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Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab Launches New Initiative to Accelerate State and Local Homelessness Prevention and Rehousing

August 29, 2023

Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, and Los Angeles selected to join the GPL’s inaugural Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator; jurisdictions will test innovative local solutions to nationwide challenges in homelessness response

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) today announced four jurisdictions will participate in the inaugural Homelessness...

Read more about Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab Launches New Initiative to Accelerate State and Local Homelessness Prevention and Rehousing

Denver Permanent Supportive Housing Pay for Success

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....

Read more about Denver Permanent Supportive Housing Pay for Success

Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Performance Improvement

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...

Read more about Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Performance Improvement
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Michigan Strong Beginnings Pay for Success

Michigan sought to expand prenatal and postpartum support in order to reduce the likelihood of negative health outcomes for new mothers and their children. With pro bono technical assistance from the GPL, Kent County is expanding comprehensive nurse home visiting services to every Medicaid-eligible, first-time mother to provide prenatal care, breastfeeding support, parenting and life skills-building, and additional services as needed. Assessed by a rigorous evaluation, the program is helping to reduce preterm births and rapid repeat pregnancies for new moms.  

South Carolina Nurse Family Partnership Pay for Success

Striving to lower rates of preterm births and child injuries, the South Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership aims to give new moms the care they need to have healthy pregnancies and babies. The GPL worked with South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS) to provide nurse home visiting services to 4,000 low-income, first-time mothers from the second trimester of their pregnancy until their child’s second birthday. The model incentivizes NFP to focus on enrolling mothers from low-income zip codes, reducing child injuries and pre-term births, and increasing healthy birth...

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Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families Performance Improvement

The GPL worked with DCYF on strategic planning to assess service needs and design an approach for improving services for children and families, executing a results-driven procurement for a new set of service contracts, strengthening their contract and provider performance management practices, and designing a strategic procurement management system to improve the results of contracted spending throughout the agency.

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Little Rock, AR Vendor Report Cards

 

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...

Read more about Little Rock, AR Vendor Report Cards

Boston, MA Vendor Diversity

As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Boston improve its vendor diversity by contracting with more Minority- and Women-owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs).

Boston aimed to increase the racial and gender diversity of its vendors. The city established concrete vendor diversity goals and, with pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, created a performance tracking system to monitor progress, streamline procurement practices to improve accessibility and transparency, and...

Read more about Boston, MA Vendor Diversity

Boston, MA Capital Project IT System

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,...

Read more about Boston, MA Capital Project IT System
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Louisville, KY Strategic Procurement System

As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Louisville design and pilot a strategic procurement system to improve the outcomes of the City’s contracted dollars.

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Rhode Island TANF Work Supports

Improving workforce participation and employment outcomes for TANF employment programs through more integrated service array and active contract management

Rhode Island Workforce Development

To address a skills gap among the workforce, the State of Rhode Island rolled out a $14 million workforce development program called Real Jobs Rhode Island to help ensure that demand for talented workers was met across growing industries. The GPL helped Rhode Island's Department of Labor and Training develop a rigorous strategy for data collection and performance management of its new job programs, streamline intake procedures by eliminating burdensome application processes, and pilot collaborative, high-frequency meetings with program...

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Saint Paul, MN Street Construction

As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Saint Paul expand the pool of vendors that bid on street reconstruction contracts and improve vendor management during construction.

The City of Saint Paul faced several key challenges with their street reconstruction contracts. Vendor competition was low, and projects ran past agreed-upon budgets and timelines. With pro bono technical assistance from the GPL, the city conducted a vendor survey and implemented pre-bid meetings to...

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Denver Permanent Supportive Housing Pay for Success

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....

Read more about Denver Permanent Supportive Housing Pay for Success

Connecticut Department of Children and Families Enhanced Service Coordination

Creating performance metrics, developing short- and long-term strategies for service allocation, and aligning the service array around the core needs of children and families served by the state

Read more about Connecticut Department of Children and Families Enhanced Service Coordination

Bottlenecks, Backlogs, and Breakdowns: Using Data to Identify Gaps in Service Referrals

Social service systems succeed by pairing the right people with the right services. Yet too often individuals who could benefit from a social service receive a referral but never connect with the service.

