OVERVIEW
The purpose of the South Carolina
Municipal Benchmarking Project is to provide local government
managers a forum to share best practices and ultimately serve as a
catalyst for service delivery improvements. The project has a
multi-pronged approach for helping municipalities achieve this goal
- sharing performance measurement data, service committee meetings
where department managers discuss service delivery challenges and
best practices, and targeted research and analysis.
Since the
project's inception in 1996,
participants have
collected performance measurement information in the key municipal
areas of police, fire, and sanitation. In 2001, parks and recreation
was added as a fourth service area. To learn more about the history
of the project, please visit the
Process Model
page. Two of the cornerstones of this
benchmarking effort are the standardized data collection
methodologies and the balanced set of
performance
measures. A majority of the performance data are collected by
the participating departments through detailed data collection forms
and then the data are validated through an extensive data cleaning
process.
The efficiency measures included in the project are calculated using
an indirect costing model, developed by a committee of finance
directors, that uses generally accepted cost allocation factors.
One of the critical type of measures identified by the Steering
Committee during the pilot phase of the project was effectiveness or
quality measures. The city managers and administrators who serve on
the Committee realized the importance of creating a benchmarking
system that included both efficiency and effectiveness measures. The
Institute for Public Service and Policy Research's Survey Research
Lab administers a standardized
citizen satisfaction telephone survey
on a biennial basis to determine the citizens' level of satisfaction
with municipal services.
If you are interested in learning more about this benchmarking
initiative, please contact one of the following project directors:
Anna Berger
Institute for Public Service and Policy Research
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
(803) 777-3455
aberger@sc.edu
Bill Tomes
Institute for Public Service and Policy Research
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
(803) 777-9788
Bill-Tomes@sc.edu
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