BUTTIGIEG LAUNCHES CITY PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM WITH BLOOMBERG PARTNERS
Today Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced the launch of the City’s Performance Management Program (SBStat), in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Johns Hopkins Center for Government Excellence (GovEx). This program develops performance analytics that align departmental efforts with citywide goals and helps the City deliver more efficient, effective services to residents.
“We work every day to improve and deliver better services that empower everyone in our community to thrive,” said Buttigieg. “Our performance management program with support from national leaders offers additional resources and focused management strategies to increase performance. I look forward to implementing new innovative solutions and realizing additional cost savings that result from this collaboration.”
Venues, Parks and Arts was the first City department to implement this new program. The first meeting, led by the Department of Innovation and Technology, was held in late January. Additional City departments will implement this program each quarter of 2017.
“The team from Johns Hopkins Center for Government Excellence has been instrumental in elevating our SBStat program to the level of national best-practices,” said Chief Innovation Officer Santiago Garces. “Building on the groundwork enabled by the Bloomberg Philanthropies award, South Bend will continue to increase our use of data to drive decisions and to make decisions more transparent.”
In October 2016, Buttigieg announced that South Bend had been selected as one of 16 new cities to participate in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative – one of the largest-ever philanthropic efforts to enhance the use of data and evidence in the public sector. As part of the engagement with What Works Cities, the City has received technical assistance to build capacity to address local issues from world-class experts, including the Johns Hopkins GovEx team, whose mission is to help governments use data to make informed, effective decisions and improve people’s quality of life.
As part of the collaboration, the City has increased its performance management and analytics capabilities that align departmental efforts with citywide objectives. The performance management program also increases the capacity of departments to use data in decision-making and to coordinate with other departments.
Martin O’Malley, former Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland, pioneered this type of data-driven management approach for cities called CitiStat from 1999 to 2007.
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