The 5 Best Places To Find Local Government Benchmarking Data

Local governments want to know how they stack up against one another. Knowing that your municipality responds to 90% of police calls in eight minutes is one thing. Knowing how that compares to similarly sized cities is another. You may clear all major roadways of snow in under 4 hours, but neighboring cities may take more or less time.

Having access to great local government and city benchmarking data helps internally, and it shows residents how your city compares to similar cities nearby and around the country. Below are five resources with good benchmarking data.

ICMA Open Access Benchmarking

The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) is a professional organization whose mission is “to create excellence in local governance by developing and fostering professional management to build better communities.” ICMA’s Open Access Benchmarking program (previously ICMA Insights) collects and shares data across cities and counties for 80 key indicators. Each indicator has a common definition, so data from contributing organizations is consistent and can be aggregated and averaged.

You can download the list of 80 local government metrics (plus 54 county specific metrics) that span 16 categories. ICMA also shared the most recently reported data for 2020, as reported by eight US cities.
This data is also available in the ClearPoint Local Government Measure Library.

Regional Or Specific Consortiums

Many states and communities have their own consortiums made up of neighboring communities for benchmarking purposes. Some are official and others aren’t, but they can work well for benchmarking certain measures together.

If you want to start a benchmarking group of your own, talk to someone who’s been through the process. A common challenge for these groups is creating comparable metrics and finding a good way to share information. Many start by emailing spreadsheets, which can be disastrous depending on the situation. Reporting software is a good alternative that can help you avoid the dangers of Excel.

Start by searching online for an existing consortium in your area. If there isn’t one, contact your neighbors (or communities like yours around the country) and ask if they want to benchmark with you. Other groups are also a good source of ideas. The UNC Benchmarking project is a great example of a coalition taking on the challenge of benchmarking.

LEED for Cities and Communities

LEED for Cities and Communities (previously also known as STAR Communities) is a certification program that focuses on sustainability and quality of life in participating organizations. Its framework collects and tracks social, economic and environmental performance indicators. Participating communities then benchmark their progress toward sustainability objectives against one another and against national and global standards.

To get started, cities and communities must prove a base level of performance across eight categories and 14 metrics. Worldwide, there are nearly 200 cities and communities using this framework and over 110 are certified. If your city or community is focused on sustainability, LEED for Cities and Communities is a good place to start tracking and improving your performance.

Municipal Benchmarking Network of Canada

‘You can’t improve what you don’t measure’ is the first line on MBNCanada’s About Us page. This group of 16 Canadian municipalities collects, shares and analyzes data from several service areas. Members use it to improve decision making, set policies and support budget recommendations. The 750 measures are split into four categories: community impact, service level, efficiency and customer service.

Each year, MBNCanada publishes a report with the data gathered from the local government organizations. The report tells the story of the service areas each organization reports on. It also explains how each organization measures its progress and notes any anomalies in the data. Any local government can use it to see how it compares to other cities and why its results may differ.

The measures included in MBNCanada’s annual report are also available in ClearPoint’s Local Government Measure Library.

ClearPoint Local Government Measure Library

The ClearPoint Local Government Measure Library lets organizations share their data in real time. Data is available as soon as the contributing organization updates it, so you don’t need to wait for a report to compare your results and progress. Users can explore the library, link data from other organizations to their own measures, and create custom benchmarking groups with similar organizations.

Over 75 cities and counties already share measures, so you can find measures to start tracking yourself. The Measure Library also includes the data from ICMA’s Open Access Benchmarking and MBNCanada’s annual report.

The Measure Library also lets you network with leaders from high performing local governments. Each measure includes the contact information for the person responsible for it so that you can reach out, ask questions, and learn how they think about measuring their performance.

In Conclusion

Municipal benchmarking is difficult because cities are so different from one another. Even comparable municipalities often look at different measures, track them differently and use different formulas. It’s easy to get discouraged, but the perfect community to compare yours to probably doesn’t exist. So when it comes to benchmarking, you can’t let perfect become the enemy of good. If you find some communities that are good enough, use them for benchmarking and draw what conclusions you can, even if you take them with a grain of salt.

If you’re interested in learning more about the ClearPoint Local Government Measure Library or getting involved with the ClearPoint Community, reach out to us. We love talking benchmarking and are happy to connect you with similar organizations so you can get the data you need.