Data-informed and evidence-based decision making can drive optimum outcomes in local governments. Rob and Jackie sat down with Rochelle Haynes, managing director of What Works Cities, to discuss how technology and innovation are being used in cities to equitably deliver services and solve problems.

Related

• Rochelle Haynes, “How Cities Can Harness the Power of AI in 2024,” (What Works Cities, 2024)
• Ash Johnson. “Balancing Privacy and Innovation in Smart Cities and Communities,” (ITIF, 2023).

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Rob Atkinson: Welcome to Innovation Files, I'm Rob Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Jackie Whisman: I'm Jackie Whisman, I head development at ITIF, which I'm proud to say is the world's top ranked think tank for science and technology policy.

Rob Atkinson: This podcast is about the kinds of issues we cover at ITIF, from the broad economics of innovation to specific policy and regulatory questions about new technologies. If you're into this stuff, please be sure and subscribe and rate us, it really does help.

Jackie Whisman: Today we're talking to Rochelle Haynes who's managing director of What Works Cities and Effort under Bloomberg Philanthropies that recognizes and celebrates local governments for their exceptional use of data in city services. I am really excited about this one so we're going to jump right in if that's okay with you. Welcome.

Rochelle Haynes: Thank you. Thank you, thank you. First and foremost, thank you Rob and Jackie for the warm welcome and inviting me to participate on an Innovation Files podcast, it's a pleasure to be here to talk about one of my favorite subjects, local government and how local governments are on the front lines of addressing emerging and existing challenges that impact the quality of life for residents. It is with that understanding of the key role that local governments play, which actually led to the creation of What Works Cities. We were founded in 2015 by Bloomberg Philanthropies, and it's led by results for America to help local governments use data and evidence at scale to tackle the most pressing challenges of the day, with the goal of improving the quality of life for residents. We were established to not only recognize and celebrate cities that were leading in the field of data innovation, but to provide them with an actual standard of excellence, a roadmap on what it means to be good, well-managed data-driven local government, and to provide those cities with a public recognition in the form of certification, which I know we'll talk more about.

To celebrate cities that are actually leading in this way, so far we have 83 cities serving 67.5 million residents that are certified at our levels of silver, gold, or platinum. The way we work with cities is we want to evaluate how well city governments are managed by measuring the extent at which leaders incorporate data and evidence in their decision making. In other words, do they have the right people, policies and processes in place to put data informed and evidence-based decision making at the heart of local governments? I'll pause there, but I'd love to share more about how we actually work and engage with cities.

Jackie Whisman: You talked about your certification process and so maybe you can tell us some of the markers that you use to identify cities. Is it cities with the most potential? Is it cities that are doing a good job and going in the right direction? Tell us a little bit more about how you identify the cities initially.

Rochelle Haynes: Absolutely. Our program is open to cities with a population of 30,000 or more in the US, throughout the US as well as Canada, Mexico and Central and South America. I'll say when our program first started, we were strictly a US-based program, but about two years ago we decided to open up to all of North America, Central and South America because we recognized that the issues and challenges that were happening at the local government level were global issues. All cities are trying to deal with the impact of climate change, all cities are dealing with homelessness or trying to deal with inequality, and so why not open up the conversation to be a global one, so create a program that is a global best practice sharing among cities.

We're open to everyone at any part on their data journey. You can be a city that has zero data practices, and we've had cities engage with us there, as well as cities that are more advanced, that understand the commitment to continuing to sustain their data practices and having a strong data foundation as being the foundation of how they can make effective policy and program development.

The way that we work with cities is, we created what we call our standard of excellence, our local standard of excellence, which allows cities to then get certified. Think of it as your benchmarking analysis, right? A city comes in and they take an assessment and they really measure themselves against eight foundational practices that we develop with leading experts across the field, on what does it mean to excel at being a city that's leading with data informed and evidence-based approach. Think of things like, we're asking cities about their data management policies. What type of rigorous evaluations do they have in place to actually see if policy and programs are getting the desired results? How does their leadership show up with data. Right? Are they having regular check ins with their leadership team about performance management, what's working, what's not working?

