Efficiency

Times are tough for American cities dealing with the financial crisis: A 2009 survey by the National League of Cities found that 84% of cities were facing significant financial difficulties and 92% expected to have trouble meeting citizen’s needs. Between budget cutbacks and increasing demands for services, it’s more crucial than ever to make sure that city government’s resources are managed effectively to achieve the most impact. By introducing innovative technological solutions and opening city data, we can help cities do more and work better by decreasing bureaucratic burdens, lowering costs, and streamlining service delivery.

Web-based tools have the potential to revolutionize the way we approach the business of government and reinvigorate a commitment to civic innovation in our cities. At its core, improving local government efficiency is about freeing up time, money, and energy to allow cities to focus on what’s really important‚ providing for the needs of their citizens and improving the quality of life in their community.

Innovative Strategies

Opening Spending Data and Tracking Project Success: Transparent spending data allows citizens and government see exactly where money is going, which programs are working, and which ones aren’t. This information can be used to make better decisions about how to allocate government resources. The Federal IT Dashboard, which tracks IT spending and rates the performance of each project, is an example of how open data can help government evaluate their investments and spend smarter. The federal government has used this platform to identify and eliminate under-performing and over-budget projects, freeing up funds to be used more effectively.

Open-sourcing Government Tools: Governments require IT infrastructure to provide services to citizens, and procuring this software is often expensive. Sharing code for technological solutions that are free for any city to use—instead of each government independently buying or building their own system—dramatically reduces costs and redundancies. Civic Commons, a repository of open-source civic software, is one project working to bring an open-source approach to government IT to foster cost-effectiveness and sustainability. Code for America employs this strategy in all our projects, designing them to be shareable and adaptable for use in any city.

Integrating Platforms to Reduce Redundant Bureaucracy: Integrating platforms and making it easier for different parts of government to share information with each other can streamline processes and reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. This makes business run more smoothly and efficiently on the government end, and helps citizens get what they need done faster.  A feature of Boston’s Education Services Platform will crosslink existing databases to eliminate the need for parents and teachers to fill out forms with the same information over and over again. Small changes like this can add up to significant savings of time and money.

Examples: