The Importance of Service Levels in a Municipality

Most communities have mission statements that publicly set expectations for that community. For example, one small city defines its mission statement as: 

“The City of… delivers quality, affordable services that ensure the health, safety, and well-being of citizens, while collaborating throughout the community to ensure its economic, social and environmental vitality.” 

These are generally created with community input so there is a large level of buy-in that these goals (and the activities related to them) are of the utmost priority. Having a mission statement is the first step to creating service levels. 

Teasing out parts of the mission statement helps identify the assets. What does the health of citizens entail? Clean water, clean air, safe buildings, appropriate waste disposal, and safe roads are certainly a few of the more important services that a city provides related to the health of their citizens.  

Each one of these areas further breaks down into responsibilities of different departments or authorities. Just take safe buildings as an example. That entails security, heat/AC, structure, air quality, cleanliness, lighting, etc.  

Within each of these categories there are critical assets. Cataloguing these critical assets and the actions needed to continue to deliver the service is the second step in establishing service levels.

Measuring service levels through KPIs

Now that the goals have been established (i.e., safe buildings) and the assets identified, determining what key performance indicator (KPI) is going to be tracked and the evaluation of the performance against that KPI is the third step. Choosing the appropriate measurement will help you determine whether you are meeting your goal.  

In our example above where the goal is safe buildings and the critical asset is the boiler, reporting the percentage of preventive maintenance (PM) actions completed could be considered a KPI. Preventive maintenance actions improve the operation, safety and reliability of the boiler.  

Therefore, it could be argued that if the percentage of PMs is high, the boiler isn’t failing often, and if the PM percentage is low, it is likely that issues will crop up that cause the boiler to breakdown more frequently. The reported number should show a level of success (70% good, 10% need improvement).

Setting expectations

The fourth step in setting service levels is to quantitatively or qualitatively explain the level of service you can reasonably achieve at the current funding level and if that funding level provides the service level that your community wants and expects.  

For example, if you have identified safe streets as critical, determining the level of service for safe streets during a snowstorm requires you to examine what level of service you can provide (at the current funding level).  

How quickly can the town clear the streets for safe passage with two plows and over 300 miles of pavement in a snowstorm?  Is that level of service acceptable to your community?  If not, what level of service would be acceptable (six hours for main streets and 24 for side streets?) And what would that service level cost?

Track and maintain

The fifth and last step is to set, track and maintain agreed upon service levels. If in the above example, the city has suggested a service level of 24 hours to make the streets passable and 48 hours to see clear to the street, and the government has allocated the needed funding (if it can’t be achieved with the existing funding) and the community agrees, that is the service level for that activity.  

These service levels should be documented, measured and reported on regularly. Cities need to revisit these service levels as new information like unexpected asset degradation or additional funding opportunities. 

In short, service levels can help set community expectations for the work that government can do and the services that can be provided. It can increase trust in government coming from the accountability of regularly reporting service levels and gives government the opportunity for success.

To learn more about ways for local governments to be successful, click here tips on how to mitigate risks and build a more resilient community.