Resources & News

What Works Cities: Cities and Economic Mobility: What It Takes to Jumpstart Progress

July 31, 2020 – The Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), a WWC expert partner, shares how cities designed their economic mobility projects with local partners and set the right evaluation metrics.

What Works Cities: Sustaining Progress on Economic Mobility During COVID-19

July 8, 2020 – More than 50 local government leaders and community partners from the nine participating cities participating in the WWC Economic Mobility initiative convened in a virtual conference organized by Results for America. Over the course of two afternoons on June 17 and 18, the cities problem solved with their peers and heard from experts in racial equity, workforce, housing, financial security, and child care.

What Works Cities: How Data-Driven Cities Respond Swiftly and Effectively to COVID-19

May 29, 2020 – To contain the novel coronavirus’ spread and protect residents, local leaders have had to act swiftly and decisively, underscoring the power of data to guide critical decisions. Read more about how cities across the country have leaned on the data cultures they have built in their response to COVID-19.

What Works Cities: Boosting Economic Mobility: The Great Challenge of Our Time

April 30, 2020 – Maia Jachimowicz, Vice President for Evidence-Based Policy Implementation at Results for America, and Zachary Markovits, Director of City Progress at What Works Cities, share why the work started by cities in the What Works Cities’ Economic Mobility Initiative to address economic disparities—even before the pandemic—is as urgent and as important as ever.

Bloomberg Philanthropies Medium: How a handwritten note helped Syracuse collect $1.5 million in back taxes

December 12, 2018 – Sometimes, little things can make a big difference. That’s one lesson from a stunningly simple experiment in Syracuse, N.Y., that netted the city $1.5 million worth of overdue tax payments. Earlier this year, the city mailed out more than 3,800 letters to residents who were behind on their property tax bills. Checks came pouring in. More of those payments came from people who had received the letter with Martha’s message than those who did not. The Syracuse experiment was an example of how cities are applying insights from behavioral science to make government more efficient, effective, and inclusive.

DataSF Blog: Ode to Joy: a Fond Farewell to Joy Bonaguro

September 17, 2018 – During Chief Data Officer Joy Bonaguro’s time leading DataSF, the team delivered in many ways. Here are just some highlights: What Works Cities Certification. Bloomberg’s What Works Cities initiative certified San Francisco for good use of data this past year. The City was one of 9 cities to receive the certification. In the 2 technical assistance categories representing much of our portfolio, Open Data and Data Governance, the City received perfect marks. The materials we’ve posted related to those topics have been copied and re-used the world over.

Sunlight Foundation Blog Post: Beyond open data policy

September 12, 2018 – Earlier this year, Sunlight’s Open Cities team updated its mission to reflect a shifting tide within our team and in the greater open government community. We’ve come a long way in helping cities establish strong foundations for openness through open data policies, transparency initiatives, and open data portals. Two weeks ago, we released our Open Data Policy Hub, which is a culmination of our last three years promoting open data policy and practice through the What Works Cities program, using our fundamental open data policy guidelines.

National League of Cities: We’re Committed to Data and Evidence

August 24, 2018 – At NLC, we hear you loud and clear. For city leaders, using data matters more than ever. In short, data and technology are everything in 2018, and fundamental to how cities keep readying themselves to tackle the challenges of the future. That’s why we’ve partnered with Results for America – a lead partner of What Works Cities, a Bloomberg Philanthropies-launched initiative – to offer a first-of-its-kind workshop series on foundational data practices through NLC University.

Tech at Bloomberg: New Toolkit for Data Science Ethics to Debut at Bloomberg’s Data for Good Exchange 2018

August 17, 2018 – As in other fields, when data scientists allow bias to impact their work, the results can be wide-ranging, difficult to predict, and sometimes, dangerous. That’s part of the reason David Anderson, a member of Data Community DC’s Advisory Board, along with a team led by Andrew Nicklin, who is the Director of Data Practices at the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, will be presenting a workshop on just this topic at the upcoming Data for Good Exchange 2018. The development of the toolkit was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies through its What Works Cities initiative.

GovEx: Upping Our Resilience Game Through Performance Measures

August 12, 2018 – For the City of Fayetteville, stormwater management is a critically important issue. When the City of Fayetteville first began working with the Center for Government Excellence (GovEx) through the What Works Cities (WWC) initiative, we set out to analyze and refine the performance measures we use to track and manage this issue. To begin to change our trajectory, we partnered with GovEx to bring together city staff from both the Storm Water Division and the Strategy and Performance Analytics office.