Tools for Decision Making: A Practical Guide for Local Government

Book Synopsis: 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