Can their public engage with the data? Do your residents have access to an open data portal where they can see what's happening on a day-to-day basis with city operations? We're looking at things like data-driven budgeting. Are you really making budget decisions based on data and where there's need and allocation of those needs, as well as results driven contracting and stakeholder impact? When I described some of the work that we do with cities, one of my favorite examples is, I used to actually work for New York City government for 10 years. I did affordable housing and social service policy. When I was in my role in homeless services, one of the questions I would often ask when it came to contracting are, are we contracting with the same shelter providers that we always contracted with, or have we actually set metrics and outcomes in contracts to make sure that these providers are giving us what we need?

Those are the questions that we're really helping cities start to answer. Are you being results driven in your approach? How are you leveraging data, and do you have a strong data foundation to be able to make decisions in an effective way? One other piece of our work that I want to uplift is, every three years we take a look at our criteria to make sure we're on the cutting edge of what's important in local governance and the principles of local governance. Two years ago we added in four new components, which I want to uplift. We added in measuring resident outcomes. We evaluate how are your residents experience in your city? We uplifted the segregation of data because we know that equity is important to decision-making as well as how residents experience a city, and so we also embedded the principles of equity throughout our criteria.

How are you thinking out the programs and services you're designing and who has access to them, but also how are you engaging your community members? Do they just have an open data portal or do you actually have active conversations with them about the decisions you're making, about where there's need in the community? Are you collecting not just quantitative data but qualitative data to help inform your decision-making? We did that because it's important that our cities that are certified aren't just good at process stuff, but they're also good at driving change for their residents and targeting their resources in an effective way.

Rob Atkinson: Yeah, that's really interesting, Rochelle. You mentioned you worked for New York, obviously you worked for Bloomberg Philanthropies. Going back a little bit in history, the first two cities that, in my view, that really took to this was, one was New York under Mayor Bloomberg's leadership, but also Baltimore with Martin O'Malley. Jackie is cheering because she is related to Mayor O'Malley. Back then it was so much harder because you didn't have internet of things, there were no such thing as a smartphone, there was no such thing as 4G, even 3G. How do you see the technology, sort of the ubiquity of technology, the affordability of technology, better databases, Web 2.0, et cetera? Tell us a little bit about how that's been able to drive a lot more of this and not just sort of a few really early leaders like New York and Baltimore.

Rochelle Haynes: Absolutely, and thank you for shouting out both New York as well as Baltimore, both of which are certified cities within our network. You're absolutely right, when this work started, because revolutionary, I remember my own tenure starting in city government and we show up with our performance dashboards and we were doing change management then, we were trying to get people to just understand that this is collected data to be able to show up this way so we can drive better decision making. To your point, technology has revolutionized the field. The field has changed dramatically over the last 10 to 15 years. To answer your question, I think it made it more equitable and accessible, so cities now, which often don't always have the resources as a private sector to be at the cutting edge of technology and to have things at their fingertips to really drive down on efficiency.

Now, because this technology is so widely available, it's all accessible and it's widely used within city government. I think now it's almost as if it's a done deal that everyone has access to the technology. I remember like GIS mapping, I remember that was the hot topic, especially when I worked in homelessness, we would use GIS mapping to predict the residents that more than likely in the communities where you would see high eviction rates, who's most likely to show up in eviction court? It was, again, revolutionary. Now, everyone has access to it. I say this to your question, I think technology has leveled the playing field, which has been important. It's given city governments the opportunity to be at the cutting edge, make decisions. I think now the question is more about, for some of them, how to organize all this amazing data and tool sets and things like AI that are coming up?

