New Tool Creates 'Common Language' for Success in City Governments
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Connecting state and local government leaders
APQC’s Process Classification Framework helps improve productivity and communications through performance standards.
For more than three decades, the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) has worked to help organizations and government entities, including the White House, work on issues of productivity and best practices.
In November, the non-profit organization, based in Houston, launched a City Government Process Classification Framework (PCF) designed to help local governments improve their productivity and improve communications by comparing performance standards with a common understanding.
John Tesmer, director of APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking initiative recently spoke with GovExec State & Local to discuss how his organization worked with Microsoft and the city of Redmond, Washington, on its new resource and how it can assist local government agencies around the country.
“The City Government PCF is designed to forge a stronger collaboration between city workers, constituents and vendors,” Tesmer said. “We’re finding there is quite a lot of interest in this with cities trying to become more efficient.”
APQC has a long history of offering PCFs to other major organizations, including Cisco Systems, UPS and Hewlett-Packard. Working with Microsoft created the opportunity for a natural partnership with the city of Redmond, where Microsoft is headquartered, in case studies to implement the PCF tools.
“The City of Redmond immediately saw the value in creating a City PCF when we were approached by Microsoft to collaborate. This framework provides the architectural guidance that every smart city needs to successfully break down functional silos and provide its citizens a consistent, efficient and most importantly, pleasant, experience when they interact with city processes,” Mike Bailey, finance director for the city of Redmond, said in a statement announcing the partnership.
“Redmond was instrumental in providing feedback,” Tesmer added. “Microsoft served as the main sponsor and subject expert around developing the parts of the framework that were unique to cities. Whereas, we’re a relatively small organization, they have people that do consulting work with cities around the world.”
Tesmer said the PCF creates a “common language” that can be used by both executive leaders such mayors but also includes functional service leaders and operations teams for finance, information technology and human resources. The common language helps all city workers identify areas in need of improvement and which components can serve as examples for optimization.
“In the past, the city would have to look at their existing process documentation,” he said. “That process is accelerated if they can develop a standard way of talking about processes. They can point to this common language in the framework. No longer are people debating about what services the city is offering. “
As Tesmer explains it, implementing a common language that looks beyond just what work is being done but what work is being done in the best way helps steer city planning beyond political discussions.
For example, mayors and city council members can use the PCF for strategic vision setting and performance management while the heads of agencies such as water and power or social care can use it as a benchmarking tool or for selecting viable business architectures for their respective areas.
“It helps them take things that were difficult to understand or articulate and make them more transparent,” he said. “If there is an objective standard around how the processes it reduces the potential for conflict.”
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