Benchmarking is essential in evaluation because it creates a comprehensive picture that helps drill performance and identify areas requiring continuous improvements and changes. The comprehensive picture prompts decision-makers to introduce new strategies or improve the existing ones to improve performance. For example, comparing the National Citizen Survey of 2018 to 2010, 2012, and 2015 in Arizona provides a trend in performances that can influence the city’s decision-makers to devise new strategies to improve performance in the different facets. For instance, in the safety facet, where the stocked supplies for an emergency issue have similar ratings in 2018 and 2015, there is an opportunity to identify areas of improvement
