From Data Portals to Performance Dashboards: Four Big Wins in Our Cities This Week

Celebrating Las Vegas, Little Rock, Providence, and Syracuse

What Works Cities
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

Las Vegas, NV

The Results Vegas web portal

The City of Las Vegas is not only committed to making life better for residents; as Administrative Officer Victoria Carreon told us recently, the City also wants the community to hold it accountable for doing so. Through its Results Vegas performance management program, departments across the City are using data to track how they’re advancing citywide priorities to grow the local economy, improve neighborhood livability, reduce community risk, and achieve a high-performing government. Residents can track that progress for themselves thanks to the Results Vegas web portal the City launched in December 2016. And with eight new dashboards added this week, residents have access to more information than ever before about the state of their city.

Little Rock, AR

Little Rock Citizen Connect, a new site mapping 311 requests and police crime data

If knowledge is power, the City of Little Rock has a vision for a very empowered community. This week’s launch of Little Rock Citizen Connect comes with the hope that “citizens will be able to quickly understand what’s happening around their home or business at any given time,” writes City Manager Bruce T. Moore on the site’s homepage. Residents can search an interactive map of geotagged 311 requests (e.g., bulky items, code violations) and police crime data (e.g., burglaries, motor vehicle theft)—and filter them by location, incident type, date, and more. Residents who want to be notified of new incidents in their neighborhood can sign up for email updates by registering for a free account.

Providence, RI

Open Providence, the City of Providence’s open data portal

As we learned during a recent visit to Providence, innovation is fundamental to how the City is boldly reimagining how it operates. But what underpins those efforts? The data that show what’s working and what isn’t. As Chief Innovation and Performance Officer Emmanuel R. Echevarria told us:

“Data is one of the most important things in making any change happen because you need to be able to measure what you do, how well you do it, and really look at process and numbers to identify where opportunities for improvements, or challenges, lie.”

The City’s newly approved open data resolution will ensure that departments can make better decisions by more seamlessly drawing on each other’s data as a resource. And by establishing processes for publishing public data on the Open Providence open data portal, residents will have easier access to information they seek about their city and local government.

Syracuse, NY

DataCuse, the City of Syracuse’s open data portal

Syracuse has been growing a demand for an open data portal long before it launched its own, called DataCuse, this week. By cultivating relationships with local nonprofits and other community stakeholders who can use municipal data to drive their own work, the City has leveraged a broad network it can collaborate with to solve challenges facing the city. Chief Data Officer Sam Edelstein shared one such example with us recently: the local Community Foundation has been seeking data on housing code violations, the age of housing stock, and similar information to inform its giving around the amelioration of lead paint. Now, that information is easily accessible via the portal. A sign of the City’s commitment to transparency, the portal brings good news for residents, too, who now have information on neighborhoods, housing, and infrastructure at their fingertips.

What Works Cities

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Helping leading cities across the U.S. use data and evidence to improve results for their residents. Launched by @BloombergDotOrg in April 2015.

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