Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, October 16, 2015

Baltimore has long been regarded as a city management innovator. Since its inception, CitiStat has been replicated by dozens of cities, counties, and states. Under my Administration, Baltimore has led the way in budgeting for outcomes, with cities like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chattanooga following our example. When I announced Open Baltimore in January 2011, we were among the first cities in America to launch an open data portal. Baltimore was the 4th City in America to create the position of Chief Data Officer in June 2013.

Since the launch of our Innovation Fund in 2011, we have gained national attention in our efforts to improve efficiency and save the city money. Through the Innovation Fund we have provided citizens better access to city services in such ways as automating reviews of building plans by our Housing Department and helping our environmental health services go from paper to electronic records.

And we are at the forefront in using Lean business process improvement to make government services more customer friendly and efficient. To date we have performed 9 Lean Initiatives with results that included dramatically reducing the red tape associated with our fire department performing critical inspections, and eliminating long waiting lines and multiple visits for ex-offenders seeking to secure critical job placement services at our career center in Northwest Baltimore. 

We are proud of our record, but innovators are restless, always looking ahead to what is next, seeking out what can make us even better.  This week, I made several significant announcements to move Baltimore forward in the area of management innovation, including:

• Appointing Sameer “Sam” Sidh as the new Director of Citistat.  Citistat will continue to track the day-to-day operations of agencies but with an increased focus on collaboration,  problem-solving, transparency and accountability. Our goal is to move the focus away from agency-specific analysis, allowing for more research and analysis of multi-agency City operations and processes.  These efforts will result in continued improvement of the quality of services provided to our citizens.
• Expanding Open Baltimore by adding datasets and using data analytics to solve problems and improve performance. This effort will be led by our Chief Data Officer, Heather Hudson. In this year’s budget, I provided almost half a million dollars in funding to support our efforts to build and properly staff a city-wide data warehouse. The new data warehouse will serve as the backbone of our new data strategy which includes   building out specific dashboards to implement a more pro-active approach to data collection and analysis,  monitoring more performance indicators than ever before and potentially allow for the use of predicative analytics to address issues before they occur.
• Launching our OutcomeStat website which highlights our year long effort to establish OutcomeStat,  an integration of planning, budgeting and performance management that I know will help Baltimore turn the curve on its toughest challenges.  In September we held a two-day  OutcomeStat conference with over 200 community partners, subject matter experts and agency officials working in a more collaborative, citizen-centric approach to problem solving. The OutcomeStat site will track the 21 key indicators that we are working to move in the right direction, from shootings to asthma ER visits to recycling.  By tracking these long term goals, we know we will have a significant impact on the quality of life for Baltimore residents.
• Establishing an interagency working group called the IDEA Team (Innovation, Delivery, Evidence and Accountability) to be led by my city budget director, Andrew Kleine, and my chief of staff, Kaliope Parthemos. The IDEA Team will continue to develop Lean Initiatives and our Innovation Fund among other initiatives.

I am excited about our progress and our continued efforts to keep Baltimore at the forefront of innovation in government. We must remain relentless in identifying opportunities to change the way government does business and improve service delivery.

This originally appeared in the Rawlings-Blake Review. If you do not receive the Mayor's weekly newsletter, subscribe here.