Mayor Landrieu is looking at performance management models in other cities, he said today on WWL. Among the models he likes are the Baltimore CitiStat performance management process, and the D.C. CapStat process — both inspirations for the NolaStat reform recommendations.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino recently demonstrated to Mitch how the Boston 311 system works. He called his 24 Hour Constituent Service to register a complaint about a broken street light:

Within 45 seconds or a minute, he got a text message back that said it will be fixed within 48 hours.

And I walked into the room and there were eight or nine people sitting in there with headphones on receiving calls from constituents who would call in and report problems in the city.

And I said — what do you do with them?

And he said, “Well we send them to the departments. We make sure they fix the problem. And then we call them back and tell them thank you for calling, and it’s done.” …

I started laughing. I said, “I want one of those for New Orleans.”

And the idea, again, is customer service.

Now, one of the reasons we can’t do what I just said, in New Orleans, is because the technology system that’s in the City of New Orleans doesn’t work. It is in almost a state of failure.

And so, you have to have the technology — number one — you have to have the resources — number two — and then you have to be able not only to receive the call, but when you deliver the message to the streets department, they have to have the capacity to go out there and fix the thing.

Mitch later elaborated more philosophically on what it will take to make New Orleans a model of reform and revitalization:

I feel very good that we’re changing; that it’s going to be transformational change. But I would just say this to the people: This is gonna be really, really hard. It’s gonna take endurance. It’s gonna take patience. And I want to ask the people to discipline themselves into getting to yes — finding common ground.

This is not a Pollyannish approach. But one of the things we have gotten used to in this town is finding the things that we want to fight about, and spending a lot of time on that, instead of the things that are common enemies to us all. We have common enemies, and we have to figure out who they are, what they are, and then we gotta get after ‘em.

And again, I’ve said there’s nothing broken here that can’t be fixed. There’s no gulf or divide between us that can’t be bridged. We have to work really hard towards doing that. It’s going to take time.

You know, the Saints used to suit up every year, and they use to always lose. And it took a complete new way to get from where they were, to the Super Bowl.

That’s where we want to go. We want to be the best government in America. People are gonna laugh at that: “You gotta be kidding me. New Orleans wants to be the best government?”

Yes, we do. You know what? We can. But we gotta be focused. We gotta be disciplined. We have to be constructive.

My mantra is: Be hard on the problem, and soft on the people, because everybody wants the same thing. And that is safe streets, schools that teach kids — kids having the opportunity to learn — good jobs, and they want a government that’s honest and effective.

The customer service portion of Garland Robinette’s May 7th interview with Mitch Landrieu begins at 24:32 on the WWL podcasts page.