Digital Technology, Urban Administration and Performance Evaluation: A Case Study from Chaoyang Dist

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Digital Technology, Urban Administration and
Performance Evaluation A Case Study from
Chaoyang District in Beijing China

• Hongshan Yang
• Associate Professor, School of Public
  Administration,
• Renmin University of China,
• Visiting Scholar, Indiana University

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Question

• Along with fast urbanization, how to enhance the
  accountability and performance of urban public
  services delivery is a puzzle faced by many city
  governments in China.
• Stemming from the study on the digital urban
  management (DUM) program in Chaoyang District of
  Beijing, the research analyzed the institutional
  arrangements, achievement and limitation of this
  new pattern.

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?. Introduction

• China is in the process of fast urbanization.
• The percentage of urbanization was 43.9 by the
  end of 2006, compared to that of 38.1 in 2001.
• The annual increase rate of urbanization is about
  1.2 and about 15 millions people changed their
  identities from farmers to citizens in every
  year.
• By the end of 2007, china has 557 cities.
• New municipality couldnt be established without
  the permission from the central government.

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Cont

• In order to ensure the prosperity of the existed
  cities, the central has less enthusiasm in
  approving new municipality.
• Moreover, the central government grants favorite
  policy to city government in economic
  development, but the county jurisdiction and
  township have no rights to share the same
  favorable policy.
• As a result, residents crowded into the existed
  cities.
• The fast urbanization and overloaded urban
  infrastructures bring on a series of challenges
  in urban management.

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Cont

• In order to improve the performance of urban
  management, Dongcheng district, one of eight
  urban districts in Beijing, began to apply
  information technology to urban management.
• The new approach is called digital urban
  management (DUM) program and it was launched in
  2005.
• DUM is an information-driven management system
  designed to monitor and improve the performance
  of city departments and agencies in real time.

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Cont..

• Up to now, DUM grew from covering one district
  when it established in 2005 to overall eight
  districts in downtown of Beijing City.
• The program has achieved significant performance
  both in public facilities management and in
  public service delivery (Qiu, 2007).
• Dongchengs success has sparked interest from
  the many other city governments such as Shanghai,
  Nanjing, Shenzhen, etc..

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Methodology

• This research applied Institutional Analysis and
  Development (IAD) framework and public
  participation theory to assess the efficiency and
  effectiveness of DUM approach.
• The IAD framework was developed by Elinor Ostrom
  and her colleagues (Kiser and Ostrom 1982, Ostrom
  1990, Ostrom et al. 1994) and has been used for a
  wide range of institutional settings.
• The IAD framework includes three levels of
  analysis operational level, collective-choice
  level, constitutional level .
• This research mainly focuses on the actions in
  operational and collective-choice levels.

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?. A Case Study of DUM program in Chaoyang
District of Beijing City

• This research is part of a research project
  called Digital Urban Management Pattern and
  performance Measurement supported by Chaoyang
  District government in Beijing.
• The goals of the project were to evaluate the
  performance of DUM program launched in 2005.

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Chaoyang District is the largest and most modern
urban district in Beijing metropolis. Table
1.Some General Characteristics of Chaoyang
District in 2006.
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Cont

• Under the traditional urban management pattern,
  department agency are driven mainly by the
  upper-level orders rather than citizens demands.
  
• City department and agency not only take charge
  of policy, but also monopolized the supervision
  and assessment of implementation.
• Since the performance information was reported by
  the departments and agencies, it was usually seen
  that the data of good performance were
  exaggerated and the data of problems were cut
  down or hidden.
• In order to enhance city department and agencys
  accountability, in 2005, the government of
  Chaoyang District began to implement digital
  urban management program.

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The main factors of DUM

• DUM is based on GIS, mobile telecommunication
  technology and E-government. It is made up of the
  following factors
• 1. Managerial grid
• 2. Facilities and Incidents coding
• 3. Urban management inspector
• 4. Information collection device
• 5. E-government network
• 6. Monitoring center and commanding center

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Managerial grids in Chaoyang Districts
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The process of DUM approach

• .

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?. Effectiveness Assessment of DUM from
Historical Perspective

• In a monocentric governance system, street level
  civil servants are not responsible for the public
  but for the bureau and its leader.
• DUM program created a new urban management model.
• This model has achieved prominent effect in
  enhancing the responsibility of city departments
  and agencies.

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1. Institutional innovation of DUM program

• (1) Separating supervision power from management
  power
• In the past, although there were supervision
  bureaus, they were affiliated to relative
  departments.
• DUM program creates independent supervision
  center and command center. They are responsible
  for district governor directly.

