Accelerating the effective use of data by governments

Working with cities across the US on open data initiatives, one question I hear over and over is “How can we make sure the data we release to the public is useful?” Answering this question can be a daunting task, even for governments that have experience with open data. At the heart of the question…

At GovEx, we work with cities around the country whose leaders are committed to revitalizing aging neighborhoods, and reversing declining property values. These issues are critical to many cities and strategies to address them must incorporate a strong knowledge of the history of urban spaces, including race and racial dynamics. Recently, GovEx Senior Advisor Katherine…

Much ink has been spilled about the deterioration of America’s infrastructure in recent years: the American Society of Engineers grades our road system as a D, presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump debated infrastructure programs on the campaign trail, and The Economist asks “Is U.S. Infrastructure Destined to Crumble?” Even maintaining our current level…

Data Science and Open Data has proven to be useful in practically all fields of local government, including education and public school systems. In this episode of Data Points, we talk with Andy Smarick, Visiting Scholar and a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. He serves as President of the Maryland State…

When you think of Flint, Michigan, your first thought is likely of befouled water, not of blight, but the City is making great strides in curbing blight in its community. Serving as the linchpin and bringing together residents, community groups, nonprofits, and philanthropies, Flint has taken steps to combat blight through a few repeatable steps…

Sunshine. Tapas. Open Data. These three things (not necessarily in that order) sum up the International Open Data Conference (IODC) that three members of the GovEx team recently attended. Open Data Director Andrew Nicklin, and Senior Implementation Advisors Rebecca Williams and Eric Reese got a chance to spend the week of October 3rd in Madrid…

The most recent International Open Data Conference (IODC) took place in Madrid, Spain, during the first week of October.  GovEx Open Data Director Andrew Nicklin and Senior Implementation Advisors Rebecca Williams and Eric Reese attended the conference and sat down to share their thoughts on the state of open data around the world in this episode. Through the…

If you are in a mid-sized city and you want to compare your spending or performance to one or more other mid-sized cities, you have 286 cities to choose from. Knowing which cities are appropriate for comparison can be difficult and mysterious. At GovEx, we wanted to simplify the process of finding comparable cities by using…

Data influences our lives in a myriad of ways every day. We use it to choose restaurants, get us to destinations faster, combat gun violence, optimize our food and water supplies, and predict the likelihood of reincarceration. Electronic information is increasingly a north star for personal decisions, companies, and policymakers whose decisions have long-lasting effects…

High quality data allows for better delivery of services, more trustworthy insight, and clearer actionable intelligence. Short-term data collection (weeks/months) efforts often use tools like Microsoft Excel trades extreme flexibility for minimal quality checking. Long-term data systems (years/decades) can suffer from poor documentation, relying extensively on institutional knowledge and inevitably changing requirements. As part of…

Transparency in policing has come to national attention in recent years due the exposure of numerous civilian deaths at the hands of police officers across the country. To help improve understanding of police and community interactions, the Police Data Initiative was formally launched by the White House in May 2015. Although the Police Data Initiative is a federal initiative, it…

In this episode, we talk with Stephanie Singer, a technologist with diverse career accomplishments as a data strategist, entrepreneur, professor, and elected government official. After she earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics and tenure at a top-ten liberal arts college and worked as a Data Strategist in a small business, she defeated a 36-year incumbent in a citywide…

A phrase often used in our field without much clarity is “data science.” This week we try to demystify some buzzwords and explain data science through a discussion with two GovEx staffers who recently attended the Data Science for Social Good conference held in Chicago. GovEx Senior Implementation Advisor Matt Pazoles and Analyst Nick Hadjigeorge attended the conference a few…

Seattle is one of the fastest growing cities in the US and has long been known for being data-savvy due its association with companies like Amazon and Microsoft. However, it’s not just the private sector that’s promoting innovation and data use. The City of Seattle also works hard on incorporating data, being open about its practices,…

How is Kansas City’s streetcar helping the City make dangerous buildings safer? With its new smart city corridor, Kansas City, Missouri is using real time data and analyses to address priorities that are top of mind for residents and city staff. The KC Smart City initiative is a microcosm of the decision-making possibilities now in reach for cities across the world. …

