Who Cares Implementation of Ontarios Municipal Performance Measurement System

1
Who Cares? Implementation of Ontarios Municipal
Performance Measurement System

• By Alicia Schatteman
• School of Public Affairs and Administration
• Presented August 27, 2007
• IPAC Conference
• Winnipeg, Manitoba

2
Background

• The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and
  Housing implemented the Ontario Municipal
  Performance Measures Program in 2000, the first
  of its kind in North America.
• The goals were to improve delivery of municipal
  services, strengthen accountability to citizens
  and enhance the capacity of municipalities to
  improve and benchmark performance.
• The municipalities began reporting in 2001. Data
  collection began with 40 different measures in 10
  service areas in 2001. For 2006, there are 54
  measures in 12 service areas
• Must report to citizens by September of the
  following year (or 9 months after the end of the
  fiscal year).
• Municipalities must publish the name of each
  performance measurement, and the result generated
  by the electronic financial information return
  software.
• They must publish this information through at
  least one of the following four methods a
  direct mailing to taxpayers or households, an
  insert with a property tax bill an ad in local
  newspapers or advertising periodicals or post
  the information on the Internet.

3
Research Questions

• How are small and medium-sized cities using and
  reporting their performance measurement results
  in Ontario?
• Secondly, how do they perceive the performance
  measurement system in terms of its results and
  impact on decision-making?

4
Literature Review

• Definition of terms
• Why measure government performance?
• Factors that affect the utilization of
  performance measurement systems
• Use of performance measurement results to inform
  decision-making and citizens about government
  i.e.. Budget decisions
• Link between performance measurement and
  accountability may improve quality, enhance
  responsiveness and reduce operating costs. In
  order to work, need clear and measurable goals,
  measurement, feedback, interactive inquiry and
  cautious use of externally provided incentives
  (rewards) needs to fit into strategic plan
  improve citizen participation if PM acts as a
  feedback mechanism
• Performance measurement skeptics what gets
  measured, gets done comparative data weak focus
  on process or outputs and not outcomes time lags
  and usefulness of results other unintended
  consequences

5
Method

• Online survey developed consisting of 14
  questions
• General questions about size of municipality,
  position of respondent, years on job, operating
  budget
• Specific questions about performance measurement
  results whos in charge of program, overall
  ratings of the program, primary audiences for
  reports, how they are reporting questions about
  perception of accountability to citizens and
  citizen groups components of the report itself
  usefulness of results to elected officials and
  interest in receiving summary data collected.
• I gathered population data from Ontario
  municipalities and identified cities between
  20,000 and 500,000 (ignoring both extremes) which
  were 51 cities (single or lower tier), I found
  email addresses for the chief operating officer
  or city manager for these cities, sent an email
  with a link to the survey on March 13. By March
  28, after one additional reminder, I had 23
  respondents (45 response rate).
• Email sent to those who indicated they would like
  to see summary results on April 24.

6
Results General Questions

• Most of the cities had populations between 20K
  and 200K (78.2) with an average operating budget
  of 155 million.
• Respondent information nearly half of
  respondents were the chief administrative
  officer (52.4), followed by the department chair
  (23.8), the chief financial officer (19), the
  town/city manager (9.5) and one elected official
• Average of 7.5 years in the job
• The chief financial officer most responsible for
  the MPMP program (61.9), followed by other
  (14.3), chief administrative officer (9.5),
  town/city manager (9.5) and department chair
  (4.8)

7
Results Satisfaction with Program

• PM measures most felt the measures themselves
  needed improvement or were unsatisfactory (71)
• Reporting to the province was either satisfactory
  or very good (65)
• Citizens most respondents (52) rated reporting
  to citizens as needs improvement or
  unsatisfactory
• Usefulness for Staff decision-making 60 felt
  the system needs improvement or was
  unsatisfactory
• Usefulness for elected officials
  decision-making 65 felt the system needs
  improvement or was unsatisfactory

8
Results PM Reports and Accountability

• Internally Primary audience for the results
  internally were indicated to be chief
  administrative officer (74) and department heads
  (66.7), city council members (52.4), mayor or
  professional staff in the mayors office (42.9),
  budget officials/personnel officials/other
  professional staff (23.8)
• Externally, provincial or federal agencies
  (61.9), citizens (42.9), and the media (33.3)
• Accountability to citizens as a result of the
  performance measurement program 47.8 yes, 39.1
  no (pretty much a split) and 13 did not know
• Use of results by elected officials A little
  over half of respondents perceive that elected
  officials use the results (57)

9
Results Report Methods and Contents

• Of the reporting municipalities, they chose the
  Internet (95), ad (21), insert into property
  tax bill (5) and no one reported conducting a
  direct mail of the report
• Components of the report itself comparison to
  previous year results (95), table of contents
  (58), explanatory notes (47), images and graphs
  (32), comparisons to other municipalities
  (26.3), targets or goals (16), and
  opportunities for feedback (10)

10
Conclusions and Recommendations

• Because program began as a mandated top-down
  program, first priority is fulfilling the legal
  requirements of collection and reporting results,
  second is the usefulness to upper management,
  third is the usefulness to elected officials and
  last are citizens.
• How they report (almost exclusively online)
  proves that the municipalities are taking the
  cheapest and fastest method despite that these
  reports can be buried online and again gets back
  to the usefulness for people outside the
  organization.
• Question now is

11
Future Research

• Given the same minimum legal requirements of
  performance reporting in Ontario, why are some
  cities going beyond this? In effect, what makes
  a community go from okay, to good, to great in
  terms of performance reporting?
• Dependent variable the performance reports
  themselves, ranking and rating them using
  national guidelines (Canada and US)
• Independent variables population size, municipal
  operating budget, demographics of citizens,
  person responsible for program, number of FTE,
  existence of a municipal communications or public
  information office, existence of a municipal
  strategic plan, salary of top executive,
  municipal debt per capita, municipal bond rating,
  and others..