Elections are an innate feature of democracy, but the regular local government official turnover can greatly impact strategic plan momentum.
City Managers and County Managers are responsible for ensuring continuous progress on countless long-term plans – strategic plans, comprehensive plans, and Capital Improvement Project (CIP) plans, to name a handful.
It’s imperative for those in the City Manager’s or County Manager’s Office and Department Directors to be able to quickly get all their information in one place, adapt plans and projects to shifting priorities, and justify their work to constituents and the Board of Commissioners.
Best Practices Local Governing Bodies Use to Increase Project Momentum
Among the challenges of operating within an ever-changing environment, Municipal and County governing bodies need to clearly and consistently communicate how they’re serving their communities.
Constituents are invested in their community and want to know what’s improving and what’s on the radar. They take immense interest in high-budget projects, outcomes from grants and special funding, and especially initiatives that will make their home a better place to live.
The list of initiatives is long and lives in many different types of plans – strategic plans, comprehensive plans, department plans, emergency communication and disaster preparedness plans, economic development plans, climate option plans, land use, public infrastructure, community facilities, and so on.
The sheer breadth of projects makes it absolutely crucial to be able to build upon the work that’s already been done in order to make everlasting change. Local government leaders rely on choosing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that acutely measure success, incorporating constituent feedback, and increasing transparent reporting to justify the importance of continuing work on effective initiatives.
Justify Initiatives by Identifying the Right Performance Measures
In a lot of cases, City and County goals are to improve communities over time – in some cases, over a lot of time. It can be difficult, on top of finding the best way to measure success, to find an indicator that will let you know you’re moving in the right direction before you get there.
Work backwards.
Start with the 5- or 10-year vision. What can you do in the next 1-2 years (or planning cycles) that can help you take the next few steps to get there?
Read more about Mission and Vision Statements
Next, rank order those steps by greatest potential for change. What will make the biggest impact right now? Visibility is key, after all.
Last, look at the data you already have access to. Is there a metric that you’re already collecting that might be able to determine the success of your most impactful initiatives?
If not, are you able to institute a survey or access data from another organization to create your own benchmarks?
For example:
Your County’s Comprehensive Plan has a pillar to “Improve Housing.” In your Annual Strategic Plan, you identified a pillar to “Increase the Diversity of Homeowners.” A supporting initiative might be to create a tax incentive for developers who build housing units in targeted areas. You can then measure the number of new housing developments in communities that fit your goal demographic.
While you might not know until later whether you’ve reached your goal of increasing the diversity of the homeowners, you now have a leading indicator that you’re on the right track.
Want real performance measure examples? Check out Cobb County Georgia’s 2023-2028 Strategic Plan and the City of Pittsburgh’s Citywide Comprehensive Plan.
Accurate performance measures should:
- Demonstrate impact
- Justify budget allocations
- Measure progress
It’s also important to remember that you may measure a KPI for a while and realize that it’s not actually indicating the success of that initiative – which is valuable information too! This will help you hone in on a performance measure that will correctly identify whether the initiative is driving change. You can’t measure what you’re not tracking, so all information is good information.
Centralize Data, Automate Updates, and Incorporate Constituent Feedback
One of the most frustrating parts of reporting is the data collection. It’s almost impossible to see progress over time in a single view between spreadsheet tabs and disparate systems.Various departments provide status reports on initiatives from infrastructure construction to beautification projects to constituent feedback on potholes, but seeing how they all connect and work towards larger goals is a real challenge.
What’s more – this data comes from different systems and needs to be manually tracked down and input into a standard template to be shareable at all. Alignment and visibility improve efficiency and accountability. Successful City and County governments have found ways to get all their information in one view so that they can prioritize projects that are working and increase the impact on their initiatives.
The next step after getting the big picture is finding a way to automate requests for updates so stakeholders can provide their information in just one click without having to jump around between several different programs. One, consolidated report will make all the difference in communicating with new elected officials, the Board of Commissioners, and constituents.
Demonstrate Value by Building Transparent Reports
The goal of all community governing bodies is to build a place where people love to live, want to stay, and where folks of all kinds feel welcome. To stay on track with initiatives that support that vision, City and County Managers need to communicate their progress to give a clear and accurate picture of where they’re at today, what needs additional support, and where we plan to be in the future.
Highly successful local governing bodies construct live dashboards that are data-rich and easy to read at a glance, and make them readily available for stakeholders and the public to view.
Read more about local government dashboards
Check out these live dashboards and clear reports that highlight each community’s most intriguing and important projects:
An easy-to-read dashboard or report helps City Managers/County Managers:
- Prove the positive impact from use of tax dollars
- Organize all project information in a central location to answer Board questions quickly and holistically
- Reallocate budget to projects that are driving revenue from initiatives that are showing less impact
This transparency builds trust with constituents and Boards alike, and also helps internal teams get a clear sense of how their individual contributions are affecting the overall community’s work.
Read more about increasing transparency in the public sector
Tools to Help Maintain Continuity in Your Strategic, Comprehensive, and Department Plans
The best way to prepare for inevitable change is to invest time and energy into building a process that organizes your hard work into one at-a-glance report. It’s necessary to find a way to integrate all of the different kinds of plans your office is working on into a single report that can simply communicate where you are and where you’re going to constituents and the Board alike.
The most effective City Managers and County Managers leverage lead/lag performance measures to track progress over time, connect all of their data together, and find a way to visually display the impact of their efforts to help leap over the hurdles of changeover.
Local governments across the nation use AchieveIt to help identify performance measures, automate update collection, and build dashboards. Whether you’re working on developing a new kind of strategy or are looking to improve the process around your existing plans and reports, we’d love to help.
Our platform was built to help city, municipal, and county government leaders keep progressing towards your goals. Book a custom demo today to learn more about how AchieveIt can partner with your office to connect, manage, and execute critical plans and initiatives.
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City of Pittsburg, California Customer Story
Read this customer story to better understand how a local government agency regained authority over their performance metrics, guaranteeing transparency and accountability through the use of AchieveIt.
