Getting to What Works Cities Gold

The City of South Bend Celebrated a Big What Works Cities Certification Milestone in 2023!

This year the City of South Bend was announced as a What Works Cities Gold Certified City for excellence in data-driven government. As of the publication of this blog, we were the only city in Indiana to reach this distinction and we are one of the smallest cities to get “Gold” certification so far.

I’m so unspeakably proud of the team for the work we’ve accomplished. This certification status has been at least 2 years in the making. Behind it are dozens of people in and outside of the Department of Innovation & Technology who have built a data-driven culture in city government that values transparency, performance, and continuous improvement. It also helps to have a Mayor who appreciates data and Department teams who are ambitious and collaborative!

Here are some highlights of the projects and plans that drove our What Works Cities Gold designation in 2023:

• We leveraged data (federal and locally collected) to create our city’s Digital Equity Roadmap. Read more here and here!
• We maintained good data governance, including updated data sharing policies and new disaggregated data SOPs built into our Forms 101 training for staff. We also helped develop new Model Data Handling Policies with the MetroLab Network!
• We rolled out Results Driven Contracting at the City of South Bend which has transformed the way we engage with social service partners to drive the progress we want. We also had the opportunity to be part of the 2023 Cohort of Leading City Procurement Reform.
• Data has been put in service to reaching our most vulnerable households. In addition to tracking key data sources with city teams (utility delinquencies, evictions, etc.), we also created a new strategic performance management program called “Assistance Stat”. This was a platform for the City and its partners track and problem solve around our most important, but under-subscribed household assistance programs.
• We maintained and expanded internal analytics training at the City, now offering more training and support for our expanding community of GIS users.

Snippets from our new data trainings! We have created standards for teams collecting programatic data.

We collected data from our residents on digital skills and mobile network coverage to inform our digital equity goals and investments.

We’ve created and automated reporting on utility delinquencies, payment behavior, and utility assistance uptake for city leaders.

We’d like to heartily thank our partners at Bloomberg Philanthropies, What Works Cities, and Results for America for facilitating a great community of practice that pushes us all to be better.

Moving forward onto 2024, South Bend is eager to experiment more with our performance management program format (SB Stat), think creatively about resident engagement with data, and implement more results-driven contracting!

Denise Linn Riedl is the Chief Innovation Officer for the City of South Bend and the head of the Department of Innovation & Technology.