Agenda - Planning Commission - 12/04/2014

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Strategies to Improve Communities Evaluate "We must, in other words, become adept at learning. We must become able not only to transform our institutions, in response to changing situations and requirements; we must invent and develop institutions which are learning systems', that is to say, systems capable of bringing about their own continuing transformation." (Donald Schon 1973: 28)12 The concepts of "learning organizations" and, more recently, "data driven communities" have been influencing governments to improve by tracking performance. If you have recently completed The NCS or any type of citizen survey, you have begun the process of becoming a learning organization. A key is learning how to use data to assess needs and then evaluate the results of actions taken to address the needs. What is evaluation? Evaluation can be defined in a variety of ways, but the following is a definition that may be most relevant to local governments: Evaluation is the systematic way that data are assembled into a picture of (1) how well an organization is delivering its services and (2) the impact of those services on the target population.13 There are three major categories of evaluation best used in local government, and all three can provide meaningful evidence of service quality and impacts. Needs assessments provide a picture of a community's or a community group's (like older adults or government employees) strengths and needs. Outcome evaluations measure the results of government service or activity and generally include questions about the process by which outcomes are achieved (like police quality as one service delivery process attempting to achieve the outcome of a sense of public safety). Performance measurement tracks service delivery efficiencies and resident opinion about the success of service delivery. (Such performance tracking can be 12 Smith, M. K. (2001, 2007) 'The learning organization', the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/biblio/learning- organization.htm. 13 P. H.Rossi and H. E. Freeman (1993). Evaluation: A Systematic Approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. To order this textbook on evaluation, visit: www.sagepub.com. done in the service of an outcome evaluation for specific community values or goals.) Local governments benefit from all three types of evaluation to become learning organizations. Including the Voice of the Resident Most government staff and elected officials believe they are in touch with residents' points of view. But understanding what residents want and what works can't come only from anecdotes or chance conversations with a few residents or staff. Valid and convincing assessment requires a grasp of evaluation principles and use of evaluation methods that bring in the voices of a representative sample of residents and offers robust empirical evidence about governing effectiveness. Although some needs assessments and evaluation are done without including the voice of the resident, it is best to include your greatest stakeholder. Needs Assessments The first step in improving community livability is to understand the strengths and needs of the community. The NCS or any citizen survey serves as a valuable needs assessment tool because it lets community leaders understand what residents themselves find working and what opportunities lie ahead. Needs assessments also can be conducted on specific issues such as older adult community livability, transportation or parks and recreation. Surveys or focus groups for particular topics are important and efficient ways to collect additional information before spending extensive resources on new activities or strategies. A Case Study on Use of Deeper Investigation Longmont, Colorado Longmont did annual citizen surveys for years and then its managers realized they wanted to understand more about some of those survey findings. To do that, staff decided to alternate the general citizen survey one year with a policy exploration survey the next. This way there would be more information about the "Why's" of results. For example, in one general citizen survey, Longmont recognized that resident ratings of snow removal were middling and stagnant. Over many years, residents gave average ratings just short of "good" on a scale of "excellent, good, fair poor." © 2014, National Research Center, Inc. Page 21