GovEx Data Points

Innovation is about solving problems. Every problem and crisis a city encounters can unlock new opportunities to innovate and create better results for residents. In this episode, Amanda Daflos, the new Executive Director of the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins, shares her thoughts on the role of innovation in government, the data and innovation connection, and how the early success of i-teams in cities like Los Angeles paved the way for the a Center and better results for the more than 200 million individuals impacted by its work today. The post Podcast #76 – From the “Start” of Innovation to a New Center for Innovation – A Conversation with Amanda Daflos appeared first on GovEx.

When tackling society’s big challenges, we often find ourselves collaborating with other departments or organizations external to our own. But as any siloed government employee will tell you, building the relationships needed to rise to the occasion, and sustaining those relationships, is often no easy task. Today, we’re joined by two individuals familiar with this reality: Ryun Jackson, Special Assistant to Mayor Strickland in Memphis, TN, and Sagar Desai, Managing Director of Innovation at Strive Together. We’ll explore situations where they have faced this challenge and discuss strategies they have relied on to keep collaborative relationships healthy and active. If you’d like to learn more, please visit us at govex.jhu.edu. The post Podcast #75 – “Did you get my email?”: A conversation on collaboration appeared first on GovEx.

Governments are often on the hook for some of society’s most pressing challenges. How can city leaders find novel and flexible solutions to address these issues and improve the lives of residents? In a world filled with ever more complex technology, leaders are looking to data science as the answer for previously unsolvable problems. Today, we’re joined by Richard Todd, Enterprise Data Lead for the City of Boulder, CO. We’d discuss what data science is, how data science paradigms can be applied to various challenges, and explore a few examples of how data science has been used to solve problems in US cities. We’ll also discuss some tips to keep in mind as you launch a data science project in your city. To learn more about GovEx and our Academy Fellows, please visit us at govex.jhu.edu The post Podcast #74 – Data Science: Easy as P.I.E. appeared first on GovEx.

How can cities and their partners help families start saving money for their children’s future college or career training expenses? Since 2013, Lansing, Michigan has been tackling this innovative opportunity with the Lansing SAVE Initiative, a program providing all incoming Lansing School District kindergarten students with a savings account. In this episode, we discuss GovEx’s performance management engagement with the City of Lansing to help Lansing SAVE evolve and thrive. We walk through the performance management process, discuss the successful partnership involved in the work, and recap how to navigate program improvements and investments during a global pandemic. We’re joined by Amber Paxton, Director of the City of Lansing’s Office of Financial Empowerment; Brian Rakovitis, Manager of Financial Empowerment Initiatives at The Community Economic Development Association of Michigan; and Erin Thiemann, Senior Program Manager at Prosperity Now. The post Podcast #73 – Saving for the Future with Lansing SAVE appeared first on GovEx.

Accountable, transparent government is something we all strive for in public service. But how do we make this aspiration a reality? It’s not enough to simply collect results from the programs and initiatives we launch – we need to turn these results into meaningful insights about the efficacy of these efforts. Today, we’re joined by GovEx Academy Instructional Fellow Richard Williams to discuss the Results Framework approach to meeting this need. If you’d like to learn more about Richard and his work with GovEx Academy, come visit us at govexacademy.jhu.edu The post Podcast #72 – Framing Results with the Results Framework appeared first on GovEx.

Today, we’re joined by the Economic Mobility Forum’s Policy Fellows as they wrap up a year of research and discussion at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Applied Public Research. The Policy Forum is a community of practice focused on connecting forum members with vetted policy fellows: experts and practitioners who are working on economic mobility initiatives in their cities. Members interact with fellows through round-table discussion, research projects, and webinar lectures. We’ll discuss the takeaways gleaned from the last year of collaboration, and specifically how the COVID-19 pandemic revealed and exacerbated already existing economic mobility disparities across the nation. To learn more about our Policy Fellows, the Policy Forum, or the Center for Applied Public Research, come visit us at https://appliedresearch.jhu.edu/ The Center for Applied Public Research is a part of the Johns Hopkins University Centers for Civic Impact. To learn more, visit us at https://civicimpact.jhu.edu/ The post Podcast #71 – A Year in Review: The Economic Mobility Policy Forum appeared first on GovEx.

The disruptive effects of COVID-19 were widespread, but that didn’t prevent the City of Paterson, NJ from moving forward on mayoral priorities. Today, we join Mayor Andre Sayegh, Chief Data Officer Harsha Mallajosyula, and Business Administrator Kathleen Long to discuss their collaboration with GovEx in developing much-needed foundational data practices in the city. We’ll look at how this work began, what problems it solved, and how it supported the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The post Podcast #70 – Forging Ahead Despite COVID-19 appeared first on GovEx.

Is it safe for pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19? What if they’re breast feeding? The answer, it turns out, is hard to find, and it depends a lot on where in the world you live. Today, we’re looking at COMIT (COvid Maternal Immunization Tracker), a Johns Hopkins initiative designed to track and report the world’s nations’ stances on COVID vaccination for pregnant and lactating people. We’ll look at the challenge collecting this data has been and what it tells us about how excluding certain groups from trials and data collection causes disarray in policy-making. Learn more at comitglobal.org The post Podcast #69 – COMIT: A Maternal Vaccination Policy Tracker by JHU appeared first on GovEx.

