Institute Programs

Purpose
To accomplish our mission, we have created a number of programs specifically designed to support you and your organization on your journey to achieving excellence in local government.

Research Program
Since our founding in 1994, we have studied many high-performance organizations to learn what makes them successful.  From this research, we have distilled a set of principles, paradigms, policies, programs, and practices which are the key elements of their success.  And, the search continues.  We are always interested in finding another success story in local government.  Will it be yours?

While much has been written about the achievements of larger cities, very little is available on small and medium-sized municipalities.  Yet, many of the real gems of local-government performance are found among these less-publicized organizations.  These innovators have not received the recognition they deserve.  And, other local-government agencies, which want to improve their own performance but are unaware of what has been accomplished already, are left to choose between re-inventing the wheel or living with the status quo.  We want to change all that.  And your organization can participate.

Publication Program
The centerpiece of this program is View from the Cordillera, our weekly commentary on achieving excellence in local government.  We have also published the Cordillera Institute Journal.  It features success stories in local government.  Articles focus on the solutions and how best to obtain them.  Written by the people responsible, they offer many ideas on what works and what to avoid on the journey to excellence.

To access the catalog of View from the Cordillera commentaries available from our archive, click here.

Information Exchange Program
Here is where our Members turn to meet their specific information needs.  Whether they have a quick question or a complex research assignment, this program can provide the answers.  It draws on a network of some 6,000 innovators in the field of performance improvement for local government.

And now, all of the services in the Information Exchange Program.are available to anyone who shares our interest in promoting excellence in local government.  Institute personnel are available to provide assistance to persons researching specific topics in this field.

Performance Improvement Program
An essential part of achieving excellence is improving performance.  The Institute has developed 2 initiatives to assist local-government agencies to do just that -- the Local Government Performance Checkup and the Comparing & Sharing Initiative..

Each of our Municipal Members is eligible to participate in the Local Government Performance Checkup.  (If you are not yet a Municipal Member, you may participate by becoming one.)  This initiative enables participants to quickly and easily establish performance baselines for 11 key municipal functions.  Those baselines can be used to set performance goals and to measure progress toward those goals over time.

For those local-government agencies wishing to use performance comparisons to drive performance improvement, we offer the Comparing & Sharing Initiative.  It empowers participants to use the comparisons from the Local Government Performance Checkup to identify the good practices that others are successfully applying.  It then gives you the opportunity to adapt those better practices to improve the performance of your organization.

Supporting Other Initiatives
In addition to our own programs, the Institute supports the initiatives of other organizations which share our objectives.  We have sponsored the Prize for Excellence in Local Government which was part of a larger improvement awards initiative for all levels of government conducted by the Fraser Institute.  When it was launched in 1998, we were in-kind sponsors of the Public Sector Quality Fair and our Director served on its Organizing Committee.  He also served on the Board of the Canadian Public Sector Quality Association, an organization which supports the adoption of quality service and management principles by all levels of the public service.