Our pursuit of innovation
After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, many voices were raised in Syracuse and around the county advocating for transparency in policing and technology that is used by law enforcement and other government departments, among many other things. Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh then continued his dialogue with residents and community groups regarding police reform and government transparency…
Moving towards a data platform for our city should allow API and other departments both to simplify our operational workstreams and vastly improve our analytical abilities moving forward. Though this prospect is exciting to us over here in data land, oftentimes talking about data infrastructure can easily drift into getting lost in the weeds of acronym soup. So, in an attempt to stave off this fate we’ve decided that rather than discussing the new platform from a strictly technical approach it might be more prudent to take the “5,000-foot view” and attempt to explain more or less:
What’s a data platform and why do we need one?
In what ways will a data platform deliver value to not only city departments, but city residents as well?
Join us in welcoming 4 new team members to the Office of Accountability, Performance & Innovation. In recent months we searched the country for a Data Program Manager, an Innovation Designer, a Data Engineer, and an ARPA Data Analyst. Each of these roles is critical to our team and offers a different set of valuable skills that will add to the expertise and value that our office provides to the City and its residents. We are so pleased with the privilege to attract and welcome such talent to our team here in Syracuse.
In February of 2021, we were sent on a mission to address a process for our Human Resources department's Employee Update and Personnel Requisition forms. These form's processes are vital to ensuring that new employees can be hired; current employees can retire, and any other employment status changes can be processed in an accurate and timely manner…
Listen to Mayor Walsh articulate his vision for the City, and you will hear him describe his goal to transform Syracuse into a more data-driven city. But that process is not something that just happens on its own; it takes work and a data-driven culture needs to be nurtured. When the Federal Government passed the American Rescue Plan (ARPA) to provide funding to state and local governments around the United States in response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the City of Syracuse received $123 million and the Mayor saw this as an opportunity to foster and promote better data practices throughout the City.
If you've read our blogs, visited our office, or been to our workshops, chances are you'll see process maps at some point. My colleague Jess wrote a great blog post about it. Process mapping is a tool that has become an integral part of a larger body of work that encompasses about a quarter of most "innovation" projects handed to us -- the problem identification phase.
The role and mission of our team has been constantly evolving since our inception as a Bloomberg Philanthropies Innovation Team in 2015. As part of a cohort of I-Teams, our team members spent the majority of our efforts focused on solving one high-priority issue per year. Past priority areas have included: Water and Road Infrastructure, Economic Opportunity, Housing Stability, Permitting, and Quality of Life.
In our current iteration as the Office of Accountability, Performance, and Innovation, over time our mission has grown to take on a larger and more diverse set of challenges, including leading cross-department change management and data analysis projects, operating an open data portal, guiding the City’s data infrastructure and governance, and managing the City’s performance management strategy, among other supporting roles and responsibilities.
As this transition gradually occurred over time, we found ourselves spread too thin, with too many projects and not enough team members to adequately support our many initiatives. To help address this, we instituted three changes to how our team operates so that we can better serve our colleagues across City departments and deliver better services to our fellow City residents.
