Tools for Decision Making: A Practical Guide for Local Government

This book guides readers to the mastery of a wide array of practical analytic techniques useful to local governments. Written in an easy-to-read style with an emphasis on providing practical assistance to students, local government practitioners, and others interested in local government performance, this updated third edition features analytic methods selected for their relevance to everyday problems encountered in city and county governments.

The authors outline a variety of practical techniques including the simplest that the fields of management, public administration, policy analysis, and industrial engineering have to offer. Each analytic technique is introduced in the context of a fictitious case presented over a few pages at the beginning of that technique’s chapter. Contents include demand analysis, work distribution analysis, process flow-charting, inflation adjustments, annualizing capital costs, staffing analysis, identifying full costs of a program or service, present value analysis, life-cycle costing, lease/buy analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, benchmarking analysis, and more.

This updated third edition features a dramatic expansion of Excel-based applications, plus templates and exercises accompanying many of the chapters and available online. New chapters prepare readers to:

• use statistical tests to identify significant differences in performance averages;

• construct Pareto charts;

• develop cause-and-effect diagrams;

• prepare control charts;

• detect possible discrimination in hiring and appointment practices; and

• present analytic evidence more effectively.

This book is an essential resource for students and instructors of public administration courses on analysis, methods, evaluation, productivity improvement, and service delivery.

Online resources for this book, including Excel templates, are available at

https://toolsfordecisionmaking.sog.unc.edu

David N. Ammons is a Professor of Public Administration and Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He has written several books and his articles have appeared in Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Performance and Management Review, and other public affairs journals. He has served on the National Performance Management Advisory Commission and the North Carolina Governor’s Advisory Committee on Performance Management. He was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2006.

Dale J. Roenigk is the Director of the North Carolina Benchmarking Project and a Faculty Member at the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He is the author of an annual benchmarking report on municipal services published by the School of Government. He also helped develop the County and Municipal Fiscal Analysis tool, a web-based dashboard designed to help North Carolina local governments analyze their fiscal condition. His research interests include benchmarking, performance measurement and management, and evaluation.