In the private sector, executives study best practices to make their businesses more efficient and profitable.
Local governments, however, often lack the resources to find out the best ways to improve services.
The city of Knoxville is poised to take advantage of a program aimed to help officials become more effective in providing services for citizens.
Knoxville is one of 16 cities being added to Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, an effort to use data and proven approaches to improve municipal services. Launched in 2015, the nonprofit’s $42 million effort aims to spread to 100 mid-sized American cities. Chattanooga and Nashville also are among the cities involved.
“As a city, we want to make sure our operations are as transparent as possible and our services and resources are being used to provide the greatest possible benefit to our citizens,” Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero said in a news release. “I am excited about this partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies to improve public data access and explore innovative ways to track and visualize our operations.”
According to Bloomberg Philanthropies, “cities will receive help creating sustainable open data programs that promote transparency and robust citizen engagement; incorporating data into budget, operational, and policy decision-making; conducting low-cost evaluations; and steering funding to programs that get results for citizens.”
Participating cities get to work with global experts to assess and implement new processes.
The city of Knoxville expects to work with the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University to track progress on removing blight. The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit advocate for open government, will help the city develop an open data policy and online open data portal.