Phoenix appoints first Chief Innovation Officer after lengthy search

Michael Hammett has been named as the first Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) for the City of Phoenix, Arizona, and will be part of City Manager Ed Zuercher’s executive team.

“Phoenix has been looking for the right Chief Innovation Officer for the past five years, but it wasn’t until this year that the right person emerged to serve this important role,” Zuercher told Cities Today. 

After a career in local television, Hammett joined the City of Phoenix in 2006 as a public information officer and recently served for six years as the Chief Service Officer, before becoming the Deputy Communications Director.

Phoenix was recently selected as one of 50 Champion Cities out of more than 630 global applicants to compete in the Bloomberg Philanthropies 2021 Global Mayors Challenge, and Hammett will continue to spearhead this work.

Phoenix’s proposal focuses on using data to deploy mobile career units to communities with unemployment challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. The units will provide computer access, job counselling, education, childcare solutions, and other services to support job seekers and connect them to hiring organisations. The project includes testing and prototyping ideas with community members, employers and staff to inform the city’s final application.

Since 2017, Hammett has led the What Works Cities process, a Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative which helps local governments use data effectively. Phoenix received 2021 Gold certification from What Works Cities and is now pursuing Platinum certification, as well as revamping its performance dashboard to better illustrate data and metrics related to city programmes and services.

Priorities

Zuercher said: “Michael’s background working on the City’s Bloomberg Foundation innovation efforts made him the ideal candidate to initiate this office in Phoenix. CINOs are increasingly becoming key members of the leadership teams in city government.”

On the remit of the role in Phoenix, he said: “It’s really about looking at an issue, challenge or city process and identifying and implementing a new or enhanced solution – resulting in a higher level of service to our customers, fostering greater equity, saving time and/or money.”

Hammett told Cities Today: “I am humbled by this opportunity to step into this new role to advance innovation efforts for the City of Phoenix. I look forward to building on the great work already happening across city departments and exploring new opportunities to reimagine city processes, programmes and services for the residents of Phoenix.”

One example relates to emergency response services. Phoenix was selected as one of five cities to participate in a year-long Alternative Emergency Response Cohort at the Harvard Kennedy Government Performance Lab. This will inform the city’s US$15 million expansion of an existing programme to dispatch mental health specialists instead of police officers for 911 calls related to mental and behavioural health issues.

Another top innovation priority is heat, Zuercher said. This year, Phoenix created a publicly funded Office of Heat Response and Mitigation to address the threats associated with rising urban temperatures.

One of Hammett’s first tasks as CINO will be to identify people from departments throughout the city to serve as part of his innovation team.

Zuercher has named two other additions to his executive team: Steen Hambric as Chief Information Officer and Kathleen Gitkin as Chief Financial Officer.