Process Improvement

Process improvement seeks to identify and improve different types of inefficiencies in a process. This can include optimizing the time, allocation of human resources, or resources invested.

  • Ex: Transitioning a process from paper to digital to reduce the amount of time and resources spent.

Project Management

Project management is the application of tools & techniques to achieve project goals in a timely manner. Project management often includes managing scope, schedule, risk, stakeholders, quality, resources, procurement, communications, and cost to ensure the project’s goals and objectives are accomplished. We have also established best practices around project management and governance that we can share with you.

Change Management

Change and innovation in government - big or small - can be positive, but involves some careful work to make it happen. Change management involves preparing for, managing, and following through to make sure change is sustainable and implemented with empathy and efficiency.

Performance Management

In every department, we spend day-in and day-out doing all the things we need to do to keep the city running. But how do we know that we are doing them well? How do we know when its time to make changes to our processes before they are broken? Performance management is the answer to these questions! Performance management is the process and structure that helps you to identify indicators that tell you if you are producing your widget well or not, but also the process of evaluating those indicators on a regular basis to tell you when it might be time to tweak your process.

  • Example: Let's say that we improve the procurement process for the city. While we are making these improvements we also take the time to identify indicators that can tell us if our procurement process is efficient and equitable. We can help you to identify those indicators, collect them and we can help you in creating visual tools that will monitor those indicators.

Innovation and Data Trainings

We are passionate and committed to sharing our knowledge and experience with every department across the City. We have built out innovation trainings that demonstrate and teach process improvement tools like Six Sigma and how to map processes, identify waste, and different ways you can ideate to develop solutions.

In addition to innovation trainings we provide data trainings that span different topics and different levels of expertise like Excel tutorials, discussions on data collection best practices, and reasons why or why not to analyze available data

Problem-oriented Innovation

While improving city processes and measuring performance is important, certain challenges are so complex that they require us to innovate while deeply understanding root issues and working across silos

  • Example: Say we are looking to solve homelessness in Syracuse. With problem-oriented innovation we would not just look at social or economic innovation, rather we would develop a project plan that would include social, economic, and technologically innovative approaches to solve this issue.

Geo-spatial analysis

Includes developing maps, both static and interactive, to inform on the geospatial relation between key pieces of information as well as synthesizing the data into an easy visual. This can also include some simple route optimization

  • Ex: A map of the parks in the City of Syracuse that contains information on amenities available and size when you click on a specific park.

  • Ex: A map of census tracts evaluating the correlations between key demographic characteristics (i.e., Internet access and population density).

Data Analytics & visualization

Creating stories and gaining insight from quantitative and/or qualitative data through analytics and visualizations.

  • Ex. Building a dashboard to understand snow plow routing, speed, miles covered, etc.

  • Ex. Analyzing infrastructure and finance data to implement new policy around sidewalk maintenance and fee collection.

Open Data

Support efforts to make as much data as possible available to the public in both raw and cleaned formats. Examples of this can be found at https://data.syrgov.net/

Human-Centered Design

Thinking about the people using whatever you’re building, changing, or implementing, and making sure that it will be easy for them to use.

  • Ex. An application for a small-business grant that can be filled out in a survey instead of filling a PDF, printing, and mailing to city hall.

  • Ex. Where to place tape lines on the ground, what words/languages/symbols to use on signs, and writing pre-post emails to make sure employees know where to go and what they need to bring when they get vaccinated.

Resident centered civic engagement

Asking residents to give us feedback about a program or public service they use which will help us understand how to improve it.

  • Ex. Talking to people who call Cityline to submit a complaint about an illegal trash set out to learn more about how to improve the service of removing that trash.

  • Ex. Facilitating workshops with parks staff, residents, and youth to learn more about what a new playground should include - building consensus and clarity between budget constraints and community desires.

Program Evaluation

Evaluating the need, context, purpose, scope, performance, and effectiveness of projects and programs to identify areas that are under-performing. We will then use the results from the evaluation to recommend measures or practices to improve that area. If the entire program is ineffective, we can then look at transferring the resources to other programs in need of additional resources and show the potential to have substantial impact. We are providing this in collaboration with a local organization that leverages behavioral science and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to intelligently design and rigorously evaluate programs and processes.