In a forthcoming book, I define performance management as a continuous and cyclical process of making data-informed decisions to improve organizational outcomes. These systems allow public managers to define the organization’s purpose, identify its priorities, set clear expectations, measure progress toward those expectations, and analyze the data from the measurement process to make data-informed decisions. Performance management systems help operationalize organizational strategic plans by tracking progress toward meeting expectations and making subsequent decisions to continuously improve performance. Over the last few decades, these systems have become ubiquitous in almost every aspect of local government management.
The adoption and implementation of performance management in community development, however, pose a unique challenge due to how these services are structured and organized. In North Carolina, community development is a municipal function for some local governments and a county function for others. The heads of these services sometimes report directly to the city/county managers, or they may function as a unit within other departments, ranging from code enforcement and public works to health and human services to economic development. Adding complexity to the matter, expectations from community development services are varied, ranging from providing affordable housing and managing nonprofit partnerships to code enforcement, homelessness support, workforce development, economic revitalization, and nutrition services.
Community development department functions thus contrast with several other public services such as police, public schools, and parks and recreation, which offer complex-yet-cogent services such as crime reduction, education, and recreation, respectively. A police department’s performance outcomes, for example, can be measured and compared across different jurisdictions by the number of crimes committed in a jurisdiction or the time it takes for officers to respond to calls. Similarly, the performance of K-12 public schools can be measured by student test scores and graduation rates, whereas parks and recreation performance outcomes can be measured by metrics such as the number of people visiting parks or participation rates in athletic programs.
Without greater standardization across community development departments, it will be difficult to measure and compare performance. The variety of tasks they perform in their respective jurisdictions makes it challenging to compare one community service department with another. A police department, on the other hand, can compare the crime rates in their community to those in another jurisdiction to see whether their numbers are unusually higher or lower than their peers, or whether other jurisdictions are experiencing similar trends. Similarly, a public school district or parks and recreation department can compare their test scores and park visitation numbers, respectively, with their peers to learn about system-wide challenges and potential solutions from other jurisdictions.
The complexity of measuring community development outcomes and the obstacles to easy comparisons with other jurisdictions underscore the importance of learning forums where community development professionals can meet their counterparts from other jurisdictions. Such forums must offer opportunities for community development leaders to learn from each other’s experiences, appreciate the various ways community development services are organized across the state, and understand the practices and policies that others are using to meet their community needs and mitigate challenges.
The UNC School of Government offers several such opportunities, including an upcoming course on Performance Management in Community Development. Taught by a community development practitioner from North Carolina, this course helps community development leaders measure organizational performance and convert performance information into decisions that enhance organizational outcomes.
Obed Pasha is a School of Government faculty member who focuses on performance management and directs the North Carolina Benchmarking Project.
This blog post is published and posted online by the School of Government to address issues of interest to government officials. This blog post is for educational and informational Copyright ©️ 2009 to present School of Government at the University of North Carolina. All rights reserved.
use and may be used for those purposes without permission by providing acknowledgment of its source. Use of this blog post for commercial purposes is prohibited.
To browse a complete catalog of School of Government publications, please visit the School’s website at www.sog.unc.edu or contact the Bookstore, School of
Government, CB# 3330 Knapp-Sanders Building, UNC Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3330; e-mail sales@sog.unc.edu; telephone 919.966.4119; or fax
919.962.2707.
Copyright © 2009 to Present School of Government at the University of North Carolina.
