Data-Driven Ways to Maximize City Budgets Post-Pandemic

Source: GovTech Published: March 2021

For our country to get back on track, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and prioritize essential public services with restricted budgets. Even with federal stimulus funds to state and local government, budgets will be stretched — mayors and their key staff have told us they need to cut their budgets by anywhere from 15 to 40 percent next year. How can public officials bridge these gaps? The best strategy is to use data as a tool — to identify what works, find operational efficiencies and identify the areas with the greatest need.    

Government’s responses to COVID-19 have been significantly enhanced where there were prior investments in data. For example, in Boston a multi-year citywide data warehouse project meant Chief Data Officer Stefanie Costa Leabo was able to provide her mayor with a real-time integrated COVID-19 dashboard in a matter of days. And yet, unfortunately, data is not typically front and center for public officials, because, as one data leader said, “there’s no ribbon cutting for a data warehouse.”   

Recently, we surveyed chief data officers in 20 U.S. cities and asked what big trends they noticed in 2020. Their answers presented a contradiction: 1) massive increases in uses for data; and 2) less funding for the infrastructure that creates value from that data. As Mike Sarasti, chief innovation officer for Miami, said, “The appetite for data has tremendously increased and data insights are becoming the norm. This presents both opportunities and challenges to city staff. We have the support and enthusiasm to evolve our data hub and expose the data through internal and external user-friendly interfaces.” Yet Philadelphia CIO Mark Wheeler worries that “budget reductions will eliminate new initiatives and impact some ongoing operations.”  

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Photo by Andrew Coop on Unsplash