How do you best leverage all of the technology? It's truly leveled the playing field, which is a point that I want to be able to make. I think also when it comes to this, I think it's also allowed the upskilling of city staff and how they approach their work, which is also at the heart of all of this and at the heart of what we do. In addition to measuring a city's data practices, we have a virtual community of practice where we're offering technical assistance workshops directly to city staff, as well as webinars, we have case studies, we have off the shelf resources that cities can use on exactly how to leverage these tools and resources to make more informed decisions because we recognized, for us to do this, it has to be at the leadership level but it also has to be at the staff level to make sure that we're doing this well.

Rob Atkinson: That's really cool. One of the points you make is that it's democratizing or enabling, not just in the US as you noted, when we travel around the world, Latin America, we were just in India, a lot of these cities that there's nowhere near the same level of per capita income as, say, Baltimore or Indianapolis, but they're able to use these technologies too, which is pretty cool when you think about it because in the old days it took a long time, there was expensive technology, only the well-to-do places could use it. Now, it is much more evenly available, not a hundred percent, but certainly more.

Rochelle Haynes: Absolutely, and thank you for pointing that out. A key part, again, when we decided to open our program throughout all of North America, Central and South America, it was exactly for what you just said. These practices are happening globally and in places where they aren't as resource rich and they're being creative. I think some of the things that we've found is we've been deeply inspired by our Latin American cities in our network. They're doing things like, I think of a city like Cordoba, Argentina, prior to COVID-19, they were a hundred percent paper-based, a hundred percent paper-based prior to COVID-19.

Take a crisis to spur innovation. They're now fully digitized, and what that has revolutionized the way that they're able to show up for their residents in effective services. I think of a city like Montevideo, Uruguay, which is one of our superstar cities in our program, and how they've leveraged data for two things. One, during a water crisis, they had a drought and water crisis and they leveraged data to be able to signal to the city on a daily basis whether or not residents are safe to drink the water, can you access the water? But they also use technology to target where there's vulnerable communities that may not get their messaging that automatically should get fresh water delivery.

Rob Atkinson: Yeah, no, that's great.

Rochelle Haynes: It's fascinating. Really, really fascinating.

Rob Atkinson: I met with the mayor of Medellin, Colombia a number of years ago, just the coolest guy, and he was just raving about data, particularly around using it for skill development for many of the underskilled or less skilled in there, so you're right, it's absolutely all around the world.

Jackie Whisman: Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your teacher's pets. Do you have a top couple of cities who are doing the best?

Rochelle Haynes: I love all my cities.

Jackie Whisman: Of course, all of your babies.

Rob Atkinson: Equally.

Jackie Whisman: I love all my cities equally. I will say no teachers pets, but I will say I love the cities that are leading into equity. I think for What Works Cities, like I said, we've been around nine years as we've matured as a program, as there are more global conversations about the impact of inequity on the need to address the needs of vulnerable communities. Cities that are leaning in this way I think truly stand out to me. They're using disaggregated data to get at the root of inequality. What services do these residents need? How do we improve economics? How do we improve health? A few cities I'll uplift is Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They wanted to look at who has access to city contracts, because they had an economic inequality issue and they realized minority and women-owned businesses were only accessing 4% of city contracts, and so using data, they were able to increase that to 25%.

Dallas, Texas did something really interesting where they tied their equity work into their budget process. They had all 42 city data departments think about how they can make better equity investments in total dollars in a more equitable way. This led to an investment of $40 million and they're tracking where that money is being spent publicly across 220 different metrics. Really taking this thoughtful approach on embedding equity, tying to your budget, you're getting at the root causes of needs as well, and I think that stands out to me because we know it's, again, don't be just good at the process, don't be just good at the policies, but how is it connecting to the needs of your residents? How is it really uplifting resident lies? How is it addressing longstanding issues?

Those are just a few cities, not just my favorite cities because I can't play favorites, but those are just two cities I can mention. I can go on and on about others. I think cities really have leaned into this equity component. I think all of us saw with COVID, in particular, I think those in the policy field knew it, but Covid bought a bear in equities, especially around who has access to healthcare.

