Washington County unveils first comprehensive service-level inventory and assessment

Washington County staff on a board meeting presented the county’s first comprehensive service-level inventory and an accompanying service-level assessment, summarizing how the county delivers nearly 300 distinct services and providing internal data tools for officials to explore funding, mandates and geography of service delivery.

The assessment, developed over about 18 months by county staff with consultant Jordan Henderson of Marina and Company and led in-house by Assistant County Administrator Marnie Kyle, inventories 297 discrete services across 23 departments and programs and characterizes each on five core dimensions: whether the service is mandated, who it serves, where it is delivered, how it is funded and how equity is incorporated. Kyle told the board the work is intended as a starting point for further inquiry, not as a final prioritization or budget recommendation.

County staff built two data tools: a comprehensive service-level assessment table (an Excel row for every service) and a service-level summary (a lookup record with notes for an individual service). Staff said the dataset is internal (on County SharePoint) and will be shared with commissioners along with help sessions and one-on-one walkthroughs because the dataset is detailed and self-reported.

The presentation stressed limitations: the inventory reflects a fiscal-year-2023 snapshot, many funding and mandate details are complex and self‑reported by departments, and cost and revenue figures are approximate ranges rather than audited line-item amounts. For example, staff reported about 220 of the 297 services were identified as required by some mandate or requirement and 77 were provided for operational reasons such as business-continuity plans, strategic plans, data‑informed evaluation or community assessments. Departments also estimated funding mixes and cost bands, and staff cautioned those figures will need updating for present-day financial planning.

Staff described common use cases for the tools. ‘Green‑light’ uses include building shared understanding of service portfolios, answering factual questions such as which services are provided to specific geographies or which services receive state funding. ‘Yellow‑light’ uses are digging into trends across multiple criteria and using the dataset to prioritize follow-up research. Staff said the tools should not be used, without further validation, for final budget recommendations, compliance determinations, or service-level mandates because of the dataset’s self-reported and point‑in‑time nature.

Next steps presented to the board included distributing the internal link to the dataset, offering commissioner one-on-one walkthroughs, scheduling a board roundtable after members have had time to study the material, and using the inventory as a starting point for a May 13 financial planning and revenue‑strategy discussion. Staff said departments retained detailed notes — including legal citations where identified — in the service-level summary records and that commissioners may request deeper follow-up on any specific service.

Commissioners asked about several technical matters: where the dataset documents specific statutory or administrative citations, how geography categories (incorporated, unincorporated, urban, rural) were applied and whether items could be filtered to show only services that apply to a given geography, and how long the FY2023 snapshot will remain useful. Kyle and the consultant said specific citations were captured in many service-level summary notes when departments could provide them; the master table had a high-level checkbox indicating whether a service was required by legislative or administrative rule and the summary view showed the underlying notes where available. Staff reiterated that the dataset is searchable and that commissioners can filter and drill down to lists such as the 33 services reported as focused on unincorporated areas.

Commissioners thanked staff and the consultant for the work, described the inventory as a valuable new tool for transparency about mandates and funding, and requested a board follow-up session to surface shared questions and to identify targeted follow-up analysis for the financial planning work later in May.