City KPI Benchmarks: How Your Local Government Compares

Key Takeaways

• Most city KPI benchmarking fails on hygiene, not data volume. Across 156 local governments in the ClearPoint dataset, the median city already tracks 136 projects across 18 plans — the problem is that 63.8% of measures are stale and 77.5% of municipal objectives have no owner.
• The real benchmark cities should compare against is execution, not the metric count. Only 17.7% of the 55,000+ municipal projects in the dataset are marked complete — so a city finishing one in five initiatives is already beating the median.
• Ownership is the single strongest predictor of progress. Across 52,247 objectives, owned objectives are 2.2× more likely to be on-track than unowned ones (23.6% vs. 10.6%) — yet 64.6% of objectives are never formally assessed even once.
• Municipal government executes better than its government peers, not worse. Cities and counties run a 77.5% no-owner rate, versus 95.8% for state agencies and 90.3% for education — local government is the best-governed public tier in the data.
• Benchmark on three numbers: completion rate, owner rate, and freshness. Those three tell you more about whether your plan will survive the next budget cycle than the size of your KPI library ever will.

We analyzed the live strategic plans of 156 city and county governments — 55,000+ projects, tens of thousands of measures, and the ownership and update behavior behind them. This is what the typical city actually tracks, where benchmarking breaks down, and the three numbers that separate the cities that execute from the ones that just report.

If you run strategy or performance management for a city or county, you have probably asked some version of this question: “Are we tracking the right things? Is our plan too big? How do other cities actually do this?”

The instinct is to go looking for more data — more KPIs, more peer comparisons, a bigger library to benchmark against. But after analyzing how 156 local governments structure and run their plans inside ClearPoint, here is the uncomfortable finding: most city KPI benchmarking fails before the comparison even starts — not because cities lack measures, but because the measures they already have are stale and unowned.

The median city in our dataset is already tracking 136 projects across 18 separate plans. Volume is not the missing ingredient. Maintenance is. Across these municipalities, 63.8% of measures are stale — they have not been updated in the period you would expect for an active metric — and 77.5% of municipal objectives have no assigned owner. You cannot benchmark a number nobody is watching against a peer who is not watching theirs either.

So this article does two things. First, it gives you the real municipal benchmarks from the ClearPoint local-government dataset — the medians your city can actually measure itself against. Second, it reframes what “good” looks like, because the honest benchmark for a city plan is not how many KPIs you track. It is what share of them are owned, fresh, and finished.

The Typical City Plan, By The Numbers

Here is the shape of the median local-government plan in our dataset of 156 cities and counties:

• 18 plans per organization — citywide strategy plus departmental and program plans rolling up underneath it.
• 136 projects (initiatives) at the median — the active work a city is trying to get done.
• 55,000+ projects in total across the 156 organizations.

City government is structurally broad, and that breadth is legitimate. A software company has one product line; a city runs police, fire, public works, parks, libraries, housing, economic development, and utilities, each with its own defensible metrics. So the goal is never to shrink a city to a handful of KPIs. The question is whether the measures you carry are being maintained — and the data says, for most cities, they are not.

The Benchmark That Actually Matters: Execution

The headline municipal number is this: only 17.7% of the 55,000+ projects in the dataset are marked complete.

Read that as a benchmark, not a verdict. If your city is finishing roughly one in five of its initiatives, you are at or above the municipal median. If you are finishing one in three, you are well into the top tier of the cities we analyzed. The bar is lower than most strategy directors fear — which is exactly why the cities that clear it pull away from the field.

The companion number is freshness. 63.8% of municipal measures are stale. A stale measure is a benchmarking dead end: you cannot compare your water-main response time to a peer if neither of you has updated the figure since the plan was adopted. Before you go hunting for external benchmarks, the higher-leverage move is to get your own measures current — because a fresh internal trendline beats a stale external comparison every time.

The Number Behind Everything: Ownership

If there is one metric that predicts whether a city plan executes, it is ownership — and it is the metric cities most consistently neglect.

Across the broader ClearPoint dataset of 52,247 objectives from 324 organizations, the pattern is unambiguous: objectives with an assigned owner are 2.2× more likely to be on-track than those without (23.6% vs. 10.6%). Same plans, same software, same reporting cadence — the only difference is whether a name is attached. Yet 77% of objectives have no owner, and 64.6% are never formally assessed even once.

For local government specifically, 77.5% of municipal objectives have no owner. That is the single most fixable gap in this entire dataset. You do not need a bigger KPI library to close it. You need a name next to every objective and a recurring date on which that name reports.

Here is the part most government leaders get backwards: municipal government is not the worst offender on ownership — it is the best public-sector tier in our data.

Cities and counties are governing their plans more tightly than states, school systems, and hospitals. But the 77.5% no-owner rate still means three out of four municipal objectives are drifting without anyone accountable — and energy utilities, at 23.6%, prove how much room there is to improve.

How Your City Compares: A Three-Number Self-Assessment

Forget the 140-item KPI checklist for a moment. Pull your own plan and calculate three ratios, then place yourself against the municipal benchmark from the dataset.

Run those three numbers before your next council update. If you are below the median on completion, you are in the majority — and the first step is naming the gap instead of hiding it behind green dashboard indicators. If your owner rate is under 25%, that is almost certainly your highest-return fix: it is the lever that moves on-track rates 2.2×, and it costs nothing but a decision.

