Problem solved: How data makes cities more efficient, effective and attuned to AI
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COMMENTARY | If the public sector wants to operate at peak performance, it must harness its data and deploy it across all its functions. Cities across the world are showing what is possible.
Today, 91 percent of Americans own a smartphone, yet most of their interactions with the government remain on paper.
The exceptions only prove the need: New Yorkers can file their taxes online, 38 states allow people to register digitally to vote, and from Pennsylvania to Alaska, some benefits and services are becoming web-based and accessible. Still, this incremental progress hardly satisfies a public desperate for government that is more efficient, more effective and capable of tackling big challenges and ambitions with big, palpable results.
For the public sector to work at peak performance, it must harness its data and deploy it digitally and creatively across all functions. If there is one level of government that is taking the challenge head on, it is the world’s cities.
Take Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where floods and rising seas threaten to inundate parts of the city. When a storm in 2023 dumped two feet of rain in less than 24 hours, data collectors rushed to the stricken areas alongside emergency responders. Their risk assessment identified 25 neighborhoods for storm-proofing, three times more than had been originally slated for improvement.
Similar severe weather evaluations are underway in places like Charleston, South Carolina and San Fernando, Chile. This is the kind of data that can save property and lives.
Each of these cities had an advantage: they had problems to solve, but numbers to crunch. For nearly a decade, we have been working with municipalities to build their data infrastructure and adopt the practices and policies to guide their use. These standards allow agencies working on complex challenges to communicate with each other to find and deliver the most effective solutions.
This effort, the Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities Certification led by our teams at Bloomberg Philanthropies and Results for America, sets excellence benchmarks for data-led local government. To achieve this, we conduct a thorough analysis of a city’s quality and security of information, its policies, and its portals.
Our evaluation leaves no stone unturned. We issue Silver, Gold, or Platinum distinctions to those that meet the criteria. We then work with their teams, and connect them to peers, so they can continue to make progress. To date, 104 municipalities have obtained Certification, including Fort Lauderdale, Charleston and San Fernando.
In addition, almost 600 other cities throughout North and South America are seeking our help to boost their digital systems. Wherever they are on their data journey, we supply the tools and the expertise to expand their digital capabilities for the greatest possible impact. Now, mayors have something that was altogether missing ten years ago — an international network committed to placing local governments on the cutting edge of technology.
Indeed, this is how cities are confronting global challenges — one data-driven solution at a time. Facing a housing shortage, the city council in Burlington, Vermont, updated 70-year-old zoning laws using newly collected residential statistics. Within eight months, the new land-use code led to increases in housing supply and the development of 44 new multifamily dwellings.
Bogotá, Colombia, is changing the lives of caregivers — a crucial sector of the economy that has labored with little recognition while entrusted with the well-being of the young, the old, and the sick. The work is primarily that of women, nine out of ten of whom live in poverty. Using a chatbot, the city gathered data and feedback to build a support program. Now, 21 community centers throughout the city, called Care Blocks, are connecting caregivers with essential services like education, healthcare, and workforce training.
In Montevideo, Uruguay, where a severe three-year drought caused a sudden increase in the salinity of drinking water, a citywide data strategy supported by the Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance allowed officials to respond swiftly to an emerging health catastrophe. The city promptly identified safe well-water reserves, communicated with residents in real time, and targeted the delivery of more than 940,000 liters of water, much of it to high-risk populations such as pregnant women, infants and immunocompromised residents.
A centralized data platform has also allowed Montevideo to dramatically expand access to medical services in one of its poorer neighborhoods, helping more than 6,000 residents get the care they need.
In San Pedro Garza García, Mexico, data fueled the development of a chatbot called Sam Petrino. Today, “Sam” fields an average of 1,000 monthly messages, ranging from questions about trash pick-up, to reports of potholes, to requests for medication deliveries.
The public feedback has improved services and amenities — parks have been upgraded and are cheaper to maintain, caregivers are receiving greater assistance and support, and the city has expanded public transport to reach more of its residents. The chatbot has reduced response times to citizen reports by 50 percent and saved the city $8.5 million MXN.
These Certified cities are demonstrating how leveraging data can reduce homicide rates, house homeless veterans, direct tree-planting, and much more. Data is also the brain matter of artificial intelligence, an essential tool for 21st- century governments. That’s why our international consortium is at the forefront of this emerging technology — to help cities be even more agile, more creative, and more responsive to the needs of their citizens.
Consider Austin, Texas, which rolled out an artificial intelligence system that monitors 437 square miles for signs of conflagration in one of America’s most wildfire-prone areas. Chattanooga, Tennessee, part of our City Data Alliance, is using a digital twin — essentially a living replica of the city — to test roadway redesigns, to examine energy use, and to plan traffic and pedestrian flow to make streets safer.
The technology allows cities to create facsimiles by retrieving data from multiple sources such as buildings, drones, and mobile devices that is then enhanced with artificial intelligence and advanced analytics. The result is better planning, quicker decisions, and more successful outcomes.
Former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has been at the vanguard of this movement, once wrote, “Good data will never replace good judgment, but it is essential to informing it.”
Today, smart, informed cities are leading the way, embracing technology to make people healthier, to safeguard neighborhoods against disaster, and to deliver critical services to their communities. This is what a modern public sector can look like. This is what a 21st century government must look like.
Carrie Bishop leads the Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities Certification and the Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance for the Government Innovation program at Bloomberg Philanthropies. Rochelle Haynes is the Managing Director for the Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities Certification program.