Mayors convene for Bloomberg City Data Alliance
Bloomberg Philanthropies has convened 22 mayors from seven countries across the Americas as the first cohort of the City Data Alliance—a program of the Bloomberg Cities partnership with Johns Hopkins University—promoting the use of data to inform decision making, improve services, enhance equity, and improve the lives of communities.
Through a $60 million investment announced in March 2022, mayors from each city will receive executive education and expert coaching to build their leadership skills around using data. In addition, senior staff from each city will receive training around critical data-capacity skill sets such as performance management, procurement, evaluation, and data as a service, with the goal of helping cities detect problems earlier, manage resources more effectively, and target resources to those who need them. A total of 100 cities will be invited to join the alliance over the next two years.
The selected cohort has already demonstrated a commitment to using data to drive impact in their cities, said Beth Blauer, Johns Hopkins University associate vice provost for public sector innovation and a leader of the new program. “But the reality is that no city has fully integrated this practice across all of their work. The objective is not just to help cities, but to help the field demonstrate what having a comprehensive citywide data strategy means, and what it means to have a workforce that’s able to deliver on it,” she added.
As one example, the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, using an annual review of 50 key data points to inform changes in policy, has shown a quantifiable reduction in racial disparities in income and life expectancy since 2018. “We are at an important inflection point,” said Tulsa mayor G.T. Bynum, an alliance participant. “We have developed buy-in with our senior leadership team, with our department directors, and with the residents of Tulsa in the value of using data for our city government in making decisions and improving performance of city services. But we’re ready to take that work to the next level. And our participation in this alliance will continue that work.”
(Photo Credit: Getty Images/FerreiraSilva)
