Citywide Comprehensive Performance Report
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES & PRACTICES
Performance Management Practices
The following section details the City’s practices on performance management. As mentioned at the start of this series, practices represent recurring actions, roles, and routines that put the performance management principles into effect.
Performance management practices have been grouped by role to highlight the duties of each key group and where responsibilities begin and end. These roles include: City Council, City Executive leadership, the Performance & Analytics Department, and City Departments.
Performance management is a shared responsibility. It requires:
- City Council to help connect City performance to public priorities, policy, budget decisions, and resident accountability,
- the Executive Team to set direction and use performance information in decision-making,
- the Performance & Analytics Department to maintain consistent standards, processes, and reporting, and
- City departments to own the performance of their services, data, and improvement actions.
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| City Council | Use performance information to support public oversight, inform policy discussions, budget review, and communication with residents, helping connect service performance to policy and priorities, resource decisions, and public accountability. |
| Executive Leadership | Use performance information in strategic, budget, and service-level discussions and decisions; review major performance issues; resolve cross-department challenges; ensure goals and targets are realistic; reinforce learning-oriented accountability. |
| Performance & Analytics Department | Maintain KPI standards; administer annual, quarterly, and event-triggered KPI reviews; support departments; review measures for accuracy and clarity; publish the CCPR; identify issues needing deeper review. |
| City Departments | Define intended outcomes; maintain accurate KPI data; submit updates on time; explain performance changes; participate in KPI reviews; identify when measures need to change; use data to improve services and support budget discussions. |
The table below serves as a high-level summary of the key practices that help put the City’s performance management principles into effect. As mentioned above, each of the key groups listed has a role to play in the undertaking of these practices.
| Practice | What it is | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Annual KPI update | A yearly process to review and update KPIs, usually aligned with the budget cycle. | Keeps public and budget-facing measures current, accurate, and connected to organizational priorities. |
| Quarterly KPI review | A regular check-in on if KPIs are still accurate, relevant, and useful, and whether results have changed in meaningful ways. | Creates a routine for learning from performance trends before issues become stale or disconnected from management action. |
| Event-triggered review | A review that happens outside the normal schedule when something significant changes, such as a new KPI, major performance deviation, data issue, or service change. | Allows the City to respond when a measure or result needs attention sooner than the next scheduled review. |
| KPI documentation | A standard record of each KPI’s definition, data source, owner, frequency, limitations, targets or thresholds, and changes over time. | Protects consistency, transparency, and institutional knowledge so measures can be understood and compared responsibly. |
| KPI adjustment | The process for revising, retiring, replacing, or reclassifying a KPI when the measure no longer fits the service, data, or decision need. | Keeps the performance system flexible while ensuring changes are intentional, documented, and not confusing to users. |
The City’s practices are designed to make performance management routine, useful, and connected to real decisions. This includes regular KPI review, clear documentation, thoughtful adjustment of measures, and a shared commitment to using performance information to understand service delivery, improve outcomes, and support transparency.
Practices: City Council
City Council plays an important role in the performance management system by helping connect public reporting to democratic accountability, policy priorities, budget deliberations, and resident concerns. In a strong-mayor form of government, Council’s role is centered on public oversight, legislative priorities, budget authority, and policy deliberation. Performance information can help Council understand service conditions, evaluate trade-offs, and communicate clearly with residents.
Council’s role is especially important where performance information informs budget decisions, service-level expectations, equity outcomes, citywide goals, or issues of significant public concern. Public performance reporting, including this publication (the CCPR), should help elected officials understand what services are being provided, what outcomes are being pursued, where progress is or is not being made, where challenges remain, and what constraints or trade-offs may affect results.
As part of this role, City Council serves to:
- Use performance information to support budget review, policy development and deliberation, and public oversight.
- Ask questions that clarify service levels, outcomes, equity impacts, resource needs, and trade-offs.
- Focus on policy, budget, service outcomes, and public accountability, while allowing operational implementation to be addressed through the appropriate administrative channels.
- Help identify community concerns or public priorities that may warrant further analysis or reporting.
- Use public performance information to communicate clearly with residents about services, progress, challenges, and constraints.
- Consider performance trends and context when evaluating proposed investments, reductions, or policy changes.
- Support transparency by encouraging clear, accessible, and meaningful public reporting.