Cities have been leaning in and they're using it in really interesting and creative ways. Even things like infrastructure investments are being done in a more equitable way. I think of the city of Syracuse, who's been a longstanding friend of our program, they have some infrastructure dollars. Where do I pave more roads? Where do I think about that? Rather than just use 311 data, which is excellent data to use, 311 data is typically used by residents who are highly knowledgeable and have the time to call in when there's potholes in the neighborhood, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's where the most potholes in the neighborhood actually exist-

Jackie Whisman: It's just the squeaky wheels.

Rochelle Haynes: It's just the squeaky wheels, and so you already know when they looked at the data, underserved communities hadn't had infrastructure investments in years and so that's where they redirected their dollars. When cities are doing that, that truly stands out to me.

Rob Atkinson: Funny, it could go the other way. A long time ago I worked for the governor of Rhode Island leading their Rhode Island Economic Policy Council because the economy back in the nineties was so problematic, lots of manufacturing loss, et cetera. The mayor at the time, this guy Buddy Cianci, let's just say Buddy, he held a grudge, and two blocks away from my house was the guy who ran against him in the last election. They had data-driven government, which was, never plow this guy's block. That was really microtargeting of data. You go walking, all the neighbors on this poor guy's street is like, oh, geez. In all seriousness, the question of equity and the importance of it, our colleague, Daniel Castro, who leads ITIF's Center for Data Innovation, he's been writing about, or we've been writing about what we call the challenge of data poverty for almost a decade now.

The idea there is that if you think about data rich communities, neighborhoods, people have Fitbit, they have ring doorbells, they're just more data tend to be more likely to have digitized health records. It's one of those things where we feel like that's an area that needs more systematic thought about how do we close, it's not just about closing the digital divide, which we've worked on a long time, which is really about broadband access and digital literacy. That's a component of it, but this is beyond that. I'm just curious, do you see that challenge in the cities that you're working on, and you give thoughts about how to address it

Rochelle Haynes: In our network, I think one of the things we're seeing, one is, one of our resident outcome metrics is around broadband access. Again, trying to make sure cities have a standard on who has access to broadband. What we actually find is, most folks have access to a smartphone, and if you have access to a smartphone, that's how people are actually engaging most of the time with city services. Everyone is using their phone to log on for a complaint, to look up the school schedule, to be able to find out what job opportunities are there. For us, it's about making sure the data that is publicly available is in a format that is accessible, it's in simple language that anyone can access and use, as well as making sure those community-based organizations that serve individuals that could be even further removed, to your point, the truly sort of folks who are underserved and deeply disconnected, a lot of those folks are connected to social service and community-based organizations, making sure those organizations have access to the quality data that cities are producing, so they can better connect residents to resources.

That's sort of what we're seeing. I think on an individual level, I think folks are using smartphones, and so how do you best engage them in that way? We're seeing some AI technology being used with some cities in this area where they're using chatbots to engage residents and address city services, but when you're thinking about those who are further removed, I think it's making sure the data you do have and the services you have are accessible, but that the community-based organizations that are working with them can also access that data.

Rob Atkinson: That's a good point. It's really, I don't know, striking, shocking, depressing that so much of what I interact with on the phone, it's super mobile friendly, it is designed for a mobile iOS Android interface. We've done studies of the federal government looking at what share of sites and other things are mobile friendly. Really, not that many looked at how many forms are easily accessible on a mobile phone so you can type everything in, and I assume that's true at the state and local level. I understand you got to pay money and you got to do that, I get it, but majority of people, particularly lower income people, as you say, access it through that modality, and yet it's designed around people like me who have a laptop, who access it through that modality. I don't know, do you see progress there?

