Trust and confidence in Hamilton - measuring performance

NRU
Jan. 24, 2018
By Olivia Da Silva

In an effort to give residents a better understanding of how their city is performing and how their tax dollars are being spent, the City of Hamilton released it's first-ever Trust and Confidence Report last week.

Intended to be updated quarterly, the report details the city's performance in delivering its 72 public services by responding to three questions: How much was done? How well was it done? Is anyone better off? Through those performance measures, the city breaks down its progress in each service area for residents to review in layman's terms.

Hamilton city manager Chris Murray spoke to NRU about the genesis of the report.

"This thing has evolved out of looking at a number of performance reports that are done across the country, and we've taken the best from all of them and added a little bit more to create this," Murray said. "It acts as a wonderful framework to really describe what it is we're doing and how well we do it."

A major benefit that comes from issuing a report such as this is its ability to generate feedback from residents for future consideration.

"It's really the feedback that we get about what's effective and what isn't. We can never be afraid of criticism," Murray told NRU. "I think in democracies, especially when you work for governments, you have to be cognizant of people's opinions. People appreciate when you're making those kinds of efforts."

While the feedback may not all be positive, Murray plans to use it to inform future improvements.

"To me, this Trust and Confidence Report is a way to celebrate the good things we do, to be honest with people that, yes, there are things that we need to improve upon," Murray said. "It is about being open and just wanting to always get better."

Hamilton performance excellence program manager Brigitte Minard, who was heavily involved in the research behind the report, told NRU that she was impressed with how committed staff was to contributing to this report.

"What was a really pleasant surprise was how passionate everybody is about the work that they do," Minard said. "Everybody was really focused on making sure we communicated their service in a way that was really easy for residents to understand, it was a really great experience."