San Jose should use data to improve outcomes, trust
Our city government tries to do too much. We are charged with the vital but broad task of improving quality of life for all residents of San Jose, which pulls our limited public funds in every direction, often without sufficient understanding of the real-world tradeoffs our decisions create.
During my campaign for City Council, I knocked on nearly 10,000 doors in District 10. I began each conversation with the same question: “Which local issues are most important to you?”
While each resident shared their unique perspective, I didn’t get 10,000 different answers — far from it. No matter the neighborhood, the same core issues continued to resurface: public safety, addressing homelessness and maintaining our public infrastructure, from roads to parks. My office’s recent resident survey yielded similar results: 78% of District 10 respondents choosing either increasing public safety or reducing homelessness as their top priority for City Hall.
During Thursday’s roadmap review at City Council, I will propose that we establish a public dashboard to track our most important city-level goals and associated key performance indicators (KPIs). I believe this dashboard will enable the city to focus its work, clearly communicate its priorities, effectively allocate resources, and regularly assess progress for the purpose of continuous improvement.
Successful organizations, public or private, achieve internal focus on the outcomes that matter most and establish feedback loops that signal what is and isn’t contributing to them. As CEO of Brigade, I found that our team had its biggest impact when we prioritized a small number of user-focused outcomes and we set up regular — in our case, weekly — check-ins to evaluate performance data and adjust our approach.
To be clear, government can’t simply “run like a business.” It must serve everyone equally, whether profitable to do so or not. We also expect government to be reliable, whereas high failure rates are a feature of competitive and innovative private markets. But government can borrow successful techniques from other sectors and I would put the performance management cycle of goal-setting, measurement, analysis and adjustment at the top of the list of such techniques.
In 2017, our city manager laid a foundation for identifying key city-level outcomes by articulating a set of Enterprise Priorities. We should expand the conversation to include public input via both scientific polling that captures a representative range of views and higher-touch, culturally competent outreach that includes traditionally marginalized voices.
Once measurable goals are established, departmental staff will be in the best position to suggest which performance indicators represent the inputs necessary for success.
For example, if crime reduction is a top citywide goal, staff should prioritize indicators that are demonstrated over time to be correlated if not causally related to that outcome. Average 911 response time is an obvious indicator, but we may also find that crime prevention training or mental health counselor engagement are measurably contributing to the goal.
This points to another benefit of the dashboard and associated performance management approach: Anyone at City Hall ought to know how their work is contributing to important community outcomes. We all do better work when we understand our impact. Moreover, when a citywide goal is stalling, the dashboard would focus staff attention and reward creative problem-solving.
Finally, and crucially, a dashboard will increase public trust. Residents deserve to know, clearly and simply, their government’s goals and performance. The tool I’m proposing offers this clarity and it demonstrates our commitment to maximizing the value we deliver to residents.
In my initial meetings with staff across the city, the subtext of each conversation has been that we’re trying to do too much with too few resources. I suspect that focused goals and greater emphasis on outcomes would be a welcome change for staff and residents alike.
Residents deserve to know, clearly and simply, their government’s goals and performance.