Landrieu reforms budget process

Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued an executive order yesterday in City Council chambers to create a more “transparent and accountable process” for producing the annual budget.
Responding to criticisms of the previous administration’s budgeting process, Landrieu promised to obtain community input in determining budget priorities, and to provide more informative descriptions of revenue sources and the purpose… »

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… »

Ronal Serpas is an excellent choice for NOPD police chief

As a civilian tech who supported the New Orleans Police Department COMSTAT process during the reform period of Superintendent Richard Pennington, I experienced firsthand the leadership exhibited by Ronal Serpas on a weekly basis for three years. While Pennington was setting the high-overview priorities to reform the NOPD (in partnership with federal authorities and change… »

Ensuring that task force recommendations are implemented

Mitch’s task forces align well with the NolaStat model for engaging departments in collaborative initiatives.
Stat-driven accountability processes work better if they’re focused on the outcomes that can be achieved when various government entities are assembled and engaged in issue areas such as crime, blight, health, economic development, and youth opportunities.
Progress is achieved when… »

“To help and defend”

New Orleans citizens didn’t need any confirmation of their fear that rogue behavior was metastasizing throughout the NOPD when the Department of Justice announced investigations into civil rights violations, including a conspiracy to cover up police shootings of unarmed citizens on the Danziger Bridge in the days after Hurricane Katrina.
The public already feared the… »

Seattle open data policy will improve public access to city information

Seattle is the next city to follow in the footsteps of open data reforms implemented by San Francisco, New York City, the District of Columbia, and other cities. Data.Seattle.gov is planned as a Web site that will publish city data sets to be downloaded by citizens, or used by citizen programmers to build Web-based applications… »

TechStat: A new way to manage IT projects

President Obama’s Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra has initiated a new accountability process to reduce waste and manage the success of federal IT projects.
TechStat accountability sessions will inform management decisions with a “data-driven, action-focused and results-oriented” process, evaluating federal IT projects across an array of project metrics to satisfy President Obama’s priorities:

Manage IT investments effectively.
Leverage… »

An engine for increasing the velocity of democracy

It’s an accepted truth that a healthy democracy requires citizens who participate in the civic life of their communities, and who engage with government institutions. But while civic participation is vital for a healthy democracy, it’s an inadequate prescription.
Government institutions also have to effectively engage and respond to citizen concerns, and by extension, government institutions… »

President Obama: A “presumption of openness”

What does President Obama think about government transparency?
The three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration form the cornerstone of an open government. Transparency promotes accountability by providing the public with information about what the Government is doing. Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies… »