How to ensure representativeness in citizen performance teams?
If a citizen performance team is representative of the population, it can represent different voices of the residents more accurately. Therefore, in the initial stage of the project, the grant team facilitates meetings in each city to review the age distribution, racial distribution, residential patterns, and the employment structure of the city with the performance teams, and challenge the team members to reach out and recruit citizens from the missing sectors into the teams.
How to avoid factional control in citizen performance teams?
There is no absolute safeguard against this problem. However, the meeting facilitators from the grant team try their best to ensure that every member in the citizen performance team has equal and sufficient opportunities to give their input. Also, the effort to broaden the representativeness of the citizen performance team helps reduce the possibility of factional control. Finally, the grant project utilizes diverse mechanisms, such as citizen survey, information kiosks, and focus group meetings, to solicit diverse public input and balance different perspectives on the selected public services.
How to sustain citizen interest in citizen-based performance assessment?
The grant team recognizes that this is the most critical factor to the success of the project. Before each meeting with citizens, the grant team plans carefully the meeting activities, so that the time with citizens will be most efficiently spent. Ultimately, the best way to sustain citizen interest is to show the results -- through presentation of the citizen-initiated performance measures to the city council, integration of the measures into the budgetary process, and reporting the performance of public services to the city council and the public.
Should city officials be involved in the process with other citizens?
Yes. The grant team believes that the involvement of the elected and non-elected officials is critical, because through the direct dialogue with citizens, city officials can gain better understanding of the citizen views of public services. Also, their joint participation with citizens in developing performance measures enhances the political credibility of the measures. This will increase the likelihood that the city council will use the measures in decision-making and make real changes. Therefore, the grant team encourages a city council member and a city staff representative to participate in a citizen performance team, which usually has about 12-15 citizens.