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In the 2025-2026 proposed budget, Mayor Harrell included a comprehensive set of investments to support the well-being and safety of teens. To guide new investments in student mental health, the City’s Innovation & Performance team conducted interviews, focus groups, and research to understand where resources could make the biggest difference.
The report on this research, “A Student-Led Approach to Mental Health Services,” identified five key insights from stakeholders and recommendations to improve prevention, early intervention, and treatment for mental health challenges. Based on research and community feedback, the 2025-2026 budget includes new investments such as:
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Screening and therapy: Expanding proactive mental health screening and increasing in-person mental health support as well as offering free telehealth services for youth.
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Reach Out Seattle: Expanding the Reach Out Seattle initiative, launched by Mayor Harrell in 2023, which provides free, accessible training and resources to adults to help them intervene and offer care and support to young people in distress.
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Youth Connector: Creating a program co-designed by and for teens to help improve access to and awareness of activities and enrichment programs.
The Seattle City Council voted to approve the 2025-2026 budget on November 21, and it was signed into law by Mayor Harrell on November 26. Check out the full report: A Student-Led Approach to Mental Health Services.
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Winning a government contract can be a game-changer for local small businesses. But confusing and inefficient processes can keep new firms, as well as small and BIPOC-owned firms, from being successful as City contractors. These inefficiencies also take up valuable staff time and resources.
This is why Seattle participated in the Bloomberg Philanthropies I-teams Procurement Cohort, a $1 million, two-year grant by Bloomberg Philanthropies to help transform our approach to buying. The Procurement Transformation project is a partnership between the Seattle Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) and the Mayor’s Innovation and Performance Team, with technical assistance from the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL).
Through this project, the City of Seattle made many important changes and learned lessons to make procurement more efficient, equitable, strategic, and results-driven. In this “cookbook” of recipes for procurement excellence, we want to share with you some of our accomplishments and learnings over this two-year project. The hope of this book is that it spreads good ideas, sparks inspiration, and encourages all of us in our efforts to continue transforming procurement!
As part of this project, we are also highlighting a series of stories that demonstrate promising practices that can better support our Women and Minority-Owned Enterprises (WMBEs). Check out our recent stories:
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Seattle is continuing to make public benefits more accessible for residents since the expansion of the Affordable Seattle program in 2023. Mayor Harrell announced the expansion of the Affordable Seattle initiative on July 12, 2023, part of his efforts to make City discount and benefit programs easily accessible to all.
Civiform is an innovative portal designed to help residents and their trusted community-based organizations to quickly and conveniently apply for City services. This one-stop-shop saves residents time and money by making it easier to apply for multiple benefit and discount programs at the same time. In the year since the Affordable Seattle Executive Order was signed, over 9,000 applications came in via CiviForm. Applicants enrolled in programs saved on average $2,575 per year.
The average household applying on CiviForm had three members with annual household income of less than $27,600 per year. Over 15% of applicants preferred a language other than English, with Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Amharic as the top-requested languages.
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The Affordable Seattle team was recognized with a 2024 Anthem Award in the Humanitarian Action & Services – Product category. Seattle was also named a winner in the 2024 Digital Cities Survey, which recognizes cities that are investing in digital equity programs, upgrading resident-facing services, and prioritizing data security.
The team was also selected to present at three conferences to share our work on CiviForm this year, most recently the Code for America Summit in May in Oakland, CA as part of a panel on community-driven product management.
Residents and community partners can learn about, check their eligibility, and apply for City of Seattle benefits and discount programs at seattle.gov/affordable. CiviForm is accessible via desktop and mobile in eight languages: English, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Somali, Amharic, Korean, and Tagalog.
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Innovation & Performance Director Leah Tivoli and Chief Analytics Officer Steve Barham traveled to Mexico City last month to participate in the 2024 Bloomberg CityLab, a convening of more than 700 mayors and leading policymakers, innovators, and creatives. Bloomberg CityLab is an annual event that brings leaders together to discuss pressing urban challenges and explore solutions.
Innovation & Performance staff participated in the City Innovation Studio, which provides a dynamic space for hands-on learning and experimentation with cutting-edge technologies, including generative AI, aimed at enhancing city governance and public services. Through workshops, presentations, and innovation sprints, participants gained insights into the latest tools and practices for driving civic innovation and improving urban life. Leah also presented as part of a panel on using digital tools to drive innovation and better service for residents, and shared lessons learned over the years.
Have questions for Leah and Steve about what they learned at CityLab? Drop us a line at performance@seattle.gov.
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Check out some of the latest performance data, reports, and data dashboards from across the City of Seattle.
2024 Seattle Rescue Plan Performance Report
The City of Seattle released the latest performance report on how our COVID-19 response programs have helped residents recover from the pandemic. Seattle received $300M in federal recovery funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). The City accepted these funds in a series of four spending packages known as the Seattle Rescue Plan. With most of these federal relief dollars coming to an end in 2024, the City created this Executive Summary that explores the story of Seattle's pandemic recovery efforts and highlights some accomplishments.
Most Seattle Rescue Plan programs were designed to serve geographic communities and demographic groups that were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Across programs that reported demographic data, nearly 50% of people served identified as BIPOC. And all programs that reported geographic data provided services in Seattle neighborhoods that are historically lower-income and more racially diverse.
While we quickly deployed emergency funding and resources, it was equally important to ensure the aid was spent responsibly, equitably, and transparently. This is why Seattle created a new team to manage the funds and report on their use. This team has supported departments to improve programs' data collection year over year and build a growing culture of data and performance evaluation in Seattle’s government. In the 2023-2024 reporting cycle, 89% of programs collected client demographic data, up from 52% in 2021-2022.
Learn more about Seattle’s COVID-19 recovery investments and see performance reports: Seattle Rescue Plan
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