Collect data to benchmark your city’s cost and service standards
Being able to compare your service levels, costs, and standards with those from other cities can help uncover gaps and identify innovations. Benchmarking can also help you find opportunities to adopt other examples of service improvement and cost reduction measures. However, such benchmarking exercises are only possible if the necessary data is available.
ASSESSMENT
Some questions to guide your thinking
- Which cities does your city use as benchmarks?
- What How are other cities measuring and reporting their service and cost metrics? the cities that we want to compare our city with?
- Can the city’s systems generate data to compare costs and performance with other cities?
Resource
Establishing a benchmarking consortium
Alliance for Innovation
In Arizona, the Valley Benchmark Cities Group (VBC) began in October 2011 as a consortium of staff from the eight largest cities and towns in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Reading
Benchmarking city services globally
KPMG 60 minutes
This report summarizes findings from a 2017 KPMG study that benchmarks the cost of twelve city services using data reported by city managers and executives from 35 cities from around the world.
Resource
Establishing a benchmarking consortium
In Arizona, the Valley Benchmark Cities Group (VBC) began in October 2011 as a …
Reading
Benchmarking city services globally
This report summarizes findings from a 2017 KPMG study that benchmarks the cost of …