Rochelle Haynes: I do. I think part of it, and one of the trends we're seeing is capacity at the local level to build strong data infrastructure. It takes funding to do some of this work, and there's philanthropic dollars that are being invested. Obviously, Bloomberg Philanthropies is a large investor in government innovation work. Results for America, the organization I work for are huge champions of how to leverage state, federal and local funding to be more data informed and evidence-based and get creative on how you build a data infrastructure, but they also just need, I think, further guidance, and so some things I want to uplift that I thought was important, and we're going to work on making sure localities in particularly understand this. The federal government recently issued some OMB guidance on how governments can leverage funding to build that capacity work. It gets to your point, if I have the funding, then I can think differently about my data systems and I can think differently about things like, am I building a website that is mobile friendly?

A lot of times I think cities need us to help them connect the dots on this work. The heart and minds are in the right place, but it's how do I connect the dots and where do I identify the funding to do this, especially when there's so many competing demands on funding and needs. One of the things we're excited about is at the federal level here in the US, that OMB guidance that's specifically letting states, localities and tribal governments know you can use federal dollars to build your infrastructure and this is how you can do it. I think things like that will get at your question around how do we go from, it's up there, it's on the mobile, but it's mobile friendly because we know, again, that most people are using it on a smartphone.

Rob Atkinson: That was very frustrating for us during the Recovery Act and the big infrastructure fund. We were strongly pushing for a definition of infrastructure to include digital and including e-government infrastructure or IT technologies governments can use. It's funny because policymakers, I don't think quite have gotten there, they still think of infrastructure as a bridge or a water system or whatever it might be, which they are of course, but the digital infrastructure that people have to interact with are so central now as you're pointing out, and hopefully there'll be more flexibility around OMB and others to allow spending on that kind of thing.

Rochelle Haynes: Absolutely, and I think it's key to the future of the success of this work and this portfolio and I think those of us that are in this field to keep raising our voices on the need for investments in those digital infrastructure because that's the way to get at also the equity pieces. I think being able to tie those two things together and how it connects to better policies and efficiencies, I think, will help us sort of navigate that terrain on identifying additional funding.

Rob Atkinson: Yeah, absolutely. Maybe a last question. We at ITIF have been long proponents of open data as you have been. We helped craft and drive the open data act that Congress passed the last days of the Obama Administration so that it wasn't just something the Obama Administration did, it was institutionalized. One idea that we've talked about is things like a shared app store for cities and ways to collect data together to do cross-city analytics. Because I've talked to some people in smart cities and they're dealing with the same sort of things like water issues or education issues, whatever, and they're dealing with their data, which I get you have to do that, but I'm also thinking a world where we use big data sets, anonymized if we need to and then use AI and other analytical tools. I'm just curious what your thoughts are about that, whether you think that's possible? It's hard in a way because cities tend to be kind of parochial sometimes with, my data, our data, but at the same time a shared pool, if you will, could bring everybody along.

Rochelle Haynes: No, I think that's an excellent question. I think if you can get past, like you mentioned, bureaucracies of sharing data, even within a city sometimes it's hard to share data. I remember working in homeless services and obviously in shelter you're going to have families have a child welfare involved, and just being able to get access to that data so that we can provide them with additional wraparound support required a lot of a heavy lift, and so I think cities are still trying to figure out how to also just share that data internally versus externally. To your larger question, I think it could be very powerful to look at some of these challenges from a regional perspective. How is our region experiencing this and is there an opportunity to pull resources? I think there's tons of value in that.

I think some places are thinking about it, but I don't know that it's as widespread. You gave me a great thing to think about in terms of... This is why I love these conversations and why we update our criteria every three years, because when we talk to experts in the field, they help us think of things this way, and so maybe there's something around signaling to localities around working collectively and regionally to solve issues because the issues of the day are common. Often, residents that are actually within a specific geographic region often cross city state lines to get services anyway, they're all sort of connected, so how do we think in a more collaborative way? Rob, I think you just gave me something to do some drilling down on about another version of my criteria and looking at things in a particularly regional way and collating of resources.

