March 28, 2017Policy Report

What Works Cities: What Excellence Looks like in Local Government

by Stephen Goldsmith

Local/ What Works Cities/ 2017/

What Works Cities, an initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies, pairs mid-sized cities with expert partners – the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), the Center for Government Excellence (GovEx) at Johns Hopkins University, the Government Performance Lab (GPL) at the Harvard Kennedy School, Results for America and the Sunlight Foundation – for technical assistance in better using data and evidence. After two years of work with 77 cities across the United States, the appropriately named program identi ed the key characteristics of a city devoted to using data to comprehensively identify, well, what works. Driven by the desire to share that knowledge more broadly, What Works Cities designed its newly announced Certi cation program to recognize high-performing cities across those criteria, to create an objective standard of success, and to help cities at any point in the data journey understand how they can improve their practices. As Jenn Park, Associate Director for What Works Cities, said, “We want to be able to show the world what the best cities are doing. The Certi cation program is made to be able to do just that – publicly validate, recognize, and celebrate cities that are doing this at the highest level.”