What Works Cities Certification: Where We Started—And What’s Next
Source: What Works Cities By Rochelle Haynes and Lauren Su
A decade ago, local government leaders had a data problem: there wasn’t clarity on what it meant to be a ‘local government leader who led with data’. There was no common language around how to best use data and evidence in government decision-making. Instead, there was a patchwork of best practices, lonely local data champions and scattered strategies for how to incorporate data into policy.
Together, Results for America and Bloomberg Philanthropies — two organizations with stakes in the data game — teamed up to find a solution. We wanted to create a standard for local governments to not only evaluate their use of data and evidence, but to celebrate the cities and staff leading the charge and excelling at using data and evidence to inform decisions .
In 2017, What Works Cities Certification was born.
What Works Cities Certification recognizes cities for their exceptional use of data to inform policy decisions, allocate funding, improve services, evaluate the effectiveness of programs and engage residents.