Openness, service classification and Rob Ford's service review #opendata #opengov #TOcouncil #TOpoli

Anyone following municipal politics in Toronto knows that there are huge pressures on next year’s municipal budget. Combined with Rob Ford’s promises to reduce government spending and outsource, the current performance and delivery of City services are being closely examined. As the Toronto Star has reported, consultants are being hired to review municipal spending and services looking for savings.

On April 12th, City Council considered recommendations from the Executive Committee on these service and efficiency reviews. The “core services review” is meant to “inventory all city services, their levels and standards, and to decide which are mandated by provincial legislation, which are “core” and which are “discretionary.” There will also be efficiency reviews probing how the City can provide services cheaper and better.

How do we measure efficiency in services? How effective are City services in meeting their goals and mandate? Private sector comparisons can inform analysis, but how do you evaluate the performance of services that are rarely outsourced, like delivering clean water? Comparing service levels and performance between municipalities is necessary. Even knowing exactly what is considered a service can be deceptively complicated. To do this well requires a strong understanding of how City services are defined, funded, measured and delivered. Taxonomies or classifications of services can help.

One of the tools City staff have at their disposal for service budgeting is the Financial Planning and Reporting System (FPARS), which is loosely modeled on the Municipal Reference Model (MRM). The MRM is a comprehensive approach to measuring and defining municipal services. The model in turn is made up of two parts; a metamodel and a list of stardard services.

Somewhat overwhelming at first glace, the MRM metamodel describes concepts and their relationships to each other. It defines how programs relate to services, what processes are required to deliver these services, what inputs (resources like time and money) are needed for these processes, service types, service outputs and more.

You can see how these concepts relate in the high level overview shown above.  Some of the concepts related to a municipal service like water treatment could look like this:

program: Toronto Water
service: deliver potable water
process: filter water
output: a unit of clean water

In a complete modelling of the "deliver potable water" service, multiple processes would be defined, along with required resources and relationships to other concepts. The MRM also has a set of standard named services which are typically delivered by municipalities. These were developed through workshops involving representatives from a cross section of small, medium and large municipalities. Please see this introduction to the MRM to better understand the program’s history and how it has been used by many municipalities across Canada.

Because of their well-defined structure, FPARS and MRM could be ideal tools for sharing information about City services and budgeting with the public. The City releases substantial information about budgeting and service performance, but it is usually presented already aggregated in PDF reports and powerpoints. While these structured reports are useful, an alternate and complementary way to share this information is to release it as Open Data. Interested developers, academics, media, private sectors could analyse the raw data sets themselves, develop applications to reuse the data and help the public better understand City services and budgets. The effect of budget changes on service levels, areas for improvement, and performance over time could be better identified and acted on.

One thing standing in the way of releasing the Municipal Reference Model is ownership. It is currently owned by Chartwell consulting, with access to municipalities provided under subscription. Perhaps it is time to investigate options for making it more widely available? Could FPARS be released to the public regardless?

By further opening up budgeting and service models, the City of Toronto could build a virtuous circle of increasing transparency and accountability, and potentially more public engagement. Taxpayers, residents and their representatives should not have to rely solely on consultants’ best advice for service changes. They should have to opportunity to examine the underlying data and critique the models that helped the consultants reached their conclusions. For these reasons, budget and service information should be released as Open Data. All citizens and our elected representatives have the right to openly evaluate the relationship between our tax dollars and the performance of City services.