Denver sought to provide individuals experiencing homelessness with permanent alternatives to costly emergency services such as hospitals and shelters. As part of the Permanent Supportive Housing Pay for Success initiative, the GPL helped Denver identify the most costly chronically homeless individuals who were also involved with the criminal justice system as candidates for supportive housing. With its project partners, the City is building 160 new units and using 90 existing units to house these individuals and testing the results with a five-year randomized control trial....

Between 2011 and 2017, homelessness in Los Angeles had increased 75% to an estimated 55,000. To combat this epidemic, voters in the region passed Measure H and Proposition HHH, which will provide $1.2 billion in bond revenue for new housing for the homeless and $355 million annually in sales tax revenue for homeless services such as diversion/prevention, interim housing...

In 2012, Massachusetts was home to 1,200 chronically homeless individuals, who were among the highest utilizers of expensive emergency services such as shelter, hospital, and jail beds. To better serve this population, the Massachusetts Supportive Housing Pay for Success project aimed to shift spending on homelessness away from temporary shelters towards permanent supportive housing. The GPL worked with project partners to remove funding barriers, allowing for the establishment of 500 housing units across the state and greater access to wraparound,...

As in many states, Black and Native children in Washington are overrepresented in the child protective system. To reduce these disparities, the Government Performance Lab (GPL) is working with the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) to provide more culturally specific and responsive services for Black and Native families. With the GPL’s support, DCYF is developing and testing promising practices to procure culturally responsive programs and contract with providers serving local Black and Native communities. These new contracting practices have the...

Developing a performance-based contracting strategy for delivery of critical services to ensure children are placed in the most appropriate setting and are provided the most effective services

Improving referrals and treatment adherence among child welfare parents in need of behavioral health services and using data for more informed strategies to reduce child fatalities

“Being on guard is just being aware, ... and being aware is being alive.” – 23-year-old participant 

In communities across the...

As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Little Rock adopt results-driven contracting strategies across its entire procurement portfolio, improving consistency, vendor management, and data usage throughout the City.

Little Rock aimed to reform its entire procurement portfolio and to improve the city’s procurement process. With pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, a new outcomes-focused procurement template was designed based on in-depth interviews, and...

The City of Boston spends over $120 million on construction projects every year but lacked the infrastructure to systematically share project information and effectively coordinate project management across departments. As a result, multi-departmental projects were falling behind schedule and running over budget. With pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, the city launched a problem-based procurement for a cross-department capital project management IT system. The procurement aimed to standardize project management processes, increase the flow of data,...