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Cont

• (2) Creating a performance measure system for
  urban management
• Based on the continuous information reported from
  inspectors and computerized data statistics, DUM
  makes it possible to obtain real-time data
  collection and review.
• The monitoring centre can provide a clear picture
  of performance related to departments or
  agencies.
• Data collection also gives an incentive for
  departments and agencies to improve their
  performance.

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2. Performance improvement of DUM program

• (1) Transition from extensive management to
  elaborate management
• By mapping managerial grid and enforcing DUM
  program, the inspectors are responsible for
  search and capture urban problems.
• When an inspector reports issues to the
  monitoring center, this information could drive
  the relative agencies or street level bureau to
  undertake the accountability and enhance
  management performance.

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Cont

• (2)Transition from mobilizing management to
  regular and seamless management
• Traditional urban management depends on city
  departments and agencies to collect information.
• City government couldnt identify problems until
  they mushroom and become unmanageable.
• Then, government had to mobilize all kinds of
  resources to resolve the problem.
• DUM allows government to capture urban problems
  in real time and take efficient steps to work
  them out.
• Relying on managerial grid, as well as
  inspectors continuous patrol and report problem,
  it is possible to carry out regular and seamless
  management.

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Cont

• (3) Improving urban governance level through
  implementing information-driven performance
  management program
• By operating DUM program, government accelerated
  the response times to urban problems such as
  trash collection, track pothole repairs,
  replacing the lost well cover, cleaning illegal
  advertisement.
• Data show the number of reported problem in 2006
  is about 5 times to that in 2005.
• In the past, after a problem is reported, in
  average it needs about one week to be resolved.
  Nowadays, in average it only needs 12.1 hours to
  solve the reported problem.
• According to the released data from government
  of Chaoyang District, the estimated saving
  revenue is about ?44 million (US 6.3 million) in
  2006.

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Table 2.Data comparison among Chaoyang District
and other seven urban districts in Beijing in
2006.
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?. Institutional limitation of DUM program from
comparative perspective

• By Comparing DUM Program with Baltimores
  CitiStat program, it provides a better
  perspective for understanding bureaus
  accountability.
• In 2000, the government of Baltimore city in
  Maryland, began to establish and implement a
  data-tracking and management tool called CitiStat
  (Perez and Rushing 2007).
• This program uses the data to drive and manage
  all city programs and services, which enable the
  mayors office to monitor urban problems and
  improve the performance of city departments in
  real-time.
• Information is gathered on an array of
  performance indicators, including response time
  for thing like pothole abatement, trash
  collection, and snow removal, as well as the
  prevalence of problems such as illegal dumping,
  and sewage overflows.

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Cont

• This information is analyzed with the assistance
  of computerized databases and geographic mapping
  to zero in on areas of underperformance.
• Every two weeks, managers from each city
  department meet with the mayor and other top
  officers to answer questions about their result.
• The mayor and other top officers use these data
  to identify underperformance and press for
  improvement.
• If the information present reveals
  underperformance, the department head faces tough
  questioning and is asked to come up with
  solutions.
• At the next CitiStat meeting, two weeks later,
  there is sure to be follow-up to see if action
  has been taken and the numbers are headed in the
  right direction

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Cont

• This approach has produced dramatic improvement
  in city service and efficiency.
• It saves lots of revenue for the city. In the
  first year of implementation, the city saved
  13.2 million.
• Up to the end of 2006, it has saved 350 million
  since its initiative.
• Baltimores success has sparked interest from
  many other city governments in the USA.
• Numerous cities in the USA have created thire own
  versions of CitiStat (Behn 2006332)..

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1. Sameness and difference between DMP CitiStat

• DUM and CitiStat have some similar
  characteristics.
• (1) Appling information technology to drive
  performance management.
• (2) Special staff and office for implementing
  program and gathering data.
• (3) Focusing on enhancing the responsiveness of
  city department and agencies.

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The difference between the two programs

• (1) the information channels are different from
  each other.
• .
• (2) the two programs pay attention to different
  management levels.
• (3) the costs of DUM program is much expensive
  than CitiStat program.

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?. Conclusion

• 1. New information technologies provide much
  contribution for improving performance of urban
  management.
• 2. The effectiveness of DUM lies on the
  independent monitoring agency.
• 3.DUM focuses more on operational level rather
  than decision-making level.
• 4.Scarcity of efficient channels for citizen
  participation also limits the functions of DUM
  program.