Bloomberg commits $42 million to scale government performance management, open data

[caption id=”attachment_20129” align=”alignnone” width=”800”] Photo: Mike Bloomberg[/caption]

As part of a new What Works Cities initiative, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a $42 million effort to help 100 U.S. cities “elevate and accelerate” their ”use of data and evidence to engage citizens, make government more effective, and improve people’s lives.”

The first eight partner cities are Chattanooga, Tennessee; Jackson, Mississippi; Kansas City, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; Mesa, Arizona; New Orleans, Louisiana; Seattle, Washington; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Organizations that will help facilitate What Works Cities objectives include The Behavioral Insights Team, Government Performance Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School, Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Government Excellence, or GovEx, Results for America and Sunlight Foundation.

One of the early contributions GovEx has made to this effort is a set of guides focused on open data and performance management implementation:

• Open Data Getting Started Guide
• Performance Management - Getting Started
• Dataset Inventory Guidelines
• Open Data - Metadata Guide

There is also the beginnings of an open data portal requirements guide and GovEx Labs, a “testing ground for collaboration, resource-sharing, and product development.” GovEx Director of Open Data Andrew Nicklin says the resources are “living, breathing books” that will continue to be iterated on. See the GovEx GitHub organization for all projects and follow on Twitter at @centerforgov.

Municipalities interested in participating in the What Works Cities program can learn more about the standard or visit whatworkscities.bloomberg.org.