Section III - North Carolina Benchmarking Project
North Carolina municipalities are continually looking for ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. As a part of this effort, a group of municipalities joined together with the School of Government and the North Carolina Local Government Budget Association to create an ongoing project to compare performance and cost data for selected governmental services. This joint undertaking is known as the North Carolina Benchmarking Project. This report presents performance and cost data for sixteen North Carolina municipalities for the year ended June 30, 2008: Asheville, Carrboro, Cary, Charlotte, Concord, Durham, Gastonia, Greensboro, Hickory, High Point, Matthews, Raleigh, Salisbury, Wilmington, Wilson and Winston-Salem.
This report is the result of a joint undertaking of the participating municipalities, the UNC School of Government, and the North Carolina Local Government Budget Association. The North Carolina League of Municipalities and the Local Government Commission also have contributed to the development of this report. The goals of the benchmarking project are:
- To develop/expand the use of performance measurement in local government.
- To produce reliable performance and cost data for comparison.
- To facilitate the use of performance and cost data for service improvement.
Services
Performance measurement and benchmarking are about tracking performance and cost data and making changes based on both internal and external comparisons over time. This report presents data and accompanying explanatory information for the following service areas:
Reporting Format
This is primarily a data report. It incorporates graphs, summary tables, and explanatory information to present the performance and cost results for each service area under study. The following information is presented:
- Performance Measures. Three types of performance measures are used and reported - workload, efficiency, and effectiveness. A municipality's performance is compared to the performance average, noting that the average is based on services with numerous variations. The measures used in this report do not assess total service performance, but gauge certain service dimensions and should be approached with an understanding of the service being provided.
- Municipal Profile. This includes a limited number of characteristics of each municipality, such as population density and unemployment rate, which may affect service performance and cost.
- Full Cost Profile. A cost accounting model is used to calculate full or total cost of providing each service area under study. The reporting format aggregates the detailed cost data in three general categories for the purpose of presentation: personal services for the direct expenses of salaries, wages, and related fringe benefits; operating costs that include direct expenses and indirect cost allocations; and capital costs that represent depreciation for equipment and facilities.
- Service Profile. This area provides input and output data and identifies important dimensions of service delivery.
- Explanatory Information. This segment of the report describes how the service is provided and identifies conditions that affect performance and cost data of service delivery.
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