ROLE 5: Assist Elected Officials or Citizens

Practice 5b. Report performance: Produce and issue external periodic performance reports.

Palo Alto, California, City Auditor [Profile]

The 2005-06 Service Efforts and Accomplishments (SEA) report (issued in December 2006) is the fifth annual performance measurement report for the City of Palo Alto.   In the first year, it took roughly 1800 staff-hours to produce the SEA report.  Since then, as data sources have stabilized and staff have become more proficient in the process, it now takes the City Auditor’s Office about 400 staff-hours or less.

As in earlier reports, for per-capita expenditures of services and some service levels, comparisons with nearby California cities are made; the choice of cities used depends on whether data are easily available.  Since 2004, the City has also begun contracting for the National Citizen Survey TM (NCS) at an annual cost of $8,400.  In 2006, NCS surveys were mailed to total of 1,200 Palo Alto households.  Completed surveys were received from 495 residents, for a response rate of 42%.  Typical response rates obtained on citizen surveys generally range from 25% – 40 %.  Using the NCS enables comparisons on citizen perception and satisfaction indicators between the City of Palo Alto and norms from groups of other jurisdictions where similar questions were asked, drawn from a pool of more than 400 jurisdictions across the U.S. that use the NCS. These comparisons are used to create a series of percentile rankings for how high Palo Alto ranks against other jurisdictions based on citizen responses for each indicator, as well an indication of whether Palo Alto’s rating is above, below, or similar to the norm from the comparison group.  The number of comparison jurisdictions varies by indicator, depending on how many used the same question.  For the 2006 SEA report, this included comparisons ranging between 16 different jurisdictions on the question of access to affordable quality food, to 285 jurisdictions for ratings on the quality of police services.  The NCS comparisons for citizen survey results have been included in Appendices to the SEA reports, available with the reports on the City Auditor’s website.

The stated purpose of the SEA reports is “to provide reliable information on the performance of City services, assess the trends in efficiency and effectiveness, and improve City accountability to the public.” As such, the City Auditor’s office affirms that the SEA report has been very well received by both City Council and the community.  Periodically, the City has seen the SEA report increasing the public’s ability to use performance data to influence decisions Most recently, during public hearings about a toxic release from a local business, neighbors pointed to the fact that the most recent SEA report showed that the number of toxic releases had doubled over the last 5 years and the number of permitted facilities increased, but the number of city inspections had declined and was not keeping up. 

Reports:

City of Palo Alto Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reports (2001-02 through most recent report)