Navigator Award Finalist: Beth Blauer, Center for Government Excellence and What Works Cities
A program to showcase data-driven success stories in select cities aims to improve municipal operations across the country.
This the third in a series of profiles on the 50 finalists for Route Fifty’s Navigator Awards program. The first 10 finalists were from the Government Allies and Cross-Sector Partners category. Finalists 11-20 were from the Agency and Department Leadership category. Finalists 21-30 were from the Executive Leadership category. Finalists 31-40 were from the Next Generation category. Finalists 41-50 were from the Data and IT Innovators category. Explore our complete list of 50 finalists .
City halls are living laboratories for data scientists, analytics gurus and performance management minds, and What Works Cities , a $42 million initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies that launched in April 2015, is one of the more ambitious programs in the municipal space. It’s aim is not only to help midsize cities better leverage their data, but also to study those data-driven efforts so local governments can improve the way they deliver public services and manage their operations.
The program will eventually include 100 cities, which is no small undertaking. A coalition of institutional partners are involved with What Works Cities, including Results for America , the Behavioral Insights Team , Government Performance Lab at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University.
“We’re trying to get a better picture of what good looks like,” Beth Blauer , executive director of the Center for Government Excellence, said during a panel discussion at last year’s Code for America Summit in Oakland, California.
As part of the Navigator Awards program, Route Fifty is happy to include a data analytics veteran like Blauer, who is “one of the creators and remains at the heart of What Works Cities,” according to a nomination submission.
What Works Cities has required a lot of commitment from the participating cities, but Blauer—a former Maryland juvenile services probation officer who would later lead Maryland’s StateStat program and Socrata’s GovStat—helped to harness a lot of know-how, enthusiasm and expertise through WWC. And that expertise that can be used to improve agency operations, solve tricky municipal problems and build stronger data-management practices.
What Works Cities offers up a lot of fascinating case studies from places like San José , California; Chattanooga , Tennessee; and Kansas City , Missouri. As the program grows and case studies continue to pile up, many more local agencies can benefit from the amassed expertise and insights into what makes cities work well.
Michael Grass is executive editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty and is based in Seattle.
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