Seeing Eye to Eye: Performance Measures that Matter to Citizens

Seeing Eye to Eye Performance Measures that Matter to Citizens Listening to the Public: Adding the Voices of the People to Government Performance Published by Fund for the City of New York www.fcny.org 2005; 102 pages; $17

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Citizen

participation has often been the square peg that public administrators try to squeeze into the round holes of government, whether it is for strategic planning, budgeting, land-use planning, or other key processes. This is especially true when it comes to performance measurement. Most participation is input driven (citizen satisfaction surveys) or output driven (annual performance reports). While both are important components of a performance measurement system, neither impact the design of the system or influence what is actually measured. Barbara J. Cohn Berman's Listening to the Public presents the results of a multi-year research project conducted by the Fund for the City of New York that provides local governments with a rounder peg that has the potential to greatly influence the design of their performance measurement systems.