Data to Guide Town’s Appropriations, Resource Allocation and Operations

RANDOLPH, MA, UNITED STATES, September 26, 2013 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Town of Randolph, MA, has become the first in the state to adopt the Revelstone web-based performance management software for local governments.

“As public servants we are placed with a tremendous responsibility to use the taxpayers’ money wisely,” says David Murphy, Randolph Town Manager. “We must remind ourselves that the way we allocate resources can literally mean life and death. We wanted to go beyond emotion and use data to support our decisions“.

Revelstone’s COMPASS software enables local governments to measure their performance, identify trends and correlations, and develop insights to achieve the best outcomes for services provided to citizens. COMPASS is the only comprehensive performance analytics and benchmarking platform designed exclusively for the needs and budgets of towns, cities, and counties and includes a library of over 500 pre-defined metrics specific to local governments. Revelstone Compass currently serves more than 1 million citizens in six states.

Mark Nelson, Revelstone’s COO and a co-founder, notes “We see our mission as helping local governments make informed decisions by having the up-to-date facts readily available. In this time of fiscal challenges tough decisions are on the table, and hard data can help the parties have productive, data-driven discussions, decisions and follow-up to know the outcomes.”

Randolph is undergoing a major transformation with an infusion of tax dollars from a 2008 levy override and a 2010 change from a town meeting form of government to a city charter and town manager. Murphy recognized that city leaders would need hard data to guide their decisions and measure their progress. Randolph will use the Revelstone platform for performance reporting and analysis to guide appropriations, evaluate the effectiveness of expenditures and streamline operations, Murphy said.
For Randolph, decisions made on resource allocation could have a profound impact. For years the town of 32,000 residents struggled with high crime rates and decaying infrastructure. The opportunity to make much-needed changes also brought its own set of challenges. With so many urgent needs, city leaders needed to prioritize competing requests.

“Data will depoliticize decisions,” says Murphy. “Now when I go to the council with a request for an appropriation, I will have the data to support the request and the means to track and measure our performance to make sure we’re using the money to best service the public and for budget management.”

While fiscal pressures continue, Randolph has improved services. Its crime rate has been reduced by 25%. The town is considering an overhaul of its library system to provide the digital technology and array of services its citizens need. A beautification program is underway. Randolph also is promoting its diversity, as a welcoming place where people of all races, ethnicities and nationalities live and work side-by-side.
Meanwhile, Murphy now has the technical expertise to move beyond “feel good” decisions and measure progress in a way that is also very user-friendly.

“Revelstone has the complexity to measure hundreds of different performance metrics,” says Murphy, “but it is presented in a way that is very easy to manage and train our staff.”

Revelstone COMPASS requires no hardware, software, programming or specialized expertise. Data is organized for easy viewing on the user’s customized COMPASS dashboard. Pre-defined measures for each department enable managers to capture results, measure productivity, effectiveness and quality of service; custom measures can also be added. Governments can measure results against internal benchmarks and compare outcomes with other municipalities, learning from peer innovations.

Randolph is in the start-up phase and will use Revelstone initially to measure its own progress before comparing its data to that of other similar cities in the region and across the country.
About Revelstone

Revelstone Compass is the only software system designed to help local governments perform at their best through the use of current, accessible data and benchmarking. Municipalities benefit from the insights derived from their own data, as well as access to innovations from other similar towns. The Compass dashboard centralizes data trapped in various departmental systems, so that trends and correlations are readily apparent. Compass is web-based, easy to implement and affordably priced. Learn more at http://www.revelstonelabs.com or call 201.649.1716.

Mark Nelson
Revelstone
201-649-1720
email us here

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