lives. Although responsibilities vary from place to place, these services usually include police and fire protection, roadway and other...

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program to make municipal governments more responsive to their citizens.
March 22, 2008... At the Sloan Foundation, we think of government performance measurement and reporting as a pyramid. At the base is a government measuring its own performance, using whatever measures its managers think are proper, and reporting the results only...

The Des Moines experience with citizen-informed performance measurement and reporting.
March 22, 2008... The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Lauren Palmer, now the assistant city manager of Manhattan, Kansas, in the preparation of this article. A Brief History (or, Eating Celery) The City of Des Moines has been measuring...

Educating public officials and managers: a university experience.
March 22, 2008... As issues of government performance measurement receive more attention, the meaningful practice of performance measurement emphasizes active citizen participation in order to build accountable, responsive government. For the last decade, many...

Public employees as partners in performance: lessons from the field.
March 22, 2008... How do you get from "Let's not try to fix what ain't broke" to "My job is to maintain a park that I'd want to bring my own family to"? Both quotes are from employees participating in implementation of a performance measurement system in San...

Tips from a market researcher.
March 22, 2008... Guest editor's note: Madelyn Hochstein has been involved with the work of the Center on Municipal Government Performance at the Fund for the City of New York and its affiliated national organization, the National Center for Civic Innovation,...

It's a major trend in America: people want more control.
March 22, 2008... Since 1987, we at DYG have been studying demographic, economic, and social-cultural trends through our program called DYG SCAN. We conduct an annual survey among a nationally representative sample of four thousand Americans, ages eighteen and...

Starting performance measurement from outside government in Worcester.
March 22, 2008... For more than a century, local government in the United States has tried, among other things, to become more businesslike in its operations (as exemplified by the movement to appoint professional city managers) and to encourage greater citizen...

Current approaches to citizen involvement in performance measurement and questions they raise.
March 22, 2008... Public managers have considerable discretion on whether and to what extent to involve citizens in governmental performance measurement and management processes. Local government managers have used that discretion to devise numerous mechanisms...

Bridging the divide between community indicators and government performance measurement.
March 22, 2008... Anyone familiar with both community indicators projects around the country and the growing movement to encourage governments to engage in performance measurement and reporting will recognize that these two activities have much in common but are...