Mayor Scott Announces ARPA Investment in Digital Services and Data-Driven Agency Performance
BALTIMORE, MD. (Wednesday, September 14, 2022) — Today, Mayor Brandon Scott announced $3.2 million of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allocated from the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs (MORP) towards modernizing City government and improving City service performance and equity. Two new programs in the Mayor’s Office – Baltimore Digital and the City Performance Team – will bring innovative approaches and best practices to using data, design, and technology to support the Mayor’s Responsible Stewardship of City Resources Action Plan pillar.
"I am truly excited about this investment, which I know will be essential in bringing innovative services and support to city residents,” said Mayor Brandon M. Scott. "Since taking office, one of my main goals has been to ensure our City government is operating in the most up-to-date fashion and at optimal efficiency. This investment will help enhance our performance and, ultimately, allow us to move ever closer towards the state-of-the-art government that our residents deserve."
The City will invest $2.1 million to create Baltimore Digital, a small team of technology experts tasked with building more accessible and equitable digital tools for residents to access City services. Digital service teams are being created throughout the U.S. at all levels of government and are demonstrating that online access to services and tools can be simpler, cheaper, and more quickly deployed than traditional IT projects. These teams employ user experience design techniques to ensure the needs of users are met and that tools are easy to use and accessible, as well as product management methods that result in quicker delivery of services to end users. The team will be under the direction of the City’s Chief Data Officer, Justin Elszasz.
“As part of Mayor Scott’s commitment to modernizing government and providing excellent customer service to constituents, Baltimore Digital will play a critical role in centering residents and their needs in building and buying technology” said Justin Elszasz, Chief Data Officer for the City of Baltimore. “This is ultimately about creating pathways to improve the delivery of core city services and bringing the City in line with established best practices in civic technology. As the Mayor’s Chief Data Officer, I am incredibly excited about the potential this effort has to improve the wellbeing and quality of life of our residents.”
An additional $1.1 million will establish a City Performance Team in the Mayor’s Office of Performance & Innovation (OPI), which will build a more holistic and comprehensive approach to performance management for the City of Baltimore. A key part of this effort will be to streamline measures collected for existing processes such as the budget book, CitiStat, and the Mayor’s Action Plan. This will also allow the City to strengthen agency performance, ensuring that these metrics are meaningful and accurate ways to track the effectiveness of City service delivery.
As part of this process, each City agency will commit to metrics and targets for key services, codified in annual performance plans at the start of each budget year. Agencies will report on their performance on these metrics and targets at least twice per year. The public will be able to follow this process through the agency performance plans and the subsequent agency reports.
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About the Chief Data Officer
The role of Chief Data Officer (CDO) was added to the Mayor’s Office in 2021 to center data in Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration and in City government moving forward. The CDO is tasked with addressing three broad areas of data-driven government: governance, capacity, and operations. Among other duties, the Chief Data Officer is responsible for implementing Citywide data governance, developing strategies and tools to help agencies become more data-driven, and Open Baltimore, the City’s open data program.
About the Mayor’s Office of Performance & Innovation
The Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation (OPI) uses data and design to create sustainable change for the City of Baltimore. Within OPI, CitiStat is a unit that uses data to drive accountability for Baltimore City government through meaningful and equitable performance goals. The Data Fellows Program embeds data experts into city agencies to improve government efficiency and delivery of services for residents. And the Innovation Team uses human-centered design – which keeps residents and other stakeholders at the center of the innovation process - to develop solutions to big city challenges. Learn more at baltopi.com.
About the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) provided $641 million to the City of Baltimore in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency and its negative economic impacts. Mayor Brandon M. Scott has established the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs to transparently and effectively administer this funding on behalf of the City. For the most up-to-date information regarding proposals, funded projects, and project progress visit our ARPA Reporting center at arp.baltimorecity.gov/dashboard.
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