GSPP Alum Leverages Data for a Cleaner and More Equitable Baltimore
By Alex Pfeifer-Rosenblum, MPP ‘21
What does it take to eliminate the backlog of trash, illegal dumping, and property maintenance service requests that have accumulated in Baltimore’s most under-resourced areas and communities of color?
A dedicated and coordinated staff at the Departments of Public Works and Housing, certainly. But also: Data. Lots and lots of data.
Enter Dan Hymowitz (MPP ‘07), Director of the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation (OPI). Hymowitz oversees CitiStat, Baltimore’s signature platform that uses data to drive accountability towards meaningful performance goals. According to a Center for American Progress report, former Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley credits CitiStat with saving the city over $350 million over its first seven years of implementation due to increased efficiency in city services – a reputation that has contributed to the decisions of numerous other cities to adopt the tool and approach. Hymowitz also oversees the Innovation Team, which, in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, works with residents and government staff to innovate effectively and tackle critical City challenges.
When Hymowitz and his team analyzed how equitably the city was responding to 311 service requests, the data painted a discouraging picture: In Southwestern Baltimore – a region comprised primarily of lower income residents and racial/ethnic minorities – service requests were almost never completed within the recommended time frame of seven business days. Meanwhile, in Southeastern Baltimore – a wealthier part of the city – nearly 100% of service requests were completed on time. By the fall of 2019, over 17,000 overdue cleaning and property maintenance requests had accumulated unevenly throughout the city.
According to Baltimore Sun reporting, these disparities led many residents to reflect on the glaring effects of structural racism and classism. “I’ve heard for years people say, ‘I didn’t call 311 because that’s the line for white people,” noted Raymond Winbush, Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. “I call and call and call,” said one 78-year old resident. “There’s almost no sense of calling.”
Shortly after Mayor Young took office in July 2019, he directed Hymowitz’s office to launch CleanStat – a new performance management initiative focused on cleaning up the city. In January, Hymowitz’s team launched the Clean it Up! Campaign – a set of data-informed initiatives to accelerate progress on the cleaning effort. “Even something as straightforward as city cleaning involves a lot of complex issues across several large city agencies. You're really peeling back the onion,” says Hymowitz. “It's one thing to examine how effectively we’re closing 311 service requests, but it's much harder to figure out why – what's working and what's not – and to apply data to analyze and improve what's happening on-the-ground.”
One step was to introduce a Data Fellow at the Department of Public Works, one of the agencies responsible for responding to service requests. Hymowitz’s team helped the department build an internal dashboard that provides a real-time picture of how work crews are making progress, allowing Managers to direct their teams in a more targeted and effective manner.
Another analysis focused on the efficacy of how city cameras are used. The Department of Housing has long placed cameras strategically in under-resourced parts of Baltimore that have been disproportionately burdened by illegal dumping. Hymowitz’s team developed performance metrics to assess how well the cameras were working at given locations.
“If the camera is not deterring or catching dumping, we need to find a better way to use that camera,” Hymowitz reflects. “This is a city resource. It’s not inexpensive.”
CleanStat analyses have been used to develop performance metrics for tracking the efficiency of boarding vacant properties – a process which affects not only city cleanliness and beautification, but public safety.
“CleanStat is all about using data to get underneath the hood of how local agencies are operating. These departments are run by competent professionals who know what they're doing – but what I would argue is healthy about the CitiStat process is how the data can be used to help agencies step up their game.”
Through Mayor Young’s Clean it Up! Campaign, the city plans to eliminate the backlog of 311 service requests by April 1, fill five thousand potholes in fifty days, hold repeat violators accountable for illegal dumping, and empower communities to beautify their own neighborhoods, among other initiatives. While much work remains, the team has managed to slice away at Baltimore’s previous backlog of 17,000 overdue service requests until, as of the end of February 2020, about 1,700 remain – a 90% decrease.
The campaign has not only applied data to improve internal efficiency, but increase transparency and public accountability. “We've created a public dashboard so that residents can track us and hold us to account,” Hymowitz explains. “And basically, you as a resident are able to look at the same data we're looking at in our performance review meetings. It's not like we invented the idea of a dashboard, but we’re finding public and exciting ways to draw attention to the CleanStat dashboard and to raise a healthy level of expectation and pressure on our work.”
The city has even posted a Top Ten list of entities who have received the most citations for repeat sanitation violations. “We hope it's going to shine a bright light on this and encourage people to follow the law and not dump and throw trash into the city.”
CleanStat is not the only channel through which Hymowitz and his team have been leveraging data: They've also implemented YouthStat, PoliceStat, and CyberStat. But it’s a prime example of how data and performance management can be used to improve equity and efficiency in the public sector.
“Quantitatively speaking, equity in how the city is cleaned is quite straightforward – you don’t want to see any variation in the efficiency of cleaning services in different parts of the city, regardless of income level or any other factor,” Hymowitz notes. “If we achieve our goal of getting to zero backlog requests by April 1, we will have also made up for the equity challenges in service that have built up over time. So there’s a nice alignment between overall performance, efficiency, and equity, perhaps even more so than in other types of areas we’re digging into.”
Even as the head of the office that manages CitIStat, Hymowitz didn’t expect to work in a role that required so much proficiency with data. After graduating from GSPP, Hymowitz’s immediate career focused on international development. “Suddenly, data has become my bread and butter. There’s a certain quantitative literacy that Goldman gives you. I don't think it's a shortcoming that I don't have a highly technical background – I have a Deputy who has deeper technical expertise – he’s an actual data scientist. The Master's level quantitative methods course was just the right amount and ended up being pretty critical for me in this role.”
“I guess that’s my cheesy line,” Hymowitz says. “Pay attention in that class, because you never know when you might use it."