In these challenging budgetary times, wouldn’t it be great to have a foolproof tool that would tell you how prioritize spending to best satisfy your citizens?    

The National Citizen Survey™ (NCS) offers you exactly that. A tool called the Key Driver Analysis has been integrated into the basic NCS service at no additional cost. You might say, “I know my citizens think that core services should be our highest priority.” But based on an analysis of thousands of surveys over a period of several years, the Key Driver Analysis will surprise even the most “tuned in” local government leaders.   

Here’s How it Works
The Key Driver Analysis is a tool borrowed from the private sector where purchasing choices often are motivated by services that are not the most obvious nor those chosen by the consumer. For example,  safety may be the criterion stated for selecting an air carrier but that is not why customers choose Frontier over Delta – KDA shows that it's in-flight entertainment and frequent flier perks. After an extensive analysis of the thousands of surveys in the NCS database, a parallel pattern emerged. 

Excellent delivery of standard “core” services like fire protection, water quality and trash haul often is not what drives residents’ rating of overall local government service quality.  The services most influential to an overall service quality rating can be unexpected – like planning/zoning, economic development or public information.  KDA identifies those influential services. Delivering key drivers well can have great impact on overall service ratings.  For example, if a community scores well on its five key drivers, the overall quality rating is estimated to be 71 on a 100-point scale (where 0 is poor and 100 is excellent). If those same five key drivers, instead, were rated just “fair,” the rating of overall service quality would drop by 27 points to 44 on that 100 point scale. You need to know what your key drivers are.  That’s just one way The NCS tells you what services matter most to your residents.