7 5%

PROPRIET ARY RESEARCH

The Phantom Owne r P r o b l e m

3, 664

2026

The Hidden Crisis in G o v ernment P e rf ormance

Ev ery city has a strategic plan. Most hav e KPIs. Man y ha v e assigned o wners. But our analysis of 3 , 664 metric o wners across hundreds of local go v ernments reveals a systemic failure: the vast majority of people responsible f or reporting perf ormance data ne v er actually do it. We c all them Phantom Owners.

Phant om Owner

— A person assigned as the responsible party f or a KPI who has nev er logged int o the syst em to updat e their data. The y ma y not kno w the y o wn it. The y ma y not kno w the syst em e xist s. The data the y'r e supposed to pr o vide is missing — and nobody noticed.

7 5 . 5%

of metric o wners ar e phant om o wners

2, 7 66

out of 3 , 664 o wners ha v e ne v er updat ed

12

element s per phant om o wner nobody wat ches

When thr ee-quarters of y our KPI owners ar e ghosts, y our council r eport isn't a perf ormance report. It's a fiction report.

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It's Not Laziness. It' s a System F ailur e.

1They Don't Know They Own It The most common cause. An admin builds the plan, assigns owners from a directory, nobody sends a notification. The average phantom owner is responsible for 12 elements — bulk assignment, not conscious ownership.

2

Too Many Measures, Not Enough Owners Cities with 1,000+ measures: 28.8% evaluation rate. Cities with 50–199: 53%. When you track everything, nobody can keep up. Evaluation Rate by Measure Volume

53% 4 1% 28 . 8%

5% of Cities H a v e Cr a c k ed the Code .

F ort Lauder dale, FL

65.4% EV ALUA TION RA T E 1, 888 measures. Aggressiv e pruning — cutting measur es nobody used. F e w er measur es = higher completion.

City of Goldsbor o, NC

CLEAR OWNERSHIP Goldsbor o 's strategic plan runs on o wner -assigned measur es with r egular updat es — pr oof that mid- siz e cities can close the phantom o wner gap without a 400-person team.

F ort Collins, CO

LEADERSHIP-DRIVE N F ort Collins ties perf ormance data directly into city manager re views and budget c y cles. When leadership uses the dashboar d, o wners update it.

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Diagnose and Fix Y our Phan t o m P r oblem

A f our -step frame w ork to identify phantom o wners in y our or ganization, understand wh y the y e xist, and syst ematically eliminate the gaps.

Most cities skip straight to Step 4 (buying sof twar e ). Without St eps 1–3 , aut omation just sends r eminders about KPIs nobody should be tracking in the first place.

MEA SURE

YOUR BENCHMARK: 75.5 % Pull e v ery one assigned as an o wner . Cr oss-r ef er ence with login data. Any one who hasn't logged in during the last reporting c y cle is a phantom. Belo w 50% = ahead of most cities.

1

DIA GNOSE Run through the 5 causes department by depar tment. Is it notification? Volume? Cadence? Leadership? Each department likely has a dif f erent primary cause.

2

PRUNE F or e v ery measure, ask: if this disappear ed tomorr o w , w ould any one notice? Sw eet spot: 50–199 measur es. No o wner should handle mor e than 15 elements.

3