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welcome
The North Carolina Benchmarking Project was initiated
in September 1995, providing a comparative basis
for local governments to assess service delivery
and costs. It allows municipalities to compare themselves
with other participating units and with their own
internal operations over time. The benchmarking
process includes compiling service and cost information,
cleaning the data for accuracy, calculating the
selected performance measures, and comparing the
results.
The North Carolina Benchmarking Project has achieved
some overall goals and produced some valuable lessons
regarding performance measurement, benchmarking,
and cost accounting, in addition to specific results
for the participating municipalities.
What the project has achieved:
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The project's methodology, consisting
of service profiles, performance measures, cost
accounting, and explanation of results, provides
a comprehensive source of information to compare
service delivery and cost between jurisdictions.
The project's accounting model is especially effective
in capturing the full cost of service delivery.
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The performance data have been
used in numerous jurisdictions for service improvement,
especially in the areas of residential refuse
collection and household recycling.
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The project's success is directly
related to consensus of service definitions and
measurement statistics, involving numerous local
government officials from the participating municipalities.
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Local governments can produce
accurate, reliable, and comparable performance
and cost data, which can be used for service improvement.
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Specific service definitions
are vital to performance measurement and benchmarking,
including explanatory information.
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Data availability and data quality
are very important to performance measurement.
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Auditing or verifying the accuracy
of performance data is a necessary component of
performance measurement and benchmarking.
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Performance measurement and cost
accounting are time consuming. However, performance
measures provide valuable information in the quest
to provide quality services at reasonable cost.
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