• January 26, 2018
• What Works Cities

This brief is a part of Bloomberg Philanthropies' What Works Cities initiative. Originally published in March of 2017, the brief was updated in January of 2018 to include four new case studies. To download the brief as a PDF, please click here.

INTRODUCTION

What Works Cities, an initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies, pairs mid-sized cities with expert partners— the Behavioral Insights Team, the Center for Government Excellence (GovEx) at Johns Hopkins University, the Government Performance Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School, Results for America, and the Sunlight Foundation— for technical assistance in better using data and evidence. After three years of work with 100 cities across the United States, the appropriately named program identified the key characteristics of a city devoted to using data to comprehensively identify, well, what works. Driven by the desire to share that knowledge more broadly, What Works Cities designed its Certification program to recognize high-performing cities, to create an objective standard of success, and to help cities at any point in the data journey understand how they can improve their practices. As Jenn Park, Associate Director for What Works Cities, said, “We want to be able to show the world what the best cities are doing. The Certification program is made to be able to do just that—publicly validate, recognize, and celebrate cities that are doing this work at the highest level.”

Certification measures a city’s work across criteria in the domains of open data, data governance, performance analytics, low-cost evaluations, results-driven contracting, and repurposing for results. The What Works Cities Standard—commit, measure, take stock, and act—has guided the What Works Cities initiative from the beginning, and the Certification criteria are divided into those four areas. The Standard represents phases of a city’s work to use data and evidence effectively, beginning with a mayor’s public commitment and concluding with using a deep understanding of city data to inform major policy and program decisions. Simone Brody, Executive Director of What Works Cities, described the Standard as “the North Star of what this work should look like.” She noted that, based on demand from cities for a tactical guide to improving practices, Certification takes the theoretical Standard and translates it into concrete indicators.

Any city with a population over 30,000 is eligible to apply for Certification, and after a robust evaluation of their efforts, high-achieving cities will be recognized with silver, gold, or platinum certification. Applicants will be able to benchmark themselves against their peers and get a clear sense of where their individual practices are and in what areas they can move forward. Although What Works technical assistance is limited to midsized cities, participating in Certification allows far more cities to access resources and participate in a growing community of cities.

What Works Cities Certification fits into the existing landscape of initiatives in this space by recognizing governments that have developed a broad, citywide capacity for using data and evidence, rather than awarding specific successful initiatives. By measuring aspects such as establishing a person or team responsible for data standards and protocols, developing a process for releasing open data, and measuring the outcomes of key procurements, Certification focuses on the fundamentals of data-driven government in a way that other recognition programs do not. Elevating the day-to-day city work and processes that results in dramatic successes is an important contribution to the field.

Brody emphasized that even a city just starting out can benefit from the process, noting that the keys to success are accessible to any city: “What we’ve found is most important to being effective at this is a real commitment from senior leaders in cities, a real belief this is going to improve outcomes, and then giving folks in city government the space to be innovative and try new tools and practices. Any city can do that if they want to, and we’ve seen dramatic progress in cities just starting out, even in a few months.”

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This brief was written in conjunction with Harvard Kennedy School’s Katherine Hillenbrand, Project Manager; Eric Bosco, Research Assistant/Writer; and Chris Bousquet, Research Assistant/Writer. The San Francisco case study was written in conjunction with Joy Bonaguro, Chief Data Officer, City and County of San Francisco.