What Happened?
Laura Doud, the City Auditor of Long Beach, California, recently released an in-depth report on digital innovation and best practices in the public sector. Her assessment outlines strategies to improve the delivery of services and transparency for the public that can be applied in municipalities nationwide.
Report’s Findings
Long Beach, California, received a $3 million Bloomberg Innovation Grant to pay for the creation of an innovation team focused on spurring economic development through investments and new policies surrounding technology advancements. Long Beach City Auditor Laura Doud compiled a report on the city’s e-governance efforts and best practices to assist the Technology and Innovation Commission identify future challenges and invest in new technologies to overcome them.
“We are on the cutting edge of exciting things happening in technology,” Doud told Gov1. “There are more opportunities to problem-solve with public involvement and interaction.”
When compiling the best practices research, Doud and her team investigated what technologies other municipalities were experimenting with to improve transparency, communication and delivery of services.
“We looked at what other municipalities are doing and combined that research with internal studies, academic reports and other materials on innovation with a focus on the public sector,” Doud told Gov1.
One trend Doud discovered in municipal technology innovations was growing investment in SMAC technologies:
- Social, media and communication platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
- Mobile, which recognizes how smartphones and tablets are transforming the use of digital content
- Analytics, to focus on better utilization of data volumes constantly being generated
- Cloud, computing systems that move data storage to remove services to enable a mobile workforce
“SMAC technology is bringing everyone up to a different level of transparency, civic participation and delivery of services,” Doud explained. “There was always a one-way communication between government and constituents. Now it’s more of a two-way interaction with access to real-time data and updates.”
Success Factors
When implementing an innovation strategy, Doud’s report cites and IBM study outlining seven factors to success for policymakers that are critical to efficient planning and campaign deployment:
- Committing enough resources to the project from the start – including money, people and time
- Employing the appropriate leaders to implement the innovation – strong leadership is key
- Tying innovation to overall strategic goals of the organization – avoid confusion by explaining how each investment plays a role in achieving a larger, long-term goal
- Communicating effectively with internal and external partners – ensure there is buy-in from all participants before launching a new initiative
- Creating allies within government and committed partners outside of government – public private partnerships offer expertise and access that the public sector cannot acquire on its own
- Seeking opportunities to share lessons and information emerging from government innovation officers – when cities share their experiences, innovation evolves faster
Furthermore, Doud recommends cities not rely too heavily on their IT departments to get the innovation ball rolling.
“IT departments have day-to-day technology responsibilities to maintain existing infrastructure and systems,” Doud explained. “The catalyst for new ideas must come from top management and policymakers if you want to make lasting, sustainable changes.”
MyAuditor
Taking advantage of SMAC technologies, Doud has launched the MyAuditor app to better connect residents to the day-to-day work of the City Auditor’s office. The mobile app provides residents with notifications of new findings and reports in real-time when they are typically sent only to the press. The goal is to not only inform residents of what the City Auditor’s office does, but also enable people to report suspicions of fraud so the department can follow up.
“We want to give people an opportunity to learn about us and interact directly with the office,” Doud told Gov1. “When people have suspicions against the city they could report back to our fraud hotline or through the mobile app.”
According to McKinsey Insights, digitization of public sector operations could significantly reduce costs while improving services. To eliminate system-wide inefficiencies, governments should be investing in:
- Shared services
- Collaboration and integration
- Improved fraud management
- Productivity enhancements
The major obstacle standing in the way of deploying these improvements is limited capital and resources. McKinsey reported public-sector IT projects requiring business change were six times more likely to experience cost overruns and 20 percent more likely to run over schedule than similar projects in the private sector. Thus, collaboration with external partners and industry experts is a key component to reducing waste and ensuring efficient implementation.
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