Under the watch of the Springfield Finance Control Board, CitiStat Springfield was developed following the example of Baltimore’s CitiStat program. Since 2008, CitiStat has collected and analyzed management and budget performance data on 21 city departments, holding monthly or quarterly meetings to discuss the data. The original intent of the program was to develop a way to bring important players to the table to have a collaborative discussion about financial, personnel and performance data with the goal of improving services, reducing costs, and increasing accountability and transparency.
When the Finance Control Board left the city in 2009, Springfield emerged a city in a much stronger position for the future than the years leading up to state control. Despite this, the city still faces serious challenges in the coming years to ensure that the financial health of the city continues to improve. Some of the challenges include the city’s structural deficit, unfunded pension liability and other post employment benefits, and a decrease in state aid due to the recession.
As a matter of survival, the City of Springfield has an urgent need to position itself for a dramatic increase in the rate of improvements to services, performance and competitiveness. CitiStat continues to provide the data and analysis that helps managers identify areas for improvement. Springfield launched Continuous Improvement Springfield (CIS) in spring 2010 in order to provide managers and employees the necessary tools to use CitiStat data to make organizational changes. CIS represents a holistic approach to organizational improvement and changing the way in which the City does business. The initiative incorporates business process metrics, continuous improvement lean tools including kaizen events, 5S events, visual controls, and elements of achieving change effectiveness (ACE) in order to create lasting changes and improvements to services.
