How to Benchmark Your City Using Off-the-Shelf Resources: The Fresno Experience

摘要

We've all had to answer questions about how our city services compare to others. When the comparison is quantitative ― "Why do we need more staff when the city next door does the same job with fewer people?" ― it's sometimes difficult to explain why the comparison may be inappropriate. The challenge is even more daunting when the reason for making the comparison is political, because any response that's not based on hard data is likely to be dismissed. Last year, the City of Fresno decided to determine how we compared to our "peer cities" in California, and to use this benchmarking exercise as a rough way of measuring our effectiveness and relative efficiency in delivering services. The city lacked funds to hire a management consulting firm, so instead we used published reports to draw comparisons.