Today, we’re joined by the creators of the eSchools+ Initiative, a program designed to address inequity caused by school closures through connecting parents and teachers with school reopening data and research. We’ll explore the initiative’s conception and the unique challenges this effort posed given the rapidly changing landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our guests are Dr. Ruth Faden, founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, Dr. Annette Anderson, deputy director for the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, and Dr. Megan Collins, a bioethicist at the Berman School of Bioethics and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Consortium for School-Based Health Solutions. The post Podcast #68 – The eSchools+ Initiative appeared first on GovEx.

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss the Love Your Block program in the City of Lancaster. Love Your Block is a Cities of Service initiative that connects city leaders with residents to help them organize neighborhood improvements, cleanups, and other volunteer-led projects. We’re joined by Lancaster’s Director of Neighborhood Engagement as well as researchers from the Urban Institute who recently completed an efficacy study of Love Your Block. The post Podcast #67 – Love Your Block in Lancaster, PA appeared first on GovEx.

This week we’re starting a mini-series on data and culture change. We will be taking a look at several different approaches to building a culture of data use with city partners from around the country. For this episode, we’re joined by Josh Edwards of Durham, NC. Josh is the Strategic Plan Director in the budget department and also the director of the city’s Innovation Team. Josh oversees a variety of projects related to data in the city and has built several initiatives to help spread data use across the city. The initiatives in Durham span a wide range of topics from innovation in criminal justice to creating a lab where employees can experiment on all sorts of topics. However all of the projects focus on building internal capacity to solve problems with data. Whether employees are using the strategic plan goal dashboard, the Durham Open Data Portal, or the Neighborhood Compass, they're all focused on using data to better serve residents. Like Data? Listen and Get in Touch You can find updates to the podcast in several ways. Look for us on iTunes as GovEx Data Points Find up-to-date episodes on our website at http://govex.jhu.edu/podcast Get in touch with us and let us know what you want to hear, suggest potential episodes, and give us feedback on how the podcast is going. You can contact us on Twitter at Gov_Ex or reach out via our website at govex.jhu.edu/contact.

Budgets are often long, complicated, and difficult for the average city resident to understand. But they don't have to be. Participatory budgeting is a tool growing in use that helps residents understand and actively contribute to budgeting decisions in a city. Since it started in Brazil in the 1980s, participatory budgeting has spread around the world. In this episode, we talk with representatives from two organizations using different participatory budgeting mechanisms to explain the why, what, and how of making budgets more participatory. First we discussed the nuts and bolts of doing participatory budgeting in a city government with City Manager Louis DePasquale and Budget Director Sarah Stanton of Cambridge, MA. Then we explored a gamified way of thinking about engaging people through budgets with Kelsey Foster, who is the Campaign Manager of the People's Budget at the Committee for a Better New Orleans. To learn more about these techniques, check out http://pb.cambridgema.gov/ and https://neworleans.peoplesbudget.com. Like Data? Listen and Get in Touch You can find updates to the podcast in several ways. Look for us on iTunes as GovEx Data Points Find up-to-date episodes on our website at http://govex.jhu.edu/podcast Get in touch with us and let us know what you want to hear, suggest potential episodes, and give us feedback on how the podcast is going. You can contact us on Twitter at Gov_Ex or reach out via our website at govex.jhu.edu/contact.

In honor of Open Data Day 2018, cohosts Sharon Paley and Eric Reese bring you this special mini episode of Data Points. We share our three favorite (and quick) tips for opening data in your government. Let us know how you are celebrating Open Data Day and if you enjoy this extra short version of the podcast by email us at govex@jhu.edu.

This week we talk with Dr. Marc Gourevitch and Dr. Jessica Athens, professors at New York University’s School of Medicine and Public Health. They’ll talk to us about the city health dashboard they’ve been developing for cities across the US. The City Health Dashboard is a web resource that enables community leaders and advocates for health, education, housing, and other policy areas in four pilot cities to easily see where they stand on 26 key measures of health and drivers of health. The site displays measures and drivers of health in a variety of data views, including interactive maps and charts. Through the site, you can compare outcomes across your neighborhood and among your peer cities. We also talk about the forthcoming expansion of the tool for even more cities to leverage for data-based health policy making.  

The Fighting Irish are fighting poverty at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (otherwise known as LEO) at the University of Notre Dame. The center is identifying the data-centric, effective and scalable programs that help people move out of poverty. LEO’s research is conducted by Notre Dame faculty "as well as scholars from across the country with expertise in designing and evaluating the impact of domestic anti-poverty programs." In this episode, we talk to James Sullivan, the Rev. Thomas J. McDonagh, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Economics and LEO's cofounder. We learn more about LEO in general, as well as its evaluation of projects which address juvenile recidivism and efforts to prevent homelessness.  

