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2018/09/14 - Walter's Blog: How Do We Calculate Success?

Democracy on the Front Lines
City Administrator’s Blog
Walter Denton
 

How do we know how we are doing? It is pretty easy to determine whether a business is successful: its profit margin and share price are accurate indicators of a company’s productivity. It is not so easy for a local government. How do you know if the City of O’Fallon is efficient? How do you know if the City of O’Fallon is providing effective services to residents?

Cities do not have profit margins to calculate success, but we can measure our processes and effectiveness. I mention this because our semi-annual Performance Report is now online. You may or may not be aware that City staff regularly prepares a Performance Report to the City Council that provides information on the operations and activities within the organization. Each department submits statistics on how they are providing services to residents.

The latest Performance Report is posted on the web site for the second half of the fiscal year: November 1, 2107-April 30, 2018. Click here to view the report.

The reports are an effort to show the City Council what the departments are doing on a day-to-day basis and to provide baseline information for staff to make decisions on service delivery. As a public agency spending taxpayer money, it is important that we operate as efficiently as possible and show that O’Fallon residents are getting value for the taxes they pay.

A continuing feature of this Performance Report is the “Performance Dashboard” with the purpose of defining the top twelve indicators that demonstrate the organization’s performance. In addition, the Management Team developed a “Balanced Scorecard” of performance measurements that outline the most important metrics in the following categories: Operations, Finances, Employees, and Citizens.

I believe these performance measures are powerful tools in providing services to our residents and will assist staff in making operational and budget decisions. The results from our Citizen Survey will be released soon that will provide additional feedback on how we are doing.