Cities Must Tell the Story to be Transparent
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.
By James Bourey
April 17, 2021
The word transparency has not only come into vogue in the past several years. It is used almost ubiquitously to cover a wide spectrum of notions about open government. Virtually everyone can be advocates of providing the public a view into the workings of government, the decisionmaking process and how public resources are allocated. But does it tell citizens everything they need to know about what their local governments are doing and, most importantly, what they are accomplishing?
When the term transparency first started to gain traction, the emphasis was on how tax dollars were being spent. The solution that many advocated was to, “Put the city’s checkbook online.” Thus, some states started to pass laws that local governments needed to post their check register online for all citizens to see. Even though it would have been a cumbersome task, it would have been fine if it would have given a clear view into how tax dollars were being spent. As a city manager, I could not understand the real value in this strategy. Even a manager would have been hard pressed to gain a lot of insight from City X paying $140.00 to vendor Y. That does not tell much of the story.
In an effort to be more financially transparent, several enterprising companies developed products to display budget expenditures in a more user friendly manner. They produced software for a portal to display useful summary information on local governments’ websites that showed how the money was being spent and allowed a user to look at various dimensions of expenditures. Thus, one can see not only what a police department is spending, but also what they are spending for such things as personnel or equipment. Moreover, this information can be displayed in tabular, chart or graph form, whichever is desired.
While this is an excellent advancement, it does not tell what the government is doing or what is being accomplished. In addition, it requires an active and interested person to go to the website and seek the information. Digging into an annual budget, people can find information about what is being produced. This would include information about such things as the miles of streets that are to be paved.
This still does not address two major deficiencies in providing the public information. First, it still largely relies on the local media to run articles about what the city or county is doing. Second, citizens do not know about their government’s performance—the results from all the activity funded by the fees and taxes. To address this, local governments need to develop true outcome based performance measures and utilize electronic media mechanisms to get their messages out to the broader public.
Many local governments have been doing performance measurement for many years. However unless those measures truly provide a view into what is accomplished, citizens will not understand what they are getting for their money. It may be of interest to some that the public works crews have resurfaced X miles of roadway. However, what does that mean for the condition of the streets? The city may need to resurface 3X miles of roadway each year for the roads to be in good shape. The city needs to report the condition of the roadways each year. Results need to be reported for all critical services that the city provides.
Additionally, cities cannot rely on traditional media to get information out to the public. While in my last position as the Newport News, Virginia City Manager, it was obvious that people were relying less and less on traditional media outlets and more on social media and online publications. In order to address this, we became very active on social media, as so many cities are at this time. Cities are reaching out with Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. However, we took a major additional step and began to publish a daily (Monday through Friday) email to everyone we could. Launched in February of 2016, the email is one page with typically three stories about city services and activities. Each story is a paragraph or two with a link to a more detailed story or added information. We started with about 75,000 email addresses from various city data bases, giving people the opportunity to opt out. Some did, but we settled in at about 70,000 recipients. The city reaches more people than just those reading the local newspaper, and the newsletter is an awesome outlet to tell the city’s story. People look forward to the daily email and rely on the information it provides.
When you can report to citizens the results of their city’s work and tell them the story on a daily basis through electronic media, you have a transparent government.
Author: James Bourey served local government for 37 years, including as a city and county manager and regional council executive director. He also worked as a consultant to local government for another six years. He is the author of numerous professional articles as well as the book, A Journey of Challenge, Commitment and Reward; Tales of a City/County Manager.
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Cities Must Tell the Story to be Transparent
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.
By James Bourey
April 17, 2021
The word transparency has not only come into vogue in the past several years. It is used almost ubiquitously to cover a wide spectrum of notions about open government. Virtually everyone can be advocates of providing the public a view into the workings of government, the decisionmaking process and how public resources are allocated. But does it tell citizens everything they need to know about what their local governments are doing and, most importantly, what they are accomplishing?
When the term transparency first started to gain traction, the emphasis was on how tax dollars were being spent. The solution that many advocated was to, “Put the city’s checkbook online.” Thus, some states started to pass laws that local governments needed to post their check register online for all citizens to see. Even though it would have been a cumbersome task, it would have been fine if it would have given a clear view into how tax dollars were being spent. As a city manager, I could not understand the real value in this strategy. Even a manager would have been hard pressed to gain a lot of insight from City X paying $140.00 to vendor Y. That does not tell much of the story.
In an effort to be more financially transparent, several enterprising companies developed products to display budget expenditures in a more user friendly manner. They produced software for a portal to display useful summary information on local governments’ websites that showed how the money was being spent and allowed a user to look at various dimensions of expenditures. Thus, one can see not only what a police department is spending, but also what they are spending for such things as personnel or equipment. Moreover, this information can be displayed in tabular, chart or graph form, whichever is desired.
While this is an excellent advancement, it does not tell what the government is doing or what is being accomplished. In addition, it requires an active and interested person to go to the website and seek the information. Digging into an annual budget, people can find information about what is being produced. This would include information about such things as the miles of streets that are to be paved.
This still does not address two major deficiencies in providing the public information. First, it still largely relies on the local media to run articles about what the city or county is doing. Second, citizens do not know about their government’s performance—the results from all the activity funded by the fees and taxes. To address this, local governments need to develop true outcome based performance measures and utilize electronic media mechanisms to get their messages out to the broader public.
Many local governments have been doing performance measurement for many years. However unless those measures truly provide a view into what is accomplished, citizens will not understand what they are getting for their money. It may be of interest to some that the public works crews have resurfaced X miles of roadway. However, what does that mean for the condition of the streets? The city may need to resurface 3X miles of roadway each year for the roads to be in good shape. The city needs to report the condition of the roadways each year. Results need to be reported for all critical services that the city provides.
Additionally, cities cannot rely on traditional media to get information out to the public. While in my last position as the Newport News, Virginia City Manager, it was obvious that people were relying less and less on traditional media outlets and more on social media and online publications. In order to address this, we became very active on social media, as so many cities are at this time. Cities are reaching out with Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. However, we took a major additional step and began to publish a daily (Monday through Friday) email to everyone we could. Launched in February of 2016, the email is one page with typically three stories about city services and activities. Each story is a paragraph or two with a link to a more detailed story or added information. We started with about 75,000 email addresses from various city data bases, giving people the opportunity to opt out. Some did, but we settled in at about 70,000 recipients. The city reaches more people than just those reading the local newspaper, and the newsletter is an awesome outlet to tell the city’s story. People look forward to the daily email and rely on the information it provides.
When you can report to citizens the results of their city’s work and tell them the story on a daily basis through electronic media, you have a transparent government.
Author: James Bourey served local government for 37 years, including as a city and county manager and regional council executive director. He also worked as a consultant to local government for another six years. He is the author of numerous professional articles as well as the book, A Journey of Challenge, Commitment and Reward; Tales of a City/County Manager.
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