Gun violence is an issue that plagues many major cities in the US. It is a complex and politically fraught issue, with a variety of causes and strategies to address it. This week, we try to get a better understanding of gun violence in the US through a discussion with Ted Alcorn, Director of Innovation…

The concepts of sunshine laws and open government have grown in prominence around the US in recent years. However, governments often have difficulty keeping up with changes and determining what works in terms of transparency and accountability. One of the oldest nonprofits focused on helping communities make sense of these shifts is the Sunlight Foundation. If you’re…

Finding, hiring, and retaining talent with skills using data and technology is a massive challenge in government. The question is constant: how do you find the people you need to use your data effectively, or to leverage new technology in government? We at GovEx recently released Cultivating Talent, a resource geared at helping answer that…

A lot of US cities are just getting started with open data, but Philadelphia has been in the data game for awhile. Philly’s open data program has released over 200 datasets, including those focusing on city contracts and the city budget. In this episode, Sharon and Eric chat with Chief Data Officer Tim Wisniewski of the City…

A lot of people these days are using the buzz word “analytics,” but few people actually know what it is or how it works in government. Getting started with analytics can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. In this episode, Sharon and Eric chat with What Works Cities fellow and former New York…

If data is the new bacon, training is the grill that makes that it edible. Raw data, like raw bacon isn’t great, but it has potential if you know how to use it. To make raw data useful, people need skills and tools to understand data, analyze it, and act upon it effectively. There are…

Nearly 30,000 acres of land. 600,000 trees on city streets. How does the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation manage so much of the city? “Everything starts with a map,” says Jacqueline Lu, NYC Parks Director of Data Analytics. Visualizing and analyzing data to understand how all the assets it oversees is the Department’s…

I met Melissa Kraft, Chief Data Officer in Denton, Texas, at West Oak Coffee Bar on a Tuesday last April for the Little D Open Coffee Club meetup. We were soon joined by Assistant City Manager Bryan Langley, and Alison Ream and Jessica Rogers, key staff in the City Manager’s Office. Before long, our table…

“Open source kindness.” That’s how OpenReferral talks about how it helps people connect to food pantries, medical clinics, mental healthcare, youth services, computer refurbishment programs, et cetera. OpenReferral, a “non-organization” community of practice, is the latest advancement in a century-old field helping people access human services. GovEx’s Director of Open Data, Andrew Nicklin, sits down with…

Customer service data such as calls to a city’s 311 center provides leaders with insights into the pulse of a city and the needs of its residents and businesses. Many jurisdictions make this data available to the public, albeit inconsistently, enabling researchers, journalists, non-profit organizations, and others to understand where needs are and how well…

What is a “nudge?” How can human behavior, and errors, affect the everyday work of government? How can data help government start to correct those errors? We discuss these questions and more with Elspeth Kirkman of the Behavioral Insights Team (or BIT) in this week’s episode of Data Points. Elspeth is the Head of BIT North America,…

Many cities see “performance-based budgeting (PBB)” as a fundamental and powerful practice in their governing transformation. But how do you turn an existing budgeting process into one that is performance-based (or at least performance-informed)? Who is doing it well? What can cities realistically expect from performance-budgeting efforts? What are the key things to get right…

“The problems and the data are alike in city work and astronomy,” according to this episode’s guest, Tamas Budavari, Assistant Professor of Applied Math and Statistics at Johns Hopkins University. Tamas is working to apply the same solutions he built to answer how the universe was formed to understand how housing becomes vacant and blighted…

Gotcha is a word that often unsettles many managers in performance management programs. For the most part, managers get frightened about anything performance if there is a gotcha connotation. People who are less favorable of “strict” and collective accountability practices often dismiss the value of Stat programs. They would easily agree with Norman Vincent Peale’s…

Eleven cities have made the commitment to better use data and evidence in their decision making by working with GovEx through the What Works Cities initiative. Baltimore, Maryland Buffalo, New York Cape Coral, Florida Fort Lauderdale, Florida Greensboro, North Carolina Gresham, Oregon Kansas City, Kansas Naperville, Illinois Scottsdale, Arizona Topeka, Kansas Wichita, Kansas With the addition…

