Here’s Why Public Services Are Improving in 12 Cities
Salt Lake City, Utah Andrew Zarivny / Shutterstock.com
A recent IBM study found new governing structures and technology initiatives improved citizen engagement with local governments.
Cities are successfully improving their services with new governing structures and technology initiatives, according to a recent study from the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
A total of 12 cities from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City to Riverside, California, were examined, and as University of Texas at Austin professor Sherri Greenberg found, they were generally more collaborative, used inclusive policies and have been increasing the level of public engagement.
Residents had come to expect online transparency and accountability in the case study cities, and governments were responding by making performance data accessible while finding new funding and partnerships.
In her report, Greenberg cites the Entrepreneur In Residence program in San Francisco, the Kansas City Mayor’s Challenge Cabinet and the CityWorks Academy in Austin:
All of these programs bring constituents into city policy development through a formal process. Today, cities are partnering with nonprofits, businesses, and universities on new projects, programs, and funding. Additionally, they are developing new city staff roles, such as chief innovation officers and chief data officers, in an effort to eliminate city department silos.
But she also cautioned that “new partnerships and staff roles must not be a passing fad; there must be a sound business case for these new initiatives.”
Local government Web portals, 3-1-1 services, hackathons and crowdsourcing are popular, according to the study, but open data must come with visualization tools rather than just being dumped.
Greenberg identifies a number of potential partnership models for city governments, among them foundation partners like the Bloomberg Philanthropies, nonprofits like Code for America, academic organizations like Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation Project on Municipal Innovation, and private-sector groups like Socrata.
She also advises governments to look toward city officials, civic leaders or even local technology groups to “champion” the adoption and ensure sustainability of new projects:
Successful cities find champions both inside city government and outside in the community. This creates a push from two directions. Inside the city, authorized officials must promote the implementation of new governance structures, policies, and digital and mobile applications to improve services. Simultaneously, constituents in the community—from individual residents to nonprofits, companies, and technology brigades—must push for the new policies, management structures, and digital and mobile technologies to enhance service provision.
Several case study cities, including Kansas City and Louisville, measure their service provision through citizen feedback via programs like CitiStat, the study notes.
New policies and technologies should be formally adopted by city governments, the study recommends, whether through a strategic plans or ordinances.
NEXT STORY: New York City’s Data-Driven Approach to Counting Its Street Trees