The GPL announced that it selected California, Connecticut, and Illinois to receive technical assistance developing performance improvement projects that apply Pay for Success principles to core agency services in areas including poverty alleviation, family stability, and higher education. Read more.
On November 18th, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner announced the launch of the Illinois Dually-Involved Youth Pay for Success Initiative. The project will expand therapeutic and wraparound services to over 800 youth across the state who are simultaneously involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, with the goal of reducing their high recidivism and institutionalization rates as well as increasing wellbeing and transitions to adulthood. Five other Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab partner governments launched PFS projects in 2016. Read more.
On September 29th, the DC Water and Sewer Authority issued the nation’s first Environmental Impact Bond. This $25 million bond issuance will fund the initial green infrastructure installation in DC Water’s Clean Rivers Project – a project that aims to reduce combined sewage overflows (CSOs) into the Anacostia River, Potomac River, and Rock Creek tributaries. Read more.
On September 28th, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy announced the launch of the Department of Children and Families’ PFS project. The project will expand treatment by Family Based Recovery (FBR) clinicians providing substance use recovery and parenting support services to approximately 500 families in order to increase family stability and prevent removals of children from their homes. Administration on Children, Youth and Families Commissioner Rafael Lopez, DCF Commissioner Joette Katz, and Social Finance CEO Tracy Palandjian participated in the launch event round table along with FBR case workers and families who had received FBR services. Read more.
Michigan formally announced the launch of a PFS project, developed with GPL technical assistance, to expand the Strong Beginnings program, an initiative that provides expanded home visiting services to high-risk pregnant women, with additional services for children extending from infants to age 2. The project partners held their first Executive Committee meeting this week. Read more.
The Social Innovation Fund awarded a $2.16M grant to the GPL to support its work of providing technical assistance to state and local governments developing projects using Pay for Success tools and methodologies. The GPL will hold an open competition and select up to five jurisdictions to receive technical assistance, which will include support with outcomes-based contract drafting, procurement of service provider and evaluator, identification of outcomes and payors, implementation of active contract management strategies, and evaluation plan design. Read more.
GPL Director Jeffrey Liebman presented at the 2017 What Works Cities Summit to an audience of 350 leaders from 91 cities across the country. Professor Liebman reflected on the state of the initiative and discussed the potential for results-driven contracting to improve outcomes nationwide.
As of March 2017, the GPL has provided government-side technical assistance on 9 of the 15 launched PFS projects in the US. This new GPL policy brief discusses the reasons that governments around the country are testing the Pay for Success approach. It also explains the PFS model, describes PFS projects in the US to date, and presents some of the lessons learned from the initial US PFS projects. Read more.
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the Government Performance Lab (GPL) helped Seattle’s Human Services Department develop outcome and process metrics for their homeless services to help focus improvement efforts on more meaningful measures of success. The GPL is publishing this list of recommended metrics with the goal of helping other governments seeking to adopt a data-driven approach to managing their homeless services contracts. Read more.
This new GPL policy brief describes metro-Boston's use of results-driven contracting in its procurement for an operator of its bike share system, Hubway. Boston and the other three participating municipalities that host the system leveraged this procurement to improve the user experience and expand their station network. The GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to Boston and its partners on this procurement through Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative. Read more.
GPL Assistant Director Hanna Azemati and Professor Liebman coauthored a chapter in the Manhattan Institute’s newly published book, Retooling Metropolis. Based on the Government Performance Lab’s work with cities, this chapter discusses cities’ top ten contracting and procurement challenges as well as how cities can address these by treating procurement as a strategic priority and managing contracts in an active and performance-focused way. Case studies of exemplary approaches to procurements and contracts include Boston’s problem-focused website redesign procurement, Seattle’s reform of the structure and management of its homeless services contracts, and Denver’s Pay for Success contract for supportive housing services. Read more.
