As part of the City’s ongoing effort to gain insight into the trends in citizen satisfaction with services the City provides, as well as how citizens feel the City is doing in general, what they like most about living here, and what they like least about living here, the City will be conducting a citizen opinion/satisfaction survey during the week of May 15, 2000. The results of the survey will assist in assessing organization performance, as well as a guide for ongoing strategic planning efforts.

Field Research Corporation in San Francisco conducted the last citizen opinion survey in September 1996, for a total cost of $34,500. Overall, in the 1996 survey, residents of Sunnyvale gave very high marks to the City for the services they received. 95% said the City provides good to excellent service and is a good or excellence place to live.

The Gelfond Group was selected to assist the City in the Year 2000 survey after a lengthy request for proposal process, which included reviewing proposals submitted by seven firms, evaluating the proposals and selecting four firms to go forward for an interview by the team of City staff from Public Works, Public Safety, Library, Finance, and Office of the City Manager. In selecting the consultant, staff used the following criteria: completeness of the proposal; knowledge and experience in survey design, administration, approach, and presentation of results; ability to be creative and understanding Sunnyvale’s desired outcomes; ability and effectiveness in working with staff; and quality of references. After the interview and reference check, the Gelfond Group was selected based on their experience, innovative approach to conducting surveys, as well as the ability to provide key driver analysis to help guide service improvements to the community.

The City routinely conducts a variety of surveys and feedback methods related to specific municipal services and programs. From time to time, it has also conducted a citywide opinion survey to assess general public awareness and attitudes regarding community issues and municipal services. The use of surveys is to help guide policy makers and program planning. The community participation sub-element of the City of Sunnyvale General Plan also states:

• Goal 7.2C: Assure that City services, programs and policy decisions are responsive to community input and feedback while recognizing the limits to the City’s ability to expand municipal services.
• Policy 7.2C.5: Provide opportunities for community input and monitor feedback.
• Action Statement 7.2C.5C: Use surveys to determine community awareness and opinion concerning local issues and to provide information for policy and program planning.

In addition, surveys can serve as a citizen report card about local government and provide information for internal benchmarks and trends if they are conducted regularly. They can review demographic differences and opinion and help the City develop appropriate responses. Benchmark data may also provide a basis for comparison of City services against other agencies that use similar survey methodologies, as well as chart progress toward achieving community goals.

1. to evaluate and assess how well existing services are provided to our residents both from the perspective of users and non-users of the services;
2. measure how perceptions have changed since the 1996 survey;
3. assess the specific needs of the community regarding specific service areas that we may have an interest in exploring;
4. match customer expectations and requirements by demographic segment and develop actionable improvement opportunities;
5. benchmark with other high performance organizations as appropriate.

Information about the survey will be posted on the City’s web site, the KSUN bulletin board, announcement at the City Council meetings, as well as advance distribution of the survey packet to approximately 10,000 potential respondents.

In order to ensure the results of the survey are representative of all relevant constituent groups currently residing in the City of Sunnyvale, the Gelfond Group will work with staff to draw a stratified random sample of potential participants. This sample will be drawn on various geographic areas of the City and in such a manner as to produce overall result accuracy to plus or minus four percent points at the 95% confidence level.

Administration of the survey will be conducted using the Gelfond Group’s telephone survey technology—datapoll. Datapoll allows respondents to complete the survey at their convenience by calling an 800 telephone number and entering the answers using their touch-tone phone. For those who do not have a touch-tone phone, separate instructions will be provided as to how they can participate in the survey. The datapoll system also has the capability of capturing verbatim comments to an open-ended question. This system is available to respondents seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

The households selected to participate in this survey will receive an information packet from the City of Sunnyvale that will include the purpose of the survey and encouraging participation in the survey. The packet will also include a copy of the survey questionnaire and instructions on how to complete the survey using the datapoll system. All information contained in the correspondence will be in English and Spanish as well as potentially other languages yet to be determined at this time.

A reminder postcard will be sent to all households selected to participate in the survey one week after the initial mailing. This postcard will urge the household to complete the survey if they have not already done so. Should the use of the datapoll system fail to produce a sufficient number of survey responses to produce statistically significant results, the Gelfond Group will conduct the traditional one-on-one telephone interviews with targeted households in order to produce a statistically valid survey population.

A minimum of 500 completed surveys will be included in the survey in order to provide the City with statistically representative data. Again, it is planned that 10,000 surveys will be sent out the week of May 15.

Once interviews are completed, the Gelfond Group will perform all necessary data processing and will produce a detailed report that will analyze each survey question by relevant demographic sub-groups such as age, income, household size, length of residency in the city, etc. Each report will graphically display the favorable, neutral, and unfavorable results to each question and will show comparisons to the 1996 survey results, if appropriate.

Additionally, the Gelfond Group will prepare an executive summary that will highlight the key findings of the survey, compare the survey results to the 1996 survey, and provide recommendations for corrective actions to address the concerns and issues identified in the survey. This summary will contain two statistical analyses, the key driver analysis and the linkage between the employee and citizen satisfaction. The key driver analysis is a step-wise, multiple regression analysis that identifies the issues in the survey that are having the greatest influence on the key findings of the research. The second statistical analysis is to examine the relationships that may exist between employee satisfaction, citizen satisfaction, and organizational effectiveness in the City. This linkage with customer satisfaction includes items such as customer focus, availability of tools and resources to meet customer expectations, cooperation, and training.

The cost of conducting the citywide citizen opinion/satisfaction survey is included in the Program 734, Organizational Effectiveness budget for FY 99/00.

This report is posted on the City of Sunnyvale’s web site, and a copy is available in the Library as part of the normal City Council agenda process. Information about the upcoming survey administration as well as the focus group meetings has been posted on the KSUN bulletin board and the City’s web site, as well as an information flier distributed to various citizen groups.

Since the survey is an important tool to gauge citizen satisfaction of City services as well as to help improve the quality of service to the community, it is important that we encourage a high level of citizen participation. As this is an information report only, no action on the City Council’s part is required.

Prepared by:

Amy Chan
Assistant City Manager

Approved by:

Robert S. LaSala
City Manager