1. CITIZEN-BASED PERFORMANCE
ASSESSMENT
John Aderibigbe
john@dutconsulting.com
www.dutconsulting.com

2. INTRODUCTION
• Citizen involvement in the design and
implementation of performance assessment
is necessary to give performance measures
political relevancy and significance. However,
many cities have reservations about the
concept.

3. • It emphasizes collaboration among citizens, elected
officials, and city staff in developing performance
measures, thereby enhancing the political credibility of
performance measurement and increasing the likelihood
that the information will be used in the decision-making
process
• It emphasizes the citizen perspective in the development of
performance measures so that performance measurement
is not totally oriented toward managerial needs
• It emphasizes the dissemination of performance
measurement information to the public so that citizens can
use the information to hold their government accountable

4. • Since the mid-1990s, there have been two major
movements in the field of public administration. The
first movement is a renewed effort to promote
performance measurement. Since the early 1990s,
many professional organizations, such as the American
Society for Public Administration, the Governmental
Accounting Standards Board, and the International
City/County Management Association, have been
promoting various programs to encourage government
agencies to adopt performance assessment, so that
public officials and citizens can evaluate the inputs,
outputs, and outcomes of public services effectively.

5. • The second major movement has been the movement
toward citizen governance and reinventing
government through citizen participation (Nalbandian,
1999; King and Stivers, 1998; Schachter, 1997).
• The original reform of reinventing government started
with a business perspective and viewed citizens as
customers (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). The more
recent effort to reinvent government views citizens
not only as customers but also as the owners of
government. This value is especially important in city
governments, which provide many direct services and
have a tremendous impact on the daily lives of
citizens.

6. OBJECTIVES
To address five developmental needs for government performance
measurement and reporting, which are:
•Developing and improving measures of performance for decision
making,
•Making those measures available to the public and other users,
•Developing methods for state and local governments to
communicate performance measures,
•Teaching users how to work with performance measures to
assess the service efforts, costs and accomplishments of a
governmental entity,
•Ensuring the relevance, comprehensiveness, understandability,
timeliness and reliability of performance measures.

7. LIMITATION TO CIPA
• The lack of sufficient attention to
performance measures by elected officials
starves performance measures of needed
political support. Many administrators view
their efforts to collect performance data and
report the measures as a fruitless and
wasteful exercise.

8. Why are Cities (Not)
Interested in CIPA?• Cities with a larger population are more likely to
participate in the CIPA project. Larger cities tend
to involve citizens more because of their need to
address diverse demands (Ebdon, 2000).
• Cities with greater organizational stability are less
likely to participate in the CIPA project. Without
major governing crises, significant economic
downturns, or social disorder, public officials
tend to treat business as usual, and have very
low incentives to make changes in the existing
process or managerial system.

9. • Cities with greater organizational openness are more
likely to participate in the CIPA project. Openness is
especially important in engaging citizens in
performance measurement. Epstein, et al. (2000)
suggest that if a local government does not have an
open organizational culture, it is unlikely to sustain
citizen engagement and use innovative approaches to
measure performance of public services.
• Bureaucratic norms, such as the emphasis on
professional expertise, organizational control,
administrative stability, and efficiency, are generally
contradictory to the value of citizen involvement
(Kweit and Kweit, 1981).

10. • Cities that are concerned about the
information from performance measurement
being used politically in elections are less
likely to participate in the CIPA project.

11. What it Entails
• It emphasizes collaboration among citizens, elected
officials, and city staff in developing performance
measures, thereby enhancing the political credibility of
performance measurement and increasing the likelihood
that the information will be used in the decision-making
process,
• It emphasizes the citizen perspective in the development of
performance measures so that performance measurement
is not totally oriented toward managerial needs,
• It emphasizes the dissemination of performance
measurement information to the public so that citizens can
use the information to hold their government accountable.

12. CIPA Activities
• Formation of citizen performance teams in each pilot city
• Selection of service area(s)
• Solicitation of citizen input about selected service area(s)
• Development of citizen-based performance measures
• Integration of performance measures into budgeting
• Data collection and establishment of activity-based management
• Performance reporting using citizen-initiated performance
measures
• Regularization of citizen performance teams and CIPA in the budget
process
• Expansion of CIPA to other service areas
• Performance benchmarking based on citizen-initiated performance
measures
• Project Evaluation

13. How it Works
• Citizens identify the programs to be measured,
• Citizens state the purpose and desired outcomes
of the programs,
• Citizens select the measures or indicators of the
programs,
• Citizens set standards for performance and
outcomes,
• Citizens monitor and report results and program
accomplishments.

14. First-Year Lessons
• The first year of the CIPA project confirmed the
significance of citizen involvement in
performance measurement. The project team
has found that although citizens do not negate
the usefulness of traditional performance
measures (e.g., cost efficiency, program
outcome, and impact measures), they almost
always suggest the need to measure the quality
of customer service, including the
professionalism of public employees. This
element is often ignored by municipal
performance measurement systems, with the
exception of police departments.

15. Group Work
• As a government employee, what do the
citizens expect from you?