This technical guide outlines a data-driven approach for jurisdictions to design and implement strategies to better prevent child abuse and neglect fatalities and near-fatalities. It provides guidance for how agencies can improve upon existing fatality review processes by systematically reviewing all maltreatment fatalities to uncover weak points in the jurisdiction’s preventative ecosystem and identify opportunities for earlier intervention.
When children are removed from their parents, finding ways for them to safely live with and remain connected to kin and other trusted adults offers a sense of stability and belonging, maintains family connections, and...
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...
From October 2020 to June 2022, the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) led a pilot program in Harris County, Texas, to transform how judges received data from the pretrial services agency. Under the pilot, judges reduced the intensity of supervision requirements for over 2,200 defendants released into the community while awaiting trial...
The Community Response Team in Washington, D.C., has responded to thousands of crisis calls, including some diverted from 911. Two-person teams of responders with specialized training in behavioral health aim to de-escalate behavioral health- and mental health-related crises and often seek to connect individuals with the care they need to stabilize. At a recent panel hosted by Blue...
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,...
Boston faced a number of challenges with its bike share system – some stations frequently had no available bikes while others were completely full, total ridership was lower than expected, and access was limited in low-income and minority communities. To address these challenges, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help the city reshape the bike share system through the procurement of a new system operator. The procurement implemented performance metrics that better...
Diagnosing bottlenecks in the procurement process, understanding where contract outcomes can be improved, and prioritizing systemic challenges require the kind of clarity provided by data. Procurement data is foundational to running an efficient, effective, proactive, and strategic purchasing...
Last year alone, state and local governments were estimated to have spent nearly $120 billion on information technology (IT), much of which was purchased from the private sector in the form of software subscriptions and maintenance, systems integration, infrastructure, and managed services...
Last year alone, state and local