Budgeting is hard. It requires difficult choices and frequently leaves government leaders open to criticism. What if there was a way to make the budgeting process more engaging, transparent, and straightforward, allowing cities to get ahead of this criticism and defend difficult choices? It’s called performance-based budgeting: allocating funds based on programmatic results that contribute…

Data visualization is a hot topic. Everyone wants visualizations that are simple, fun, and easy to understand. But where should you start when visualizing your data? This week we talk to Jon Schwabish, a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute and data visualization guru, to discuss his thoughts on how to get in the data…

If you’re thinking about building a public, online performance dashboard to update your constituents, you’re not alone. Dashboards are a popular way to get a bird’s eye view of city operations. It’s easy to see their appeal and to understand why almost every city manager and mayor I have met during the course of our What…

What is a Broadband Coordinator? Does a city need one? Why would a broadband coordinator need a broadband report card? We talk to Jason Hardebeck, Broadband Coordinator for the City of Baltimore about his post and his intentions to make it obsolete. Hardebeck is working with GovEx (via MetroLab) to develop a broadband report card,…

The GovEx team travels all over the country visiting What Works Cities, but it’s not all work all the time! In our downtime, we explore the cities we’re visiting. A delicious meal or a walk through downtown can be a great way to get to know a new place. This is also a team that…

What do gang members and biking advocates have in common? They are passionate, critical, and aggressive. And if a city engages them smartly and strategically, they can become effective partners. Just ask Fred Fletcher, Chattanooga’s Chief of Police, who has engaged gang members and bike advocates to create safer streets in two cities. In Chattanooga, a…

The City of San Francisco is often thought of as a leader in technology and data-driven government. The city’s Chief Data Officer Joy Bonaguro joins us to discuss how that reputation became a reality and how data is making San Francisco a better city for all its residents. As the city’s (and county’s) first chief…

One of the datasets most commonly shared by governments is non-emergency service request data. However, despite there being some clear common threads between jurisdictions, this information is largely a tangled mess. With some simple analysis and a partnership with the Open311 community, we hope we can change that.

After school care, suicide prevention, pothole repair, national defense. Government does a lot of good for people. But as governments look to engage their communities, the fact that they are designed to do for people gets in the way. Community engagement is not about doing *for* people, it’s about doing *with*. Community engagement is a pillar of the open data movement. Almost…

Open data is great because it’s open. But not all data is meant to be open. A lot of it is “sensitive.” What could be “open data” is often classified as “sensitive data” to protect the personal information and identity of individuals. Sensitive data may be restricted from publication, or it may be cleared for…

Shireen Santosham, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of San Jose, California, joins us to discuss all things data and innovation in San Jose. San Jose is a city of just over 1 million people in the Bay Area. You might know it because of its tech reputation and its location right in the heart…

Two Johns Hopkins University (JHU) researchers join us to take a deep dive into a discussion of policing and data in Baltimore. Since GovEx is a research center based in Baltimore and at JHU, we have a unique interest in partnering with our colleagues and exploring how data can be used in our home city. In…

GovEx Director of Performance and Analytics Carter Hewgley joins us to discuss the important issue of lead poisoning across the country. His experience at FEMA and at the District of Columbia government gives him a great perspective on what can be done at both the national and local level to combat this issue. Check out…

On April 19th & 20th, city government leaders from across the United States met in New York City for the first What Works Cities Summit. In this office hours, we recap some of the highlights of the summit with colleagues from Anchorage, Buffalo, Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma. We discuss who made impressions, what’s has been happening post-summit,…

I love air travel. I love the commotion of an airport and its city-like infrastructure and society, pondering the life story of my fellow passengers, and the planes themselves as marvels of human innovation. And at least some of my spare time is spent thinking about the aviation sector, whether its looking for opportunities to…

Welcome to GovEx Data Points, a podcast focusing on all things data and government! This is our first ever episode, so thanks for listening. In this episode, we’ll walk through some background information on GovEx and provide an introduction to what we plan to cover in future episodes. The podcast is brought to you by the team…

