This first appeared as a PATImes column in February 2006.

Creating Grassroots, Bottom-Up Pressure for Results
by John M. Kamensky

“I don’t believe a thing they say,” is the common reaction citizens have to annual performance reports from their local governments, or from state or federal agencies.  Meanwhile an increasing number of people are turning to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show for their news.  This seems to reflect Americans’ natural skepticism of government.  But where can Americans turn for information that they might trust about how their government is working? 

Increasingly, community-level performance indicators are being developed and reported by independent, third party providers, such as non-profits or government audit agencies.  The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Ted Greenwood is an advocate of this trend.  He says the strength of this approach is that it focuses on things people care about.  But the weakness is that often there is no link to actions that can make a difference.  In contrast, he says, when government measures its performance, it tends to select things to measure that are actionable, but not necessarily things people care about.  He sees a hybrid approach as the best of both worlds.

In December, leaders of community indicator projects from across the country streamed to Burlington, Vermont for a conference showcasing best practices which are available on their website, www.communityindicators.net.   What is interesting is that this conference highlighted the intersection between community indicators and government performance measures.  This intersection serves as a bridge between citizen aspirations and government accountability.  For example:

• In Reno, Nevada, “Truckee Meadows Tomorrow” is a non-profit created in 1993 out of the ruins of a failed regional planning effort.  It develops a biennial community well-being report that helps identify and guide solutions to the region’s social, economic, and environmental problems.  This non-profit group engaged 4,000 citizens in developing 6 goals and 30 indicators to measure progress toward those goals.  The group encourages citizens and businesses to join an “adopt-an-indicator” program. The adopter pledges to help improve the performance of that one indicator.  While the adopter is not responsible for moving the indicator, he or she is responsible for tracking, developing a strategy, identifying who are the key players, and serving as a convener among stakeholders, when possible.  Karen Hruby, the group’s executive director, says, “We’re all about change.”  She says this comprehensive, participatory program uses recognition and awards, not rules and regulations, to get change to happen.

• The Vermont Regional Partnerships initiative helps drive the priorities of the state’s Agency for Human Services.  The Agency organizes its efforts around a set of social well-being outcomes, such as reducing crime by boosting high school graduation rates and ensuring livable wages.  It delivers its services through 12 regional partnerships.  The state team of 200 employees supports the regional partnerships, which are responsible for delivering results.  There are conveners in each community responsible for addressing specific challenges, with performance indicators and accountability for action.

• The St. Louis “Region Wise” effort, sponsored by the Danforth Foundation,  produces a “One Region” report covering five goal areas based on a region-wide visioning effort covering 16 counties and 2.7 million people.  While this effort measures regional change in areas such as voter participation and economic development, the challenge is how to make these measures actionable by individual citizens.  The RegionWise organization publishes periodic white papers on topics such as watershed management and election reform, and develops a fact-based campaign-like strategy to get action on these issues.

• For more than a dozen years, Charlotte, NC, has sponsored a neighborhood quality of life initiative across its 173 neighborhood areas.  Every two years, the city, county, and school system examine 20 local variables that address social, crime, physical and economic conditions in the city.  It then ranks the neighborhoods as “stable,” “transitioning,” or “challenged.”  Variables include the percent of substandard housing, the percent of persons receiving food stamps, high school drop out rates, and the juvenile arrest rate.  With these rankings in hand, the city’s “neighborhood council” of key city officials come up with comprehensive strategies targeted to each neighborhood, focusing especially on those rated as challenged.  This council works with neighborhood-level revitalization teams comprised of government, non-profit, and citizen members.

Many of these performance measurement efforts are sponsored or supported by foundations or non-profit groups.  In addition to the Sloan and Danforth Foundation sponsorships, local level United Ways are also major supporters of these efforts.  For example, the United Way in Western Michigan has been a sponsor of that community’s indicator efforts and has used the results to both drive change and set its own priorities.   As one observer notes, the growth of these independent, non-governmental measurement efforts “makes sense – after all, students don’t grade their own papers and tests in school.”

Other active players include the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.  The Urban Institute sponsors the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, which is a consortium of 26 communities committed to developing and using neighborhood information systems in local policymaking.  Brookings sponsors the Urban Markets Initiative which is committed to improving the quality of information available on urban communities, with the goal of using information to drive change.

Another interesting trend is that while indicator initiatives have been launched at the national and state level the active buzz around this issue is happening at the grassroots, or community level. For example, the state-local Governmental Accounting Standards Board has been sponsoring the development of government performance measures,, called “Service Efforts and Accomplishments,” which are intended to supplement traditional financial reports.  And the National Academy of Sciences has been supporting the development of Key National Indicators, which will describe how we as a nation are doing.  But both have been slow to gain momentum. 

Perhaps there is more traction at the local level, because there exists a clearer path for these various initiatives are creating a foundation of community- based indicators of performance, and some are successfully using this information to pressure their local governments to improve.  Still, there continues to be a need for better links between useful information and its use.  A new IBM Center for The Business of Government report by Carolyn Lukensmeyer and Lars Hasselblad Torres, Using Deliberative Democracy: A Manager’s Guide to Citizen Engagement, describes the spectrum of tools government managers can use to engage citizens in substantive dialogue about how to participate as a community in making informed decisions, for example in zoning for new construction, as well as how to be better informed in making individual choices, such as how to better plan for retirement.  The techniques in this report, along with the performance indicators being developed in hundreds of communities across the country, are pointing the way toward a more engaged citizenry in getting results that matter to both individuals and their communities.