Bill Coleman works with SAS local government customers across the US to understand best practices and solutions. Coleman applies his more than 30 years of experience as a senior leader in city and local government to guide SAS product and marketing management. From 1994 to 2008, he served as Town Manager of Cary, NC, the seventh-largest municipality in the state with a population exceeding 130,000. Coleman was responsible for planning, organizing and directing municipal operations, which included more than 1,000 employees and 11 departments providing a full range of municipal services. Under his leadership, Cary was the first municipality in North Carolina to work on performance enhancement system. The system was designed to help the town maintain its high quality of life by improving resource allocation and operational efficiencies throughout town government, beginning with the areas of public safety and development services.
Performance management systems are becoming more important to local governments across the country. This is true for several reasons. Citizens are calling for a more accurate accounting of how their tax monies are being spent. Local government revenues have not been growing as much as in the past and, in
Imagine a business offering a multitude of products and services that seemingly have little relationship to one another, and all are supported by different data systems. This is the plight of local governments. The products and services produced and managed by local governments range from utilities, solid waste and recycling to parks
Recently, I was having lunch with a city council member who shared a litany of comments about the outstanding job the city and its staff does in all areas of city operations. She remarked on how little the public understands about all the city does and how efficiently it’s done.
It was a moonless night in April 1912 when the pinnacle of ocean travel technology and luxury, the RMS Titanic, collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. A primary cause of the tragedy was that the captain and
Police Departments across the country are under constant scrutiny by elected officials, the media and the public to reduce crime, control costs, engage the public, always be accessible and, most important, always be courteous and professional. Police departments that demonstrate excellence in these areas can achieve accreditation by The Commission
As much as I enjoy dramatic reinterpretations, for this blog post I’m just going to talk to you about the complex challenges municipal organizations face in setting spending priorities. The complexity stems from competing aspects of the various projects vying for funding. Some of these factors are related to the
This is a dramatic interpretation of an actual conversation I recently had with the CIO of one of North Carolina’s leading cities. We discussed his experience using data quality, data integration, business intelligence and analytics in the daily operation of the city. I may have taken some...well, a lot of
Fire department operations are very complex, with multi-faceted missions that include not only fire prevention and suppression, but emergency response and fire inspections. These must be coordinated with area growth and development decisions, and water system management decisions. When a fire or an emergency occurs, the right equipment, with the right people,
Most management literature and studies posit that organizations with a clear mission and work objectives, understood by all levels of the organization, are the most productive. The key to that success is effectively communicating the mission, agreeing on key performance indicators and giving employees at all levels access to relevant
The single most costly employee benefit for any organization is health insurance, and the price is going up. From 2003-2009, the costs per hour worked for employee health insurance increased from $1.03 to $2.00. These costs continue to increase from 5%-7% per year. The reality is that employee health insurance costs will continue
Many cities and counties are taking the lead of private industry and developing 311 call centers to consolidate incoming calls for service and information requests from citizens. The business advantages are clear: Citizens have one number to call for service and information rather than having to waste time searching for
Cities and counties are responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure to support a broad range of services. Local governments must develop and implement multiyear capital projects plans that provide infrastructure for things such as jails, courts, public office buildings, streets, bridges, parks, athletic complexes and community centers, water treatment
Local governments are not immune to the rising demand for more accountability in government run services and programs, and the expenditure of public funds. Elected officials and citizens alike want to know what these programs accomplish for the public investment made. To date, the response to these questions and demands has been
Water and wastewater treatment plants are among the most complex facilities built and maintained by utility companies, whether public or private. Each facility contains thousands of pieces of equipment worth millions of dollars that must operate in concert for the many complex treatment processes to function effectively. The consequences of these assets
Over my 32 year career in local government as a city and county manager I was faced with many difficult decisions during budget deliberations. Setting tax and utility rates, adding head count, determining compensation and benefits, calculating the appropriate mix of debt and cash for funding capital projects…these were all
The downturn in the economy beginning in 2008 and continuing even to now has put tremendous pressure on local governments to do “less with less”. In the past when economic downturns caused service level cut backs the cry was to do “more with less”. The idea was to identify ways
