LNKstat kick off

Taking Charge, the City of Lincoln's performance management process, by which we set goals, develop performance indicators, and monitor progress, jumped up to a new level today with the inauguration of LNKstat: a meeting designed to collaboaratively focus the attention of the City's management staff on our municipal government's performance. LNKstat meetings are patterned after a practice that was originally developed in policing during the 1990s, COMPSTAT, which here in Lincoln our police department calls ACUDAT. 

LNKstat is designed to serve the same purpose as ACUDAT, only by more broadly examining all eight of the City's outcomes, from safety & security to efficient transportation. We have been receiving some top-notch technical assistance from the What Works Cities initiative to develop and refine LNKstat, and this morning's meeting begins a series of six coming up in the next few months. 

Today's focus was on the City's first outcome area: safety & security. Our police and fire chief, along with our Parks & Recreation Department and Public Works Department, reviewed the public safety performance indicators from Taking Charge with Mayor Beutler and his staff, and fielded questions and comments from the other City department heads.

The City's performance management team, a group of representatives from most of the departments, led by the Mayor's Chief of Staff, has been working for the past few months with What Works Cities to prepare for this process. The first meeting was excellent. Lots of good information was shared, several action steps were identified, and we all had a productive meeting examining how things are going in the effort to ensure a safe and secure community, and what we need to do to keep on track. 

Next week, LNKstat will shift focus to outcome area number two: livable neighborhoods. This one may be even more challenging than safety & security, because there are eight City departments with a   portion of responsibility for this outcome. What's exciting to see is the City's top management staff focused together on these outcomes, not just those within our own individual domains. 

What works?

What Works Cities is an initiative of the Bloomberg Philanthropies that helps cities enhance their use of data and evidence to improve their services. Lincoln was fortunate last year to be selected as one of the cities (57 so far) to receive technical assistance from the initiative.

Part of that assistance is in the form of training, and today we are hosting Eric Reese, from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence, GovEx. Eric is leading a training session on performance management for about 130 City of Lincoln staff: department directors, their assistants, and senior managers. The purpose of this training is to help us further enhance our performance management process, exemplified by Taking Charge, Lincoln's outcome-based budgeting process.

Tomorrow, both the audience that the topic changes to open data. Lincoln is joining the nationwide open data movement, and our open data governance committee will be participating in what we are calling an Open Data Boot Camp: a half day to get every one up to speed on the concepts, purpose, practices, and opportunities surrounding open data. The governance committee is composed of 17 City staff and citizens from several walks of life.

I'm leading the City's open data initiative, at least for the moment, because of my interest in data. Greater transparency with police data was a recommendation of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and anyone who has read my blog for any part of the past decade knows that I'm mighty interested in using data and analysis to guide operations. Lincoln already makes lots of data and information available to the public, but we intend to do even more, and to transition to more data made available in machine-readable format that can be easily downloaded and employed by anyone interested.

We are looking forward to a couple of days of engaging, interesting, and productive training. City Council member Leirion Gaylor Baird is largely responsible for Lincoln's selection as a What Works City, and the Mayor's Chief of Staff, Rick Hoppe, has been doing the heavy lifting for organizing both this training and the City's interface with the initiative.