By Mary Velan
Gov1
The city of Boston recently launched a new initiative called CityScore that leverages data to grade how well the city is performing on a variety of topics - ranging from fire department response time to school attendance rates. The user-friendly platform is designed to provide residents and public employees with up-to-date information regarding what is happening across the city at any given time. The dashboard tracks performance metrics of all city services departments such as public safety, education and public works.
“The City of Boston is using data in a way that no city has ever done before,” said Mayor Walsh. “I am proud to launch this data platform that recommits us to our pledge of transparency and delivery of excellent city services. This overview of city metrics allows us to take immediate action within our departments to improve city services to make our city safer and smarter.”
CityScore is designed to provide a transparent platform that allows people to see a nearly real-time indication of the city’s performance. Using metrics that are critical to the overall health of the City, the data is rolled up into a single score that is easy to comprehend. The underlying metrics are also displayed to quickly identify drivers of the score.
In an effort to identify trends over time, CityScore is broken down to track data over a given day, week, month and quarter. Todays launch serves as the first iteration of a platform that will grow, change and expand over time.
“Our team’s goal is to provide the best basic city services in the nation,” said Chief of Streets Chris Osgood, who helped develop CityScore. “CityScore helps us track our progress and has already been successful in helping us deliver better services to residents. This will be a great tool for us moving forward.”
This data allows people to monitor the delivery of city services, and it creates the opportunity to identify areas where the city is excelling and areas in need of improvement. Scores are determined by comparing current performance to either a target set by the city or a historical performance average. Scores at or above one indicate the City is surpassing or meeting specified targets or historical averages, scores below one are not.
CityScore currently tracks measures in the following areas: public safety, economic development, education, innovation and technology, health and human services, basic city services and constituent satisfaction.
Using tools that already existed in the Department of Innovation and Technology, the Citywide Analytics Team built CityScore using data generated by the city’s departments.
How Does CityScore Work? CityScore aggregates key metrics from across the City into a single number that represents the City’s overall performance day-to-day. Additionally, CityScore can be broken down to further investigate the metrics that are driving the score.
Individual metrics are scored by comparing current performance levels to either a target set by the City, or to an historical performance average. CityScore is an average of all individual metric scores:
- A CityScore of greater than 1: indicates that the City is exceeding specified targets and/or surpassing historical performance levels.
- A CityScore of exactly 1: indicates that the City is meeting specified targets and/or is maintaining historical performance levels.
- A CityScore of less than 1: indicates that the City is not meeting specified targets and/or is not keeping up with historical performance levels.
Why Is CityScore Important?
