It’s been a year since Mitch Landrieu was inaugurated as Mayor of the City of New Orleans. How is the new Mayor doing at implementing… »
Best Practices
Letter in opposition to Master Plan citizen participation amendment
To: The New Orleans City Planning Commission
1300 Perdido Street, Rm. 1E07
New Orleans, LA 70112
January 26, 2012
Dear Esteemed Commissioners:
As the founder, director, and leading advocate for the transparency, accountability, and citizen participation recommendations described by the NolaStat reform, and through a variety of interactions with a broad constituency of the city, I have become… »
TechStat teaches skills that promote good government
The NolaStat report has offered a treatment of the TechStat approach used to manage IT projects in the District of Columbia. Additionally, the use of portfolio managers responsible for monitoring key performance indicators of D.C. projects was a remarkable innovation.
Here’s a review of the federal TechStat process that was published in Government Technology:
Federal CIO’s Techstat… »
Garbage in, garbage out
New Orleans remains the most blighted city in America. The factors that produced an estimated 57,000 blighted properties are historic outmigration, exacerbated by flooding after Hurricane Katrina.
Despite the overwhelming need to revitalize neighborhoods by bringing property back into commerce, there are tremendous investment opportunities in the city, with attractive, historic architectural gems distributed throughout the… »
Victory
More than three years ago, Citizen Crime Watch was created to advocate for improved public access to 911 calls for service crime data. With heightened public concerns about rising crime after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Police Department was doing a poor job of keeping the public informed about shifting patterns of crime. The calls… »
Questions & answers about the NOPD COMSTAT process
What is the New Orleans Police Department’s COMSTAT process? What should we know about it, and how should we evaluate it?
These are questions that remain unanswered by a story printed in today’s Times-Picayune.
One concern is that the process creates internal competitive pressures that can tend toward corruption of statistics.
But COMSTAT also has its share of… »
More agile human resources management needed to reform civil service
The civil service system used in New Orleans city government is decades behind the times, and is in desperate need of an overhaul, according to a report prepared by the George Bush School of Government & Public Service for the Business Council of New Orleans.
That conclusion should come as no surprise to anyone in New… »
Mitch looking at reform models in other cities
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…. »
data + sharing = intelligence
Florida recently launched a data-sharing system involving eight state agencies:
“Shared information is imperative to any successful organization, especially one charged with making decisions based on data related to at-risk children and families. … To share intelligence and data is a cultural change for the state — it’s a new way of thinking — and the… »
Governing for excellence through a budget crisis
“I will inherit a city that is in financial trouble,” Landrieu said. “I think the public is going to be shocked to know the financial situation the city is in” (Greg LaRose, City Business, 4/26/2010).
Councilmember Stacy Head foreshadowed on WIST radio last week that when Mitch Landrieu is sworn in as mayor next week, he’ll… »
Governing for Outcomes
“If information was used to make policy changes, they came about as a result of yearly reviews. Implementation took months, or even years. By the time a contemplated change was in place, the conditions that prompted the shift might no longer be relevant” (Martin O’Malley, after becoming Mayor of Baltimore).
Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO) is… »
