Making Municipal Governments More Responsive to Their Citizens
Ted Greenwood, Program Director

Our program to make municipal governments more responsive to their citizens has two components:

• Promoting Citizen-Informed and Citizen-Based Performance Measurement and Reporting

This goal of this component is to make performance measurement and reporting that is citizen-informed or citizen-based widespread, normal and expected.  Performance measurement and reporting is citizen-informed when it is done by the government but involves the public in developing measures that citizens care about and in deciding how performance will be reported and obtains and takes seriously feedback from the public on performance reports.  Performance measurement and reporting is citizen-based when it is done from outside the government, normally by a non-government organization but preferably with the cooperation of the government.   

The directions in this component are:

• Continuing to encourage GASB to move forward with its principles-based suggested guidelines for voluntary reporting of performance information by state and local governments and to encourage governments to include citizens’ perspectives in their performance measurement and reporting.

• Continue to engage with government professionals, elected and appointed officials through their professional organizations to encourage citizen-informed performance measurement and reporting.

• Strengthen the community of practitioners of and maintain the infrastructure for citizen-based and citizen-informed performance measurement and reporting.

• Fund with small grants selected, especially appealing, new projects that would promote citizen-based or citizen-informed performance measurement and reporting. 

Selected Projects to Promote Performance Measurement and Reporting
a listing of current and recent projects and contact information for the project directors

• Enabling Direct Service Requests.

Our goal for this component is to accelerate the spread of technologies (e.g. telephone-based or web-based) that enable citizens to make and track direct service requests to their local governments and ensure their continuation where they exist. 

Selected Projects to Enable Direct Service Requests
a listing of current and recent projects and contact information for the project directors