Michael Bloomberg thinks using more data is the way to help city governments work better for citizens, and his alma mater is a big part of that play.
On Monday, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the launch of What Works Cities. It’s a $42 million initiative “to help city leaders use data and evidence in their decision-making to improve the lives of residents.”
In a HuffPo-torial published Monday, Bloomberg wrote that he wants to use his money to help cities with “resources that are always stretched thin” get more out of what they already have. (It’s somewhat similar to the vision outlined in an earlier Bloomberg Philanthropies challenge, from which Philadelphia won $1 million in 2013 to support social enterprises and fix the city procurement process.)
Details suggest the aim is for a huge impact. The new program is looking to help at least 150 mid-sized cities (population: 100,000-1 million) build out data capabilities over three years, and it will draw on the work of several partnering organizations to help those cities build a network.
Along with Results for America, the Sunlight Foundation and Harvard University’s Government Performance Lab, one of those organizations is a newly-created center at Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus. The Center for Government Excellencewill work to assess the data capabilities of the cities that participate in the initiative, and educate the governments about the best practices for using data.