Lay the Foundation

Gather a Team and Data

It is good to gather key players and engage them right at the start. A city needs certain people to lead with a bird’s-eye view of the entire initiative, while others will focus on the day-to-day details of the data. Think of this as an opportunity to share with staff the reason for the shift to performance management, and some examples of how performance management has worked for other cities.

The following list provides a description of each key player:

• Principal: The mayor, city manager, or any other (typically elected or appointed) leader who has the desire to manage a government or a branch of a government utilizing an evidence based approach.

• Department Lead: The department head or division administrator who owns the data that is being utilized to measure progress. This person is ultimately accountable to the principal for making progress on shared goals or a strategic plan. There may be multiple department leads.

• Stat Lead: An appointed member of the principal’s team that is responsible for overseeing the departments through the performance management process. This person must have credibility with department leaders and direct access to the principal and his or her senior team. This position is akin to a city’s chief operating officer or a mayor’s deputy chief of staff - someone with the gravitas to make things happen.

• Stat Analyst: The person responsible for collecting and managing the data used in the performance management program, and preparing analyses and reports of department data. See Appendix D for a sample Stat analyst job description.

Hiring a Stat Analyst

The Stat analyst plays a crucial role in the success of the program. After a few years in this role, the Stat analyst may transition to a position within a department, deepening the performance management culture and skills within the city. At a minimum, he or she needs to possess the following skills: Intellectual curiosity: He or she must want to discover lessons from the data. Interpersonal skills: He or she will need to gain the respect of everyone involved in the performance management program, including department heads and frontline workers. Communication skills: Not only will the Stat analyst mine data, he or she will need to communicate what is found in a clear, concise, and compelling way. Confidence: Look for someone who is willing to take risks and accept that he or she may make mistakes. Basic technical abilities: To create reports and visualizations, he or she must be proficient in data analysis techniques. Team attitude: He or she must understand the relationship his or her work has to the work of other analysts on staff.

• Budget Analyst: Every government has a budget office staffed with analysts who know where the proverbial "bodies are buried" from a financial standpoint, and they should always be included in the Stat process from the very beginning. Unfortunately, budget analysts are often siloed from other analytical staff and it requires a conscious effort to leverage them as a critical asset. Getting budget analysts involved in the Stat process is easy. It is as simple as inviting them to meetings as you prepare for a Stat session and giving them a seat at the table during the session. Here are five simple ways to leverage a budget analysts in the Stat process:

Leveraging Budget Analysts

• Leverage their portfolios. Budget offices usually divide the work into "portfolios" and assign different departments and programs to different analysts (e.g. human services portfolio, public safety portfolio, public works, etc). As your government prepares for a Stat session on policing, bring the public safety budget analyst into the team at the beginning of the process. Their insights on how the police department is leveraging funds will be invaluable as the organization has discussions about shifting resources to do more effective policing.
• Leverage their knowledge. Budget analysts know where the money is loaded, which programs have been cut from year to year, and which programs are requesting more funding. They can provide invaluable evidence, including documentation, of historical funding shifts and spending patterns.
• Leverage their understanding of performance. If the organization is doing performance-based budgeting, then budget analysts know how funds are allocated based on programmatic results that contribute to organizational goals - a major focus of Stat programs.
• Leverage their established relationships. Budgets are built by people and budget analysts often know people at every level of the organization - useful resources for a Stat program trying to understand how services are delivered and learn more about a program's performance and contributions.
• Leverage their analysis. Budget analysts routinely conduct cost benefit analysis, analyze returns on investment, scrutinize spending patterns, and conduct analysis of funding alternatives. They are often adept with Excel and are one of a handful of people who can extract information out of source financial systems. These are invaluable to any Stat program strapped for talent and searching for insights.

• Department Contact: A person on a department leader’s team, ranging from a database manager to chief of staff, who has the best information related to the metadata, the current use of the data, and the general value and quality of the data. This person may already exist if the department has a chief data officer or a director of research. The department contact is responsible for shepherding the data including curating the data and ensuring that it is clean and in compliance with the metadata. This person will be the main point of contact for the Stat team and will play a critical role in making sure the performance management program is a success.

• Data Experts: Other key participants in this preliminary conversation are geographic information system (GIS) professionals, database administrators, department staff with “analyst” or “research” in their title, and internal auditors. These are the people in a city department who manage data or otherwise know where data lives. These individuals are likely not currently working together on a consistent, coordinated, or regular basis. Many cities are not tapping into their analytical capability, and the exercise of identifying data experts can be a first step to deepening a city’s bench.

• Public: For successful performance management programs, the public is an important end user. Public use of Stat generally occurs in three broad forms:

  • A user seeking services or general information
  • Press or non-profit organizations seeking details or context for government data to support the writing of an article or grant application
  • A developer who wants to understand the capacity of the data

Conducting a Data Inventory

Once the team has been identified, the Stat analyst will lead the effort to collect and track data. The first step is to create a data inventory, which is crucial to support goal setting. If a city has an existing set of priorities or a strategic framework, use it to guide the data collection process by prioritizing the datasets that are related to the priorities, and the departments that may own the data.

The Stat analyst should set up a meeting with the department lead and his or her leadership team, as well as the data experts mentioned above. Prior to this first meeting, a city should ask the invitees to come to the table with any data they own or know that the department is collecting. The following types of questions can help with data collection and discovery before the meeting. For a more thorough discussion of uncovering datasets, see our Dataset Prioritization Guidelines.

1. Do you provide information for reports on federal, state, or nonprofit grants?
2. Do you manage a database?
3. Do you compile reports for a legislative body (city council or cabinet meeting)?
4. Does your department have a strategic plan or any other key performance objectives?
5. Is your organization under any oversight from state or federal agencies, external auditors, or investigators? Is there a corrective action plan?
6. Do you already have a performance-based budgeting or evaluation program?
7. What data is often requested by the public through FOIA requests, 311 or some other method?
8. Does the data align with an agency or citywide initiative?

GovEx recommends that cities begin their data inventory with the datasets that are more critical to decision making (311, call center data), or datasets that are relevant to a particular initiative (BlightStat, CompStat, BayStat). In addition to streamling the workload, this approach can allow the city to work out any pain points that might crop up. Common pain points include defining terms like dataset, data, and information; communicating the importance of identifying data ownership; and prioritizing this work in the face of other pressing responsibilities.

Las Vegas, NV

Traffic safety is a priority for the Las Vegas community. In 2014, the city reduced the number of automobile accidents at targeted intersections by 23 percent when it re-engineered the 50 intersections with the most crashes in a specific year. Additionally, Las Vegas reduced traffic delays by at least 25 percent at 25 of the 50 Most Congested Intersections. The city achieved these results by using data and evidence to drive decision making.