One of the key themes in performance improvement is the need for local authorities both to operate efficiently and to show that they operate efficiently. While no authority wilfully wastes money, statistics such as the Audit Commission's Performance Indicators show that some authorities appear to have higher unit costs than others. These may or may not present a fair picture, but an authority cannot prove to local taxpayers that it is offering value for money unless it can provide some evidence. Such evidence is also a necessary requirement for Best Value and Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA).

Benchmarking helps answer fundamental questions such as:

• How are we performing ?
• Are we performing better year on year ?
• How does our performance compare with our peer organisations ?
• Can we learn anything from other organisations ?

We launched four Benchmarking Clubs in 1998 and have since expanded the range to cover most of the main financial services. CIPFA Finance Benchmarking offers a unique product currently delivered to 1,650 members of individual Clubs.

The strengths that make CIPFA Finance Benchmarking Clubs so successful are:

• A large and proactive membership
• Consistency through common and robust definitions
• Careful validation of data supplied by members
• Confidential comparisons with a wide range of similar authorities
• Detailed reports showing not just how members compare in terms of headline cost benchmarks, but also some of the reasons why their performance differs from others'
• Exchanges of experience between members
• The opportunity to learn from other authorities' successes and failures
• Learning from 'good practice'
• The ability to compare with members who have contracted out services
• Savings in time and cost, as the effort of defining and collecting benchmarks is spread over all club members.

Comparing like with like by producing precise definitions of what is being benchmarked and applying data validation techniques to ensure the benchmarks provided are as good a comparison as can reasonably be expected.

Encouraging participation by the use of member steering groups, information meetings and review meetings.

Promoting good practice by circulating checklists and monitoring the degree of compliance.

Facilitating exchange of information, methods and ideas.

Enabling further process comparison by supplying the full database of raw data to all members returning data.

Mapping performance trends over time.

Collating and providing information on quality initiatives employed by members.

Best Value is as much concerned with the quality of services as with their cost.

The main focus of the CIPFA Clubs is on benchmarking costs and other workload-related measures. This is not by choice, simply because it is so difficult to measure and compare quality. Where Best Value Performance Indicators are defined, many clubs collect these. In addition, most of our clubs use Good Practice questionnaires to monitor achievement against predefined good practice.

Each club questionnaire also has a Scrapbook section where we collect textual and quality information that is compiled for all members and circulated via e-mail. Previously asked questions include information on e-commerce, customer satisfaction, staff retention and recruitment, future departmental developments and details of best value service reviews.

Club members agree to respect the confidentiality of all information. To this end all reports refer to individual members by letters and a key to the names is provided separately, which members are asked not to show to anyone other than their immediate colleagues.

Each CIPFA Benchmarking Club operates along the following lines:

Membership is open to public sector organisations via an annual subscription. This fee covers documentation, data collection, telephone helpline, reports and one place at information and review meetings.