GUEST COLUMN.
MAKING PERFORMANCE DATA MATTER TO ELECTED OFFICIALS
By Obed Pasha, Associate Professor of Public Management, School of Government, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“How do I get my elected board to support performance management?” Local government managers often ask this in my practitioner courses, yet the literature offers little guidance. Scholars in this area have focused primarily on technical questions: How should goals be set, progress measured, and decision-making forums structured?
The managers in my classes, however, asked a different set of questions for which I did not have clear answers: How can we best integrate performance management into our organization? What kind of organizational culture do we need to establish for performance management to succeed? And how do I convince elected or appointed officials to use performance data?
My search for answers led to several years of research and a practical guide for local government managers, “Performance Management in Local Government: A Guide to Improving Public Outcomes Through Evidence-Informed Decisions.” For the guide, I conducted five in-person focus group discussions with eleven elected officials and eight recently retired managers between August 2024 and August 2025.
Mayors, council members, and county commissioners represent constituents with competing values, ideologies, and needs. In board meetings, data may be used to advance political priorities, support favored projects, or delay decisions until the evidence supports a particular position. Managers can be caught between elected officials’ priorities and professional expectations for objective analysis. As one manager observed, “I’m not sure any data is more powerful than the commissioner saying that ‘my neighbor walked over to the animal shelter, and she said that place is a dump.’”
During my research, elected representatives identified three barriers to using performance data. First, complex, fragmented data are difficult to understand and often fail to answer officials’ central questions. One official, for example, could not determine how long it took for a business in his community to open up, because data from planning, zoning, engineering, the fire marshal, and inspections remained in separate systems.
Second, conflicting departmental evidence can leave elected officials unsure how to proceed. One council member cited conflicting data around speed bumps that reduced accidents but increased fire response times. Third, officials may mistrust data they receive from staff.
Beyond these issues, elected representatives acknowledged that short-term political pressures could limit their ability to engage in big-picture, long-term decision-making. “I have to keep focused on the short term,” said one council member. “If I don’t… I’m booted out [and] someone else will win the elections.” Elected representatives also regretted that they spend much of their time responding to public complaints about potholes and speeding, leaving little room for the big-picture decisions they were elected to make.
So, what is the solution? I asked elected representatives and recently retired managers to develop recommendations collectively for local government managers seeking to gain elected officials’ support for performance management. The ten strategies that emerged from those conversations are presented below. Additional details, including examples and quotations, are available in Chapter 7 of the book.
1. Don’t Ignore Anecdotal Data: Managers should consider anecdotal evidence alongside professionally collected data. As one county manager noted, a commissioner’s receiving complaint about the animal shelter from a neighbor can outweigh formal measures and influence the elected body’s decision.
2. Simplify Complex Data: Managers should simplify complex data so that elected representatives can understand it and confidently share it with the public. This can be accomplished through a summary note, a user-friendly table, or a dashboard.
3. Speak with One Voice: In the words of a city manager, “It is the responsibility of the manager to resolve internal disagreements regarding policy proposals.” The manager should offer professional advice on the best course of action if the data is conflicting.
4. Use Data to Justify Requests: Managers should support their requests with data that help elected representatives justify their decisions to the public. For example, demonstrate how the new fire substation will help the fire department reduce response times.
5. Long-Term Thinking: Encourage elected representatives to direct constituent complaints to staff, reserve time during meetings for strategic discussion such as land banking, water capacity, and waste management.
6. Align Organizational Operations with Board Priorities: Whenever possible, managers should align organizational actions with board priorities. For example, a parks department might celebrate holidays observed by different communities across the city in ways that bring the broader population together rather than creating siloed events.
7. Avoid Data Dumping: Too much detail can overwhelm elected representatives. For example, emphasize 10 to 15 key measures in council meeting rather than all 400 metrics collected by staff.
8. Respond to Public Concerns: Give elected officials the evidence needed to answer residents’ concerns. For example, provide neighborhood-level speeding data to help elected representatives address residents’ concerns.
9. Benchmark: Elected representatives want to know how their community compares with peers. For example, provide comparative property tax rates data to respond to resident complaints about high tax.
10. Offer Thorough Analysis: Finally, managers should make an earnest effort to present alternatives, including the possible drawbacks and benefits of their preferred option.
As I note in the book, performance management “is a tool that helps public managers navigate the sailboats of rationality and professionalism to the best of their abilities through an ocean of politics and complex environmental realities.” The above should put a swift wind behind those sails.
The contents of this Guest Column are those of the author, and not necessarily Barrett and Greene, Inc
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