As you no doubt know from previous GovEx blog posts, we are both avid readers and Slack users. Every week, we pass around numerous topical articles related to how governments use data to make smarter decisions and improve outcomes for their constituents. But why keep these interesting tidbits locked inside our own Slack channels? Are…

I am willing to bet that your city probably has a variety of problems to solve, with limited resources. Almost every city faces the challenge of staying focused on its most critical priorities, and it can be daunting for a city to take on the task of determining what it looks like to “improve education” or…

I wasn’t a Slacker until I joined GovEx, though plenty of people in my network were raving about it. I love text chat and used various instant messaging and online presence tools over the years. I was excited to join an organization which prefers communication tools beyond e-mail. Here’s how we make it work.

If you’ve worked with us, it won’t surprise you that our office is full of people who spend the day reading articles and books about data and governing. But we love to read about other subjects, too! We wanted to provide a taste of what we have been reading lately. Read on to see what…

Baseball is a game of numbers. As spring training wraps up and the season approaches, each team is trying to set targets for their performance this year and set expectations for success. Governments are also often asked to set performance targets. Questions such as, “How many cases will the department resolve?,” “How much money will the government…

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During the 2016 Code Across, dozens of groups around the world used open data to create solutions to challenges in their local communities, and the event is generating an increasing amount of data portal activity. In this post, I will dig deeper into the numbers and explore the past four years of data portal activity…

Last week, the White House launched the Opportunity Project, an initiative aimed at leveraging federal and city data to improve urban economic mobility. GovEx joins more than a dozen nonprofit and private sector organizations to support this initiative. We’re making ourselves available to cities that we’re currently working with to help them add data to the platform and to…

Everyone favors knowing the cost and benefits of their actions. Knowing the cost of open data is no different. Almost each day, we all confront situations requiring us to select from many alternatives. Some of the choices can be simple; for example, choosing from a restaurant menu, deciding the color of clothing to wear, which…

When Denise McKay, Director of the Department of Personnel Management, took her new position with the City of Jackson, it took 84 days to get an individual hired. Like many professionals responsible for recruiting and hiring government employees, Director McKay was interested in reducing the number of days it takes to hire a new City…

In 2007, I knew nothing about lead. I was a new analyst for D.C. City Administrator Dan Tangherlini, and I stayed up all night preparing to brief him on the topic. I had a notebook full of facts about blood-lead levels, testing protocols, and legal injunctions, but before I could say a word, he started:…

It takes political will, clear goals, and stamina to maintain robust databases and ensure that energy data is used in a meaningful way. When you get your monthly utility bill, it’s easy to see how much energy you used in a month or year, or to see how your consumption rates against your neighbors. But for cities, getting…

One of the top questions cities ask GovEx is “how do we leverage benchmarking to improve our performance?” Benchmarking is tricky because it requires finding another city to compare yourself to, and most cities don’t have an identical twin – they have cousins. During this office hours, we highlighted multiple practitioners who have first-hand experience…

Download GovEx’s SeaStat Case Study as a PDF Table of Contents Introduction A Brief History of Stat SeaStat’s Evolution and Successes SeaStat in Practice What’s Next for SeaStat? How to Bring This Type of Stat Program to Your City/Department? Introduction “CompStat will take the police department to the next level in observing, mapping and tracking…

Wouldn’t it be great if your stat program could get you quick wins while also building community engagement? That’s just what the Seattle Police Department was able to do, even after a string of false starts, with its performance management program SeaStat. Through reasonable and effective improvements, SeaStat has created what SPD’s previous iterations weren’t…

Open Data Day 2016 is just around the corner on March 5th. GovEx is getting into the international hack day spirit by offering a few challenges of our own. This Open Data Day, GovEx is calling on YOU to help determine #WhatWorks throughout the international open data community. You don’t need to be a coder…

Introduction Open data and performance analytics are often separate practices, but are inextricable when it comes to the operations of modern governance. Open data provides the raw material for analysis and open data programs can have many goals, including increasing government transparency, sharing information to aid in decision making, engaging a broader coalition of stakeholders,…

