Federal funds are building long-term data capacity in US cities

As well as supporting individual projects related to public safety, affordable housing, education and economic development, historic federal funds are also helping cities and states to build their capacity in using data to improve performance and transparency.

This is according to experts on a recent webinar held by the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. The watchdog agency was set up by Congress in 2020 to prevent fraud and mismanagement of pandemic relief funds and to promote transparency in how money is used.

Modernisation

Results for America, a non-profit that promotes evidence-based policymaking, created a dashboard in collaboration with consulting company Mathematica to track how communities are spending their American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allocation. It also provides the capability to compare jurisdictions.

Zachary Markovits, Vice President and Local Practice Lead at Results for America, said government modernisation is a key trend.

“Jurisdictions across the country are using these funds to grow their fundamental capacity to use data and evidence in the day-to-day delivery of services,” he said.

He cited Detroit, for example, which is spending some ARPA funding on building a city-wide data warehouse to help maintain its data and integrate systems across the city. Initially, it will focus on pandemic response.

“They’ll have that immediate impact to measure and track outcomes there but [it] will have long-term implications for governing because so many departments at that point will be able to get information faster, do quicker analysis of budget resources and redirect funds to more effective programmes,” Markovits said.

He added that cities that had previously built capacity for data-driven decision-making – as measured through Results for America’s What Works City Certification or State Standard of Excellence – were creating stronger and higher potential ARPA spending plans.

“We’re seeing evidence that investment in building the capacity of local jurisdictions to use data effectively is actually an important prerequisite for this kind of opportunity,” Markovits commented.

Another trend, he said, is using data to drive equitable investment, which is set to remain a long-term priority.

Accountability

Nicolas Diaz Amigo, Chief Innovation & Data Officer for the City of Syracuse, New York, is part of a core team that has put together the internal reporting and governance mechanisms and an external dashboard for ARPA funds.

“We wanted to bring that transparency focus so that we can inform citizens on how the city was performing when it came to spending our ARPA dollars, but also because we wanted to use this big transformational investment as a way to develop more rigorous data-driven practices internally, more project management standards, and make it a habit that we are using metrics to measure our own performance internally.”

As well as a list of projects, for the first time residents can see in close to real-time the outputs. For example, the Homeowner Support project aims to assist 720 households and has so far reached 126.

“[We are] inserting more of a data-driven approach into all of these projects and also hoping that the public will keep us accountable in the things that we set out to achieve,” said Diaz Amigo.

Syracuse has hired a dedicated ARPA data analyst as well as a new Director of Strategic Initiatives, who is the city’s ‘ARPA tsar’.

“This did take a big organisational change management perspective as well,” Diaz Amigo added.

“Multi-departmental collaboration in thinking about this big reporting and accountability framework internally was very important in getting this off the ground.”

Long-term recovery

The City and County of Denver has launched a dedicated ARPA website which shows projects by expenditure area and recovery category, including the amount spent and remaining, and details of individual projects. The next iteration of the dashboard will include outputs and metrics for each project.

Denver has also launched a Recovery Index Map which will track the longer-term outcomes associated with projects. It brings together 18 datasets and gives each neighbourhood an economic, health, and educational score, reflecting the main focus areas of Denver’s ARPA spending.

Lisa Martinez-Templeton, Chief Economist for the Denver Department of Finance, said: “This was trying to get at the intentionality of the federal funding to really try and invest in systemic long-term change.”