"The Plain Dealer's use of selective benchmarking results in misleading conclusions"

I was glad to see printed in the Sunday May 24, 2009, Cleveland Plain Dealer "Cuyahoga County staffing, services unfairly characterized in Plain Dealer series [1]", by James McCafferty, Cuyahoga County's administrator. There he challenges several PD analyses of Cuyahoga County government performance, writing "The Plain Dealer's use of selective benchmarking results in misleading conclusions", which he claims are "disingenuous and intellectually dishonest".

I've spent several decades providing professional benchmarking services to some of the world's largest corporations and completely agree - the PD does not provide a good analysis here, it is not "apples to apples", as they say, and so it is harmful to the community.

I had intended to write something quite similar here about this issue, myself. I was glad to see McCafferty speak-up for his administration, and with some authority.

Bill Callahan, in is Cleveland Diary [2], had also observed the poor analyses by the PD and recently wrote "The Plain Dealer’s big “analytical” comparison of county agency spending (Cuyahoga County agencies have more workers, less productivity than others in Ohio, Plain Dealer analysis finds [3]) is such a misleading, misdirected mess that it’s hard to know where to start."

After four years on the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council, which works with Cuyahoga County on lead poisoning eradication, I know the county has many benchmarks in place measuring performance of their programs and initiatives - the work I have done with the county was analyzed under contract by Cleveland State. It is very valuable to benchmark aspects of government, over time and against best in class, and I would encourage expansion of benchmarking as a tool for continuous improvement in government, always.

But benchmarking is not the same as building a spreadsheet, and the PD does the practice disservice by suggesting their analyses are good science, thorough and unbiased. They best stay out of the competitive analytics businesses and stick to public relations... unless their editors feel negative campaigning against public confidence in County government is some form of public relations service.

The header of the day is a Cuyahoga County Auditor's neighborhood office in North Collinwood I just happened to come by, Sunday. It seems Cuyahoga County has many department and service outreaches like this across the region... is this good or bad? What is the value?

The county has a huge and complex scope and footprint. Such complexity - and the quality of services that result - drive cost and workload to determine value of government. To attempt to make the understanding of this more simple than that - to skip steps in measuring costs and benefits - leads to completely invalid results.

I'd love to see good results, but the PD can't deliver that - they do not have the resources.