In addition, the city will be able to track a person who has been arrested from the initial interactions with law enforcement to the judiciary system and within the correctional system. "Now, we're only able to look at those cases on a department-by-department basis without the ability to track them across multiple departments," Meadows said.

Another advantage is that Cognos can easily integrate with the city's disparate data sources so that agencies can continue to use existing work order management, fleet management, time management and human resources systems, Meadows said.

Mike Schiff, president and principal analyst at MAS Strategies in Reston, Va., said that government agencies increasingly see performance management software as a way to help account for expenditures.

"Voters want to know what is happening to their money," he said. "While Sarbanes-Oxley is aiming [for] accountability in the commercial environment, the message certainly wasn't lost on the government. The use of these performance management solutions is accelerating."