Since taking office last year, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has made a priority of collecting data to help improve city hall’s services.
Over the last 18 months, City Hall’s been collecting data on everything from potholes to Uber travel times between neighborhoods. Walsh’s data team is now tasked with figuring out how best to put all that information into action.
Walsh said data analytics have been useful in making decisions on school issues, fire department modernization and more.
Jascha Franklin-Hodge is Walsh’s Chief Information Officer and oversees a team made up of between eight and 10 analysts and programmers, depending on the project, according to Walsh’s spokeswoman Bonnie McGilpin.
“It’s not about data for data’s sake,it’s about how we can have a positive impact by either directly improving the quality of service that’s being delivered or simply by making government operate more effectively, more efficiently, in a more responsive or transparent way that ultimately has positive quality of life impacts for people.”
One of the most prominent uses of data at City Hall so far has been Walsh’s own “dashboard” installed in his office. From Sim City-like screens near his desk, Walsh can monitor the realtime working rate and efficiency of many city departments and functions.
Franklin-Hodge was eager to show off one project the data team has been working on- efforts to bring housing, permit and inspection information to the fingertips of firefighters when they’re dispatched to a scene. Many fatal firefighting incidents occur due to already structurally deficient buildings,
Franklin-Hodge said. By organizing all the information the city has trapped in its archives and files about certain locations and putting it on a tablet device for firefighters to access en route, data can saves lives.
Franklin-Hodge described the data team as a mix of specialties across government and tech which took workers from various projects Walsh launched in the earliest days of his administration and “coalescing that into an actual organization with some structure around it and with deliberate design that focuses on building a mix of skills from highly technical to very business -oriented that allow us to apply data throughout the city.”
Compared to other cities like New York and Baltimore, Walsh insists Boston is a forerunner in using data for city services.
“I’m not saying we’re the first, but we’re looking at a whole different way. I’d say we’re ahead of most cities,” Walsh said.
Boston has tucked away $1.34 million in its planned fiscal year 2016 capital budget for advancing data analytics, according to McGilpin. The authorized funds go toward a mix of technology infrastructure and investments, including work to unlock core data from traditional city systems, making city data available to businesses and making them more easily related to other sources.
Walsh added that the city has gone from not even having a computer in the mayor’s office when his term began to now having cabinet members and other officials preparing to use their own data dashboards. Walsh is so into data, he doesn’t see any area of city government that wouldn’t benefit from knowing the numbers.
“I don’t think there’s anything that could be measured that wouldn’t be helpful. Not necessarily for me, but for the city as a whole,” Walsh said.