Our publicationBottlenecks, Backlogs, and Breakdowns: Using Data to Identify Gaps in Service Referrals, elevates three key questions that program staff can ask of their data to improve their processes...

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Denver Permanent Supportive Housing Pay for Success

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....

Read more about Denver Permanent Supportive Housing Pay for Success

Connecticut Family Stability Pay for Success

In 2013, over 50 percent of the 36,000 cases investigated by Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) had an indication of parental substance use. DCF hoped to support these recovering parents by matching them to recovery and support services while limiting removals of their children, so the agency worked with the GPL to launch the Family Stability Pay for Success project. This project identified a crucial gap in services for families with children aged 3-6 and expanded these services to support 500 additional families in need. The GPL also worked with DCF to...

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Massachusetts Pathways to Economic Advancement Pay for Success

While Massachusetts has some of the highest educational performance in the country, the state continues to face challenges in supporting the employment and career success of English language learners and those who have not achieved high school credentials. With pro bono technical assistance from the GPL, Massachusetts launched a project to provide vocationally-oriented adult basic education and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) services to approximately 2,000 adults over the course of three years. The program is expected to improve earnings and education outcomes...

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California Department of Social Services SNAP Job Training and Employment Services

The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) operates a workforce development program for CalFresh recipients called SNAP Employment and Training (E&T). In California, counties run their own E&T programs, with funding provided by the state and federal governments. GPL helped expand and improve E&T programming in three ways. First, GPL helped the state explore new ways to use federal matching funds that can create a perpetual, sustainable funding stream with a one-time investment of state dollars. Second, GPL facilitated a data match of county E&T...

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Connecticut Department of Children and Families Enhanced Service Coordination

Creating performance metrics, developing short- and long-term strategies for service allocation, and aligning the service array around the core needs of children and families served by the state

Read more about Connecticut Department of Children and Families Enhanced Service Coordination
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Little Rock, AR Vendor Report Cards

 

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...

Read more about Little Rock, AR Vendor Report Cards

Boston, MA Vendor Diversity

As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Boston improve its vendor diversity by contracting with more Minority- and Women-owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs).

Boston aimed to increase the racial and gender diversity of its vendors. The city established concrete vendor diversity goals and, with pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, created a performance tracking system to monitor progress, streamline procurement practices to improve accessibility and transparency, and...

Read more about Boston, MA Vendor Diversity

Boston, MA Capital Project IT System

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,...

Read more about Boston, MA Capital Project IT System
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Highlights

Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab Launches New Initiative to Accelerate State and Local Homelessness Prevention and Rehousing

August 29, 2023

Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, and Los Angeles selected to join the GPL’s inaugural Homelessness Prevention & Rehousing Accelerator; jurisdictions will test innovative local solutions to nationwide challenges in homelessness response

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) today announced four jurisdictions will participate in the inaugural Homelessness...

Read more about Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab Launches New Initiative to Accelerate State and Local Homelessness Prevention and Rehousing

Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab Expands Pretrial Initiative to Five Jurisdictions

October 3, 2023

Jurisdictions to Receive Applied Research Support and Technical Assistance to Improve Outcomes and Make Supervision Less Restrictive for People Awaiting Trial 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) today announced five jurisdictions which will receive applied research support and technical assistance from its Pretrial Initiative. The Initiative is designed to support state and local jurisdictions seeking to improve outcomes for those awaiting trial while making pretrial supervision less restrictive....

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Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab Announces 2023–2024 Alternative 911 Emergency Response Implementation Cohort

August 22, 2023

Largest-Ever Cohort Set to Receive Applied Research Support and Technical Assistance to Advance Unarmed Alternative Emergency Responses
 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) today announced 14 members will participate in its 202324 Alternative 911 Emergency Response Implementation Cohort, an initiative...

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