Over the last nine months, the Center for Government Excellence (GovEx) has visited nearly 50 cities across the United States. These “discovery sessions” help Bloomberg Philanthropies and the What Works Cities initiative collect a national baseline that measures the acuity of cities for using data and evidence to inform policy decisions. Over the next 18…

I love city life for many reasons. The farmers market on Sundays (and Saturdays if I wake up in time), lunch at the Baltimore Museum of Art or Lexington Market, local food trucks, local beer…I could go on. Opportunities for good food and culture abound in Baltimore, and easy access to both are arguably some…

When half of New York City’s sewage drains were clogged with cooking oil, who found the restaurants that were illegally dumping? Who found the city’s buildings most prone to fires? Who sped the removal of dangerous trees after Superstorm Sandy? Data that’s who! Data…with the help of Mike Flowers. During his tenure establishing Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, Flowers gained…

Open data has many benefits for governments and communities: providing new channels to engage residents and community groups, increasing government transparency, and improving internal efficiency through data sharing to name a few (shameless plug – check out the GovEx Open Data page to see more). But often important data is scattered across different agencies, jurisdictions,…

Cities all over the US are actively using data and evidence in decision making, investing in what works, and improving the lives of their residents. Open data programs are a fundamental and powerful practice in this important transformation of governing. But how do you measure the impact of your open data efforts? Just as measurement…

Like many people (and dogs), it’s easy for cities to rely on old habits and tricks when thinking about their community engagement strategies. GovEx is currently working on its “Community Engagement Playbook,” a guide and toolkit for cities to use to be more thoughtful in their community engagement strategies and learn how other cities are…

Starting an open data initiative from scratch can seem like a daunting effort. GovEx has built some excellent resources, but I wanted to share my experience working on establishing a portal in the State of Maryland. Giving a first-hand account of some of the challenges we faced can help others in the same situation succeed….

I was late to a meeting when the elevator stopped to pick up two more people, one significantly older than the other, but both employees in my organization. Based on their conversation, I could tell the older gentleman spent many years delivering our programs in the field. The younger was brand new, not even finished…

It’s been nice to see some recent online discussion around the power of blockchain technologies and how they might play a role in the open data movement. Replicating bitcoin may not be the right path, but some of the benefits of blockchain, peer-to-peer technologies, smart contracts, and mp3s could be applied to enrich open data technologies, improving measurement, authenticity, distribution, metadata, and more.

Your city publishes high-quality open data, and you use that data to make smart policy decisions. Done? Not so fast. Your open data also has great potential to empower residents and foster civic engagement. Not sure how this would work in your city? You’re in luck! Many cities have experimented with engaging residents through open…

An overview of the City of Jackson’s What Works Cities engagement.

You can’t make budgeting sexy (although some of my colleagues may disagree) but you can make it more effective. Chattanooga, TN, has developed an innovative process that weaves stakeholders into this essential governmental function. In The Scenic City, Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO) is steeped in the tenets of: promoting a culture of performance and results,…

The number one question cities ask GovEx is “how do we change our culture?” Culture change is tricky because culture itself includes so many facets and factors, and most cities don’t have just one culture – they have many micro-cultures which must all be navigated and influenced differently. During this office hours, we will highlight two sets of practitioners from the cities of Denver and Chicago who are knee-deep in changing the cultures and habits of their cities. At the end of the session, you will be able to: Understand culture change in the context of data, analytics, and performance; Cite specific examples of change management efforts in two large and diverse cities; get tips on practical ways to influence culture in your city.

Open data is improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people, many incrementally and some dramatically. If we want open data to have even greater impact, we need to think strategically about how to organize it for more effective production and consumption at scale. Recently, we started gathering a list of civic data standards. This is a launching point for using interoperability to broaden the reach of data for public good.

Without context, data is just data to most people. Numbers on a screen and lines on a chart. Sure, there are people who look at a metadata description and see an opportunity for analysis: the data analysts and data scientists out there, the researchers, the civic hacktivists, the open data and performance management experts. But…

This practical guide helps government leaders and managers understand organizational culture and how to build cultures more adept with data.

