Performance Management:

It's been said that "What gets measured, gets done".  With that in mind, Urbandale has been measuring its performance since 2000.  The City’s leaders believe that an effective system of performance management is an essential decision making tool.  The benefits of a strong performance management program are:

1. Performance measurement helps the City to know if it is using its resources efficiently and effectively.  By comparing Urbandale's performance on a number of key indicators to the performance of other comparable cities, City officials can have a better understanding of how resources are being used.
2. Performance measurement helps the City Council to make decisions on resource allocations.  
3. Performance measurement helps the City focus its resources in areas where performance is below standards.

The performance measurement program has three components.

First, Urbandale is a member of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Center for Performance Measurement (CPM).   The Center serves a performance measurement facilitator for 220 cities from around North America.  These cities collect performance data on literally hundreds of activities and the CPM prepares comparison reports that show how each city compares to the other cities on each of the measures.  ICMA-CPM Data Report which includes data submitted by Urbandale. 

Second, Urbandale participated in the Iowa Citizen's Initiated Performance Assessment program.  Through this program the City developed a number of performance measurement indicators from a citizen's perspective.  These performance measurement indicators are reported in the City’s Annual Budget Document.
 
Third, the City conducts a biennial Citizen Survey.  This survey allows the City and its leaders to assess resident opinions about a variety of city services.