Ted Jackson’s Take: Why Benchmarking Fails In City Hall

I have spent more than 30 years helping organizations — a lot of them governments — actually execute the plans they spend months writing. I co-founded ClearPoint after years inside the Balanced Scorecard world, and the pattern I have watched repeat in city after city is the same one this data confirms.

Cities do not have a measurement problem. They have a maintenance problem. I have sat in budget rooms where a department proudly walked through forty KPIs, and when I asked who owned the third one and when it was last updated, the room went quiet. That silence is the 77.5% no-owner number made human.

The cities that break out of the pack are boring to watch, in the best way. They do not track more than their peers — they track the same things with more discipline. Every objective has a name on it. Every measure has a date by which it must be current. And the quarterly review asks three plain questions about each initiative: what did it cost, how long did it take, and did it have the impact we wanted? When I see a city doing that, I can predict its completion rate will sit in the top tier long before I ever look at the dashboard. The benchmark that matters was never the size of the library. It was whether anyone was on the hook.

What Top-Tier Cities Do Differently

Washington State Department of Licensing. Serving 6 million residents, the agency had accumulated 150+ measures — the classic government sprawl. Rather than add more, its team narrowed to a critical few and reframed performance around the people behind the numbers: who is underserved, and who is un-served altogether. They use ClearPoint to visualize performance by groups of residents and quote customers directly in leadership reports. The lesson for any city: the win came from subtraction and ownership, not from a longer KPI list.

Public dashboard leaders like Sugar Land, Fort Worth, and Olathe run their strategic progress in the open, on community dashboards residents can read. Publishing forces a discipline that internal-only plans never feel: you cannot leave a measure stale for two years when taxpayers are watching the trendline. Transparency is not a reporting nicety — it is one of the most effective freshness mechanisms a city has.

What To Do This Week

1. Calculate your completion rate. Count initiatives due in the last 12 months and how many actually closed. Compare to the 17.7% municipal median. Below it? You are normal — now you have a baseline.
2. Assign an owner to every objective. This is the 2.2× lever. If your owner rate is under 25%, fixing it will do more for execution than any new metric you could add.
3. Find your stale measures and set update dates. With 63.8% of municipal measures stale, the fastest credibility win is getting your existing numbers current before your next review.
4. Pick three benchmark numbers, not forty. Track completion rate, owner rate, and freshness at the citywide level. Report them every quarter. They will tell you more than a 140-KPI scorecard.
5. Publish what you can. A public dashboard, even a small one, converts internal good intentions into external accountability — and accountability is what keeps measures fresh.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good KPI completion rate for a city government?

In the ClearPoint dataset of 156 local governments, only 17.7% of strategic projects are marked complete, so that figure is the municipal median benchmark. A city completing one in five initiatives is at the median; completing one in three (33%+) puts it in the top tier. Completion rate matters far more than the number of KPIs tracked, because most cities already track plenty.

How many KPIs should a city track in its strategic plan?

There is no single right number — city government is structurally broad, and the median local government in our dataset already runs 18 plans and 136 projects. The more useful question is not how many KPIs you track but how many are owned and current. With 77.5% of municipal objectives unowned and 63.8% of measures stale, hygiene beats volume every time.

Why do most city KPI benchmarking efforts fail?

They fail because the underlying measures are stale and unowned, not because cities lack data. You cannot meaningfully compare a metric to a peer’s if neither figure has been updated since the plan was adopted. In the dataset, 63.8% of municipal measures are stale and 77.5% of objectives have no owner — fix those before chasing external comparisons.

Does assigning an owner to a KPI actually improve results?

Yes, and it is the strongest effect in the data. Across 52,247 objectives from 324 organizations, objectives with a named owner are 2.2× more likely to be on-track than unowned ones (23.6% vs. 10.6%). Ownership is the highest-return, lowest-cost change a city can make to its strategic plan.

How does local government compare to other sectors on strategic execution?

Municipal government is the best-governed public tier in the dataset. Its 77.5% no-owner rate is lower (better) than state government at 95.8%, education at 90.3%, and healthcare at 89.1%. Private-sector energy utilities lead all sectors at 23.6% no-owner, which shows how much headroom cities still have.

What three numbers should I benchmark my city on?

Completion rate (initiatives finished ÷ due), owner rate (objectives with a named owner ÷ total), and freshness (measures updated this period ÷ total). The municipal medians are 17.7% completion, 22.5% owned, and 36.2% current. These three predict whether your plan survives the next budget cycle better than any KPI count.

Ready to see where your city stands against these benchmarks? Book a ClearPoint demo to map your completion, ownership, and freshness rates against local-government peers — or download the 143-measure Local Government KPI Library below to build a plan worth benchmarking.

Methodology: Benchmarks are drawn from anonymized, aggregated ClearPoint Strategy platform data. The local-government cut covers 156 cities and counties (median 18 plans / 136 projects per organization, 55,000+ projects total, 17.7% project completion, 63.8% stale measures, 77.5% of objectives without an owner). Ownership and assessment effects are calculated across 52,247 objectives from 324 organizations spanning municipal, state, healthcare, education, financial services, and energy sectors. Sector no-owner rates: State Government 95.8%, Education 90.3%, Healthcare 89.1%, Municipal Government 77.5%, Financial Services 58.3%, Energy 23.6%.