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What We Do: CPM

ICMA's performance measurement program has been developed over a decade by city/county managers and other service-area specialists. Participating in the ICMA program prevents your community from recreating the wheel and provides you with comparative data from nearly 200 cities and counties.


ICMA certainly encourages all jurisdictions to engage in some form of performance measurement activities. However, ICMA's performance measurement program provides consistent definitions for comparative data.

For example, the use of "lane-miles" would seem to be a logical data element for road maintenance. However, differing widths of roads, curbs, and gutters complicate this seemingly easy measure. These and a host of other similar adjustments are made to ensure apples-to-apples comparability among jurisdictions.

This means:

  • You and your staff can spend far less time on data definitions, refinements, and collection and more time on using the data and other information to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of services, while saving taxpayers' dollars.
  • Your community is linked to other participants in the program, so you can learn from their experience, and they can learn from you.

There can be no guarantee that performance measurement will lead to cost-savings and/or improvements in the effectiveness of public services; however, even a modest improvement in one service area every five years could well pay for the time and expense of undertaking performance measurement.

Consider the following questions in the context of performance measurement:

1.  How much time and effort does my city/county spend on:

  • Developing and preparing budgets?
  • Monitoring month-to-month financials?
  • Preparing the comprehensive annual financial report?
  • Auditing its financials?

2.  How do efforts and expenditures in the aforementioned categories compare to the efforts to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery (i.e., performance measurement)?

3.  How much money does my jurisdiction spend to track dollars compared to amounts devoted to tracking the efficiency and effectiveness of services that these tax dollars support?

CPM 101

One power-packed, low cost program intended for local governments new to or seeking an introductory approach to performance measurement.

  • 100 questions across 14 service areas
  • Online, live webinar format training on limited, predetermined dates
  • Access to data from CPM 101 participants only and norms from all CPM Participants (Comprehensive and 101)
  • Basic graphing tool built into Excel data file
  • PDF report featuring graphs and narrative for key indicators with data from CPM 101 participants only
  • $995/year, no training fee. Sign up by December 31, 2011 to lock in this rate.

 

CPM Comprehensive Program

Our flagship program. Local government have been reaping the benefits from our CPM Comprehensive program for 17 years.

  • 1000+ questions across 18 service areas
  • Onsite training in your community on a date of your choosing
  • Access to data and norms from both CPM Comprehensive and CPM 101 participants
  • NEW robust, online data query, reporting, and analysis tool
  • PDF report featuring graphs and narrative for key indicators with data from all CPM participants (Comprehensive and 101)
  • Monthly participants-only webinar series
  • Discounts on performance measurement-related ICMA University workshops
  • Private website with instant access to program data from 2003 to the present and easy download of data reports, effective practice case studies, and other resources from 2001 to present
  • Bound and unbound copies of the Annual Data Report
  • Copy of What Works case studies with best practices of high performing jurisdictions
  • Core measures (10-20 measures for each of 18 service areas)
  • $5,550/year + $4,000 training fee in the first year

CPM has developed three additional options of participation that allows jurisdictions to participate in their own way. Brief descriptions of these offerings are listed below:

CPM-SC (small communities)

  • Available to local governments with a population of 10,000 or less
  • Annual fee of $2,675 for up to 15 service areas
  • $500 remote training fee
  • Same services that are offered in the comprehensive program (see above), but the primary focus for most communities on 10 or fewer service areas
  • Emphasis on core measures (10-20 measures per service area) to narrow the scope of data collection efforts

CPM-ALC (a la carte)

  • Measure and collect data for one to two service areas
  • Annual fee of $1,625 for 1 service area; annual fee of $2,675 for two service areas
  • $500 remote training fee
  • Data submittal via paper only
  • Fully cleaned data for the service area(s) your jurisdiction participates in provided in electronic format
  • Core measures (10-20 measures per service area) for jurisdictions that want to narrow the scope of data collection efforts 

Metropolitan-area or statewide performance consortia

  • Available to clusters of 10 or more jurisdictions that agree to be trained in a single location
  • $4,000 one-time on-site training fee waived- first year savings fee of over 40%
  • Same services that are offered in the comprehensive program (see above)
  • Area-wide consortium provides more opportunities for comparisons within a region
  • Facilitates the sharing of effective practices
  • Service areas in each regional consortium can select its own set of core measures (10-20 measures per service area) 

For more information on the other services offered by CPM, please visit Services and Publications.

To join one of these programs or for more information, contact a representative from the CPM staff, email cpmmail@icma.org.

Downloads

ICMA Center for Performance Measurement brochure