This is a guest post by Polco, an NLC Savings and Solutions partner.
Walk into any city or village hall around the country, and you will hear conversations about how to measure information regarding the community and the services provided. Not just objective data like police response times, but data that lets us know how our residents see their community. Do they feel safe? Is it a good place to raise children? How satisfied are they with their local government?
Traditionally, this data has only been evaluated at an aggregate level that may not reveal neighborhood level differences. An 80 percent favorable rating for snow removal when analyzed by census block may show a high level of dissatisfaction in a specific neighborhood. With this knowledge service delivery issues can be addressed and improved. Polco’s mission is to help you measure these types of things more frequently, in greater detail, to help you build the best community possible for your residents.
As part of that mission, Polco has developed two survey tools to help communities get the data needed to better understand and manage performance and service delivery issues. Our standardized Baseline Questions and Annual Community Survey measure community sentiment on public service delivery satisfaction and overall quality of life in the community. As individual communities started to use these questions, it led us to consider an interesting idea:
If these questions are useful for an individual community, what would happen if we grouped communities together so they can communicate with each other, learning from each other, benchmarking and developing best practices?
Our pilot Performance Measurement Cohort is a chance to network with colleagues from across the country so everyone can learn and understand emerging trends impacting all communities. While some regional networks exist, we know that sometimes the best ideas are right next door while others are clear across the country. And in local government, there are more similarities than differences, regardless of location.
We have designed this as a collaborative effort for everyone to mine performance measurement best practices. We hope to create a space to try different things and are enlisting your assistance to create the best program possible. Our pilot cohort is open at no additional cost to all Polco clients who sign up before January 15th, 2019.
Bring your creativity, best ideas and willingness to learn. We will provide our expertise, the structure, and (virtual) coffee. We can’t wait to begin!
Learn more about Polco by visiting overview.polco.us where you can read more about our product and also sign up to explore a city engagement dashboard for free. Polco is very proud to be the National League of Cities exclusive Enterprise Partner for online civic engagement.
About the author: Cory Poris-Plasch is the Vice President of Customer Success at POLCO