• November 5, 2013
• Regulation

This guest-authored post was written by Joanna Weiss, the Chief Program Officer for the New York City Business Integrity Commission. The post is part of the Regulatory Reform for the 21st Century City project. The first part of the NYC BIC story is Enforcement and Data by Commissioner Shari Hyman.

When Commissioner Hyman brought me on to implement NIMBUS, it was clear we needed a well-articulated plan of attack. Over its 20 year history, the Business Integrity Commission's (BIC) various business areas have maintained data in different formats and in different systems. Our job was to transition this “organic” development to a modern, centralized platform.

Our first task was to parse out commonalities among data and databases. Guided by BIC’s three core regulatory areas, we grounded our unification process across 40 categories of information that all connected to BIC primary functions:

• Data on companies that operate in the private sanitation and wholesale market businesses
• Data on people who operate in the private sanitation industry and wholesale market places
• Data on the fleet of vehicles used in these industries.

Though the unification was a challenging data-defining process, it allowed us to create a system that preserves and further enhances BIC’s ability to examine and report nuanced information about the industries it regulates. For example, with all data about a particular person consolidated into a single location, BIC can now see entire employment histories of industry members. In industries where a common tactic is for less than reputable individuals is to shuffle between companies to hide their presence, this is an invaluable asset. Consolidating all data into a single system improves BIC’s ability to identify bad actors, and ultimately to use scarce resources more strategically.

A transformative system like NIMBUS needs both full, top-to-bottom support, and also clear messaging and understanding.

Once we defined the data, we had to move it. Of course, migrating conflicting data is easier said than done. We soon realized that titles of data fields were inconsistent across the databases, as was the quality of the data entry. In one database, contacts were described by first and last name. In another database, middle initials were used. If we found a John Smith in one database, and a John P. Smith in another database, we could not be sure the two databases described the same contact. To address this, we devised a series of rules for migrating data. These rules created standards for how data would be organized, listed and combined. We couldn’t have established these rules without full agency buy-in. We worked across units to establish the data normalization rules and process for review. It was an arduous exercise, but with executive buy-in, we were able to mobilize everybody. Which leads me to another critical action we took…

A transformative system like NIMBUS needs both full, top-to-bottom support, and also clear messaging and understanding. It’s a culture change, and we knew staff needed to know that their perspectives were essential and that their work would not be hindered. To ensure this we did two things: we formed a governance committee that included a representative from each practice area within BIC and identified unit “power users” (or line staff who were our main points of contact in a particular business area). We met with the governance committee once a month to flesh out and resolve competing interests between the practice areas and keep all the business areas up to date on project status. With the power users, we reviewed requirements for the build and showed screen shots as they were developed. We had them test all functionality for their business area as it was built. We also exposed the agency to the new system throughout the build. We held “lunch and learn” sessions. We created a screen shot “gallery” and invited the entire agency to a gallery opening to get feedback on design well in advance. And finally, we conducted several rounds of testing and training on the new system.

On October 28, 2013, with a press of button by Deputy Mayor Robert Steel, we formally launched NIMBUS, culminating 14 months of work for my team and the agency. While it’s a fantastic feeling now that we’re live, it’s clear to me that the steps and tactics I highlighted above were essential to steering our ship away from the muddy waters of data muck and frustrated staff.