'What Works Cities' Announces Sixteen New Cities
Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced that sixteen new cities have joined its What Works Cities initiative, a $42 million effort to improve and enhance the use of data and data-based evidence by municipal governments with the goal of improving service delivery, local decision making, and citizen engagement.
Albuquerque, New Mexico; Birmingham, Alabama; Boulder, Colorado; Des Moines, Iowa; Fort Worth, Texas; Hartford, Connecticut; Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee; Lincoln, Nebraska; Madison, Wisconsin; Olathe, Kansas; Portland, Oregon; Salt Lake City, Utah; South Bend, Indiana; Syracuse, New York; and Virginia Beach, Virginia will join thirty-nine other cities already receiving strategic guidance and technical assistance through the initiative. With support from a consortium of partners that includes Results for America, the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, and the Sunlight Foundation, participating governments are improving their open data practices, establishing and enhancing their performance management programs, developing their evaluation capacity, and changing their contracting practices so as to achieve better results.
Launched in April 2015 with the goal of supporting a hundred mid-sized cities in the U.S., the initiative is now working with a total of fifty-five municipalities that, together, are home to nineteen million residents.
"Mayors in every part of the country and across the political spectrum recognize that data can help city governments continuously improve how they serve citizens, and they are eager to learn from one another," said Michael R. Bloomberg. "We have an outstanding and diverse group of cities participating in What Works Cities, and we look forward to welcoming more to the program in the weeks and months ahead."