Rob Atkinson: I got my PhD a while ago in city and regional planning from Chapel Hill. I was talking a few years ago, a couple of years ago to one of my professors, he had talked to a lot of the city people who were interested in making cities more pedestrian friendly, and he said, if we could just combine data to really learn things like, this particular aspect tends to be dampening on pedestrian travel across all the cities, we look at this particular thing seems to really help with pedestrian usage and all. Anyways, that was the inspiration for the idea really from him is like, wow, that's really cool. What if we could do that and really get learning that everybody could then use?

Rochelle Haynes: I think what's powerful is like, I mentioned our network has over 200 cities and so we do have an opportunity to share best practices about things like that, like thinking about pedestrian safety, traffic management and then other topics of the day, and so cities are routinely sharing their approaches with one another and learning from each other. That's the power of being part of a network. I think what I loved about your question is, how do we even take it a step further than making sure they're connected in SHM best practices to where there's opportunities to collaborate in a regional way we can think about that. Cities are often inspired by one another, and we encourage them to lovingly share each other's practices. You don't have to start from scratch all the time. Why should you?

Rob Atkinson: Absolutely.

Jackie Whisman: Their problems are universal, they can come with some universal solutions.

Rochelle Haynes: Universal solutions, I love that. It's universal problems, universal solutions. When you think about the history of performance management, you had mentioned Mayor O'Malley and CitiStat, I'm from New York City, we had CompStat, that's all been things that were kind of copied and leveraged in advance.

Jackie Whisman: CitiStat, yeah, they hired the CompStat team to bring CitiStat to Baltimore. If only they had a group like yours that could spread it further, sooner-

Rochelle Haynes: I know. I often say when I was in city government, I was like, oh my gosh, if I had this group, especially when I was leading homeless services, I was chief of staff there and so you get a little bit of everything as chief of staff, I said I would've been in our virtual platform every single day about what new strategies are you using for prevention? What new techniques are you using to make sure that folks who are put in stable housing are able to retain that housing, because you just want to get out of your vacuum and you're thinking and be able to learn from one another. I think that's the beauty of this work is that we have a network, we're connecting and sharing practices, and honestly, we're just evolving on things that had started many years ago, whether it's in Baltimore or New York City, how do we continue to help the field grow and evolve?

Now for me, I think folks understand the importance of having this data. Now it's like, what do you do with all this different data? Inform it in a way that you can be truly effective. For me, on a personal level, embedding it with the city staff, because I think about sustainability, is really important to me, so when we do certification, we say it's not just tied to a mayor, it's a city certification. This is how this city operates and it's really important, but I want to make sure that civil servant staff that are typically there through the mail transitions, the leadership transitions, are embedding this work in how they approach, because those are the folks who are going to make sure that we actually become the more data informed evidence-based localities that we're seeking to build.

Rob Atkinson: Well, Rochelle, that's a great place to stop. You give me hope, optimism, it's something that's needed in these days, let's put it that way. There's a lot we read every day. Whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, there's always enough to read that's kind of depressing, and this is one area I think where American innovation is quite real, it's progressing and it's just great what you and Bloomberg Philanthropies are doing, so we really appreciate you being here with us today and telling us all about it.

Rochelle Haynes: Thank you, I really appreciate being here. I often say, governing in this way is a bipartisan issue.

Rob Atkinson: It really is, yeah, that's the thing. I learned that, not to say there isn't partisanship, I get it, but the partisanship in my view decreases the lower level you get at the county level, the city level, it's much less, states, a little bit more, in the feds it's where it blooms. But yeah, these are the same problems, you're dealing with homelessness, it don't matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you're dealing with clean water or good streets or whatever it might be.

Rochelle Haynes: Absolutely. Thank you both, I really appreciate the opportunity.

Rob Atkinson: Great.

Jackie Whisman: And that’s it for this week. If you liked it, please be sure to rate us and subscribe. Feel free to email show ideas or questions to [email protected]. You can find the show notes and sign up for our weekly email newsletter on our website itif.org. And follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn @ITIFdc.

Rob Atkinson: We have more episodes and great guests lined up, and we hope you will continue to tune in.

Jackie Whisman: Talk to you soon.