Pew’s recent study made it clear that people want more context with their data. To meet this opportunity, governments and vendors have created tools that allow for custom visualizations within data portals, while resident civic hackers aim to share stories and ease friction through detailed analyses or apps. One commonly used, and misused, visualization tool…

“Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” – President Lyndon B. Johnson, January…

This practical guide helps government leaders and managers understand organizational culture and how to build cultures more adept with data.

This video highlights two of the most common concerns governments express about Open Data and provides advice and real examples on how to respond to those concerns.

A Civic Data Standard is an open, collaboratively developed set of data schematics or semantics which facilitates interoperability between multiple providers and consumers for the public good.

Bloomberg Philanthropies announced Thursday its latest round of “What Works Cities” selections. The $42 million program ultimately will provide 100 U.S. cities with expert help to make data publicly accessible, incorporate it better into decision-making and evaluate programs.

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence has created this infographic to help governments align outcomes, measures, activities and resources within a performance analytics system.

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence has created this short video to help governments get past the semantics and focus on the substance of performance measurement.

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence has created this short guide to help governments understand the practices of internal and external benchmarking.

“What Works Cities have been told they need to make progress in “data science” practices and build “data science” teams. But most people don’t know what that term means and how it applies to the real challenges they face in their cities. During this office hours, we will explain what “data science” means and explain its relevance by introducing you to Mike Flowers, one of the nation’s leading practitioners of bringing data science into municipal government. At the end of the session, you will be able to explain “data science” to your peers; cite specific examples of its application to urban challenges and opportunities; get tips on low-cost ways to launch data science practices in your city.”

Data enthusiasts must do more to help public-sector leaders understand how data techniques and tools can help them change real outcomes.

What Works Cities want to know how they can change the culture and practices of an entire city with so few people and resources. We will have experts and practitioners on hand to answer these questions and more.

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence has created this getting started guide to assist cities in implementing performance management programs in their own communities.

Michele Jolin, CEO and co-Founder of Results for America moderates a discussion with city leaders who are at the forefront of the national movement to use evidence and data to get better results for their city residents.

Municipalities across the United States have set up online data portals, allowing residents to access everything from city expenditures to 311 service calls. Panelists discuss the common barriers cities must overcome when implementing open data programs.

Interested in municipal analytics? Want to start an analytics shop in your city? We’ll help you get started, earn organizational buy-in, select projects, and much more. Hear stories and lessons learned from veterans in Los Angeles, New York City, and New Orleans.

Andrew Nicklin and Carter Hewgley​ share the top three things they wish they knew when starting out in Open Data and Performance Analytics. Kansas City will share lessons learned from years managing their KCSTAT program.

Carter Hewgley, former head of analytics for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has joined a Johns Hopkins University project to make cities’ data more accessible and help solve urban problems.

This document provides a selection of sample language intended to be included in any or all contracts established between a government and other parties to preserve the government’s ownership of its data.

Cities often already have valuable data which can be opened up. This guide helps open data program leaders rapidly identify this data within their governments.

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence has created this getting started guide to assist cities in implementing performance management programs in their own communities.

Chattanooga, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Kansas City, Missouri; Mesa, Arizona; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Jackson, Mississippi; Seattle and New Orleans will be the first to benefit from the What Works Cities Initiative.

This document contains a set of sample requirements to help governments evaluate, develop (or procure), deploy, and launch an open data web site (portal).

Finding and working with many different sets of data requires descriptive information. This metadata guide explains the basics.

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence has created this getting started guide to assist cities in implementing open data programs in their own communities.

Andrew Nicklin, former head of groundbreaking open-data programs in New York city and state, has joined a Johns Hopkins University project to make cities’ data more accessible and help solve urban problems.

The Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins, established with a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, aims to assist more than 100 U.S. cities in creating data infrastructures to transform the way their governments operate.

Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable arm of former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, announced that it is spending $42 million to create the What Works Cities Initiative, which is aimed at helping 100 mid-size cities make better use of data and evidence in their policymaking.