Transparency, not just measurement, key to data-driven organizational change

Today's Post has an article about Councilmember Adrian Fenty learning about best practices around the country, in preparation for his Mayoral candidacy and campaign. I think learning best practices is a good thing. And I think the Citistats program in Baltimore is something that we should do in the city. (For the article, see "For Guidance, Fenty Turns to a Neighbor," subtitled "Candidate Seizes on O'Malley Program." Note that DC does have a CompStat equivalent program for the police department.)

It's not that the City Government isn't collecting such data, it's that it often isn't publicly disclosed, at least in a manner that is easily accessible, and at times, from an evaluative standpoint, perhaps the questions being asked aren't pointed enough.

Below is something I wrote about this in February 2004 from themail. Note that I changed the header of this blog entry. It's not just measurement, but making the data available.

What Gets Measured Gets Done

In the classic business book In Search of Excellence, the authors coined the famous phrase "what gets measured gets done" to refer to companies that outperform their peers because of a greater focus on what matters. Of course, being sure that organizations focus on what matters is always a problem, as is a focus on accountability.

Today's Austin American-Statesman talks about how the City of Austin updates 4,000 different performance measures weekly, from library circulation statistics to how the city is meeting its goals, and it posts this data to the city website. This is an expansion of their public communication of such data, which since the mid-1990s had been published quarterly. (Click here for the City of Austin e-Performance Measures website.)

Similarly, the Citistats program in Baltimore is a finalist in Harvard's Ash Institute annual program highlighting governmental innovation. The program is written about by syndicated columnist Neal Peirce in LESS SECRECY, MORE EFFICIENCY: BALTIMORE'S GROUNDBREAKING "CITISTAT".

Citistat marries data tracking and analysis with accountability for improvement, comparable to the CompStat program initiated by Jack Maple and William Bratton in NYC, a program which led to big change in policing strategies and tactics, and a concomitant reduction in crime. Peirce quotes Mayor O'Malley stating that “success comes only with constant and intense executive pressure, plus relentless follow-up with departments.”

I looked at the government services section of the DC Government website, but I haven't been able to locate similar data sets. We need them.
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Similarly, I have written about benchmarking. That DC needs to publicly compare its services to best-in-class results. E.g., I don't think it should take 9 months to fix a broken water main, which was a problem a few years ago at 1st and K Streets NE. I complained and complained about this for months. I wrote about this in July 2000, also in themail, in "Len Sullivan’s Comments about DC Government." (Anyway, Mr. Sullivan had some excellent points.

Index Keywords: public-administration; civic-engagement