Cities use data to tackle almost every problem imaginable. This includes the serious issue of opiods and overdoses. Using data to tackle serious issues in a public way is a great benefit of open data and performance analytics work and this week we dive into the great work being done by the city of Cincinnati. In this episode, we dig into Cincinnati’s work through a conversation with the city’s Chief Performance Office Leigh Tami. Leigh’s background in law gives her a unique perspective on using data to solve problems and her work in Cincinnati spans a variety of topic areas. Listen in as we discuss how useful data has been in Cincinnati and how other cities can apply the techniques Cincinnati has used. Like Data? Listen and Get in Touch You can find updates to the podcast in several ways. Look for us on iTunes as GovEx Data Points Find up-to-date episodes on our website at https://govex.jhu.edu/podcast Get in touch with us and let us know what you want to hear, suggest potential episodes, and give us feedback on how the podcast is going. You can contact us on Twitter at Gov_Ex or reach out via our website at govex.jhu.edu/contact. The post Data Points Podcast Episode 48 – Cincy Insights with Leigh Tami appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Government Excellence.

Cities use data to tackle almost every problem imaginable. This includes the serious issue of opiods and overdoses. Using data to tackle serious issues in a public way is a great benefit of open data and performance analytics work and this week we dive into the great work being done by the city of Cincinnati. In this episode, we dig into Cincinnati’s work through a conversation with the city’s Chief Performance Office Leigh Tami. Leigh’s background in law gives her a unique perspective on using data to solve problems and her work in Cincinnati spans a variety of topic areas. Listen in as we discuss how useful data has been in Cincinnati and how other cities can apply the techniques Cincinnati has used. Like Data? Listen and Get in Touch You can find updates to the podcast in several ways. Look for us on iTunes as GovEx Data Points Find up-to-date episodes on our website at https://govex.jhu.edu/podcast Get in touch with us and let us know what you want to hear, suggest potential episodes, and give us feedback on how the podcast is going. You can contact us on Twitter at Gov_Ex or reach out via our website at govex.jhu.edu/contact. The post Data Points Podcast Episode 48 – Cincy Insights with Leigh Tami appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Government Excellence.

It’s always good to pause and reflect. As the calendar page turns from 2017 to 2018, Eric and Sharon take time out to wrap up 2017 and discuss everything that’s happened on the Data Points podcast in the past year. The conversation range from integrated data systems to Lithuanian basketball and hits all the key data topics in between. Eric and Sharon also discuss what they want to focus on looking forward into 2018. If you have particular ideas and topics to focus on for the Data Points podcast in 2018, get in touch with us on Twitter at Gov_Ex or reach out via our website at govex.jhu.edu/contact. Like Data? Listen and Get in Touch You can find updates to the podcast in several ways. Look for us on iTunes as GovEx Data Points Find up-to-date episodes on our website at https://govex.jhu.edu/resource-type/podcast/ Get in touch with us and let us know what you want to hear, suggest potential episodes, and give us feedback on how the podcast is going. You can contact us on Twitter at Gov_Ex or reach out via our website at govex.jhu.edu/contact. The post Data Points Podcast Episode 47 – 2017 Wrap-Up appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Government Excellence.

Many people know about algorithms. But we often don’t know much about them and how they work. In Episode 39 Weapons of Math Destruction, guest Cathy O’Neill described the basics of applications of algorithms in government. Today, we’re going deeper with law professors and reseachers Bob Brauneis and Ellen Goodman to talk about openness and algorithms in the US. In this episode, we tap into Bob and Ellen’s expertise in law and government to talk through how open records laws apply to algorithms. Through their work at George Washington University School of Law and Rutgers University School of Law respectively, they dig into areas such as freedom of information requests, information law, and public policy related to openness of government. They also worked together to publish a forthcoming paper, Algorithmic Transparency for the Smart City, which details their efforts to catalog responses to public information requests on algorithms. Like Data? Listen and Get in Touch You can find updates to the podcast in several ways. Look for us on iTunes as GovEx Data Points Find up-to-date episodes on our website at https://govex.jhu.edu/podcast Get in touch with us and let us know what you want to hear, suggest potential episodes, and give us feedback on how the podcast is going. You can contact us on Twitter at Gov_Ex or reach out via our website at govex.jhu.edu/contact. The post Data Points Podcast Episode 46 – Algorithms, Law, and Openness appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Government Excellence.

This week, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the selection committee for its fourth US Mayors Challenge. The Mayors Challenge will invest $17.5 million in American cities to test and implement innovative and shareable solutions that tackle today’s toughest problems. Over 320 cities have participated in the 2017 Challenge. On this episode, Sheila and Sharon speak to Anne Emig of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Government Innovation about the initiative, the trends that have been spotted this year, and what’s next for the Mayors Challenge. We are also joined by Julie Rusk, Chief Civic Wellbeing Officer from past Mayors Challenge winning city, Santa Monica, California. The Wellbeing Project has paid dividends for residents of Santa Monica and is now spreading to other cities as well. Julie will take us through the project and how its been supported by the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge and may be useful to your city.   The post Data Points Episode 45 – Mayors Challenge appeared first on Johns Hopkins Center for Government Excellence.