Practices: City Executive Team
The City Executive Team represents the highest decision-making group that reports to the Mayor. It consists of top leadership from each branch of the organization and the Chief Operating Officer (COO), a role currently filled by the Mayor.
Executive leadership provides the direction and accountability needed for performance management to matter. Its role is to ensure that performance information is not only collected and reported, but used to guide priorities, evaluate trade-offs, address risks, and improve services.
The Executive Team helps reinforce clear expectations that performance management is part of how the City leads, budgets, plans, and improves. This includes setting the expectation that performance data should be used to understand results, ask better questions, identify needed action, and support accountability, not simply to comply with reporting requirements.
Leadership at the executive level is especially important when performance issues extend beyond a single department. Some results are shaped by shared systems, resource constraints, policy choices, community conditions, or cross-department work. In those cases, executives help determine whether the issue requires operational attention, budget consideration, policy direction, or coordinated action across departments.
The Executive Team serves as the group responsible for ensuring alignment with broader organizational goals and championing a performance culture with their departments.
As part of this role, the Executive Team serves to:
- Reinforce organization-wide expectations for performance review, transparency, and continuous improvement;
- Use performance information to inform strategic planning, budget development, service-level discussions, and outcomes-based budgeting;
- Review major performance issues, significant deviations, or unresolved risks that require leadership attention;
- Help solve cross-department performance challenges where shared accountability is needed; and
- Support a learning-oriented accountability culture, where underperformance prompts inquiry, action, and follow-through rather than finger pointing.
Practices: Performance & Analytics Department
The Performance & Analytics Department (PandA) stewards the City’s performance management system. Its role is to establish performance standards, provide structure, consistency, quality assurance, and support so that departments can use performance information effectively. PandA also helps to ensure that public reporting is accurate, meaningful, and aligned with organizational goals.
PandA does not “own” departmental performance. Departments remain responsible for their services and results. Instead, PandA maintains the common framework that allows performance information to be reviewed, compared, explained, and reported in a consistent way.
As part of this role, the PandA team serves to:
- Maintain standards for metrics, KPIs, public-facing measures, internal management measures, and measures that are under development or no longer active.
- Administer the KPI review and maintenance process, including annual updates, quarterly reviews, and event-triggered reviews when significant changes or concerns arise.
- Coordinate with departments to ensure KPIs remain relevant, accurate, and aligned with operational objectives and strategic goals.
- Maintain the official KPI documentation system, including definitions, data sources, owners, reporting frequency, limitations, targets or thresholds, and version history.
- Support appropriate adjustments to KPIs when services, data sources, strategy, or operating conditions change.
- Curate public-facing performance reporting, including the CCPR, so that information is understandable, useful, and not misleading.
- Help connect performance measures to service definitions, equity analysis, strategic priorities, and outcomes-based budgeting.
- Provide guidance, templates, training, and quality review to build department capacity.
- Identify when a KPI issue may require deeper performance management, operational review, or executive attention.
Practices: City Departments
Departments own the performance of their programs and services. They are closest to the work, the data, the operating conditions, and the residents or customers served. For that reason, departments are responsible for ensuring that performance measures are accurate, meaningful, and used to support service improvement.
Departments should define the services and programs they provide, identify the outcomes those services are intended to influence, and select measures that help explain service delivery, service quality, access, efficiency, equity, and / or results. Strong department performance management should connect day-to-day operations with broader organizational goals.
As part of this role, City departments serve to:
- Define major services, programs, outputs, service levels, and intended outcomes;
- Identify short-term performance targets based on realistically available resources and long-term performance targets based on continuous improvement and the ultimate desired outcome;
- Propose and maintain meaningful KPIs and supporting measures;
- Submit KPI information accurately and on time through established review and reporting processes;
- Ensure that department data is complete, reliable, and explained in context;
- Participate in regular KPI reviews with PandA;
- Explain significant changes in performance, including the operational, resource, policy, staffing, demand, technology, or community conditions that may affect results;
- Identify when a KPI should be revised, retired, replaced, or reclassified as internal- or external-facing;
- Use performance information in regular management routines, service planning, budget development, and improvement efforts;
- Connect KPI results to service levels, resource needs, budget trade-offs, and outcomes;
- Support equity analysis by identifying relevant access, service, geographic, demographic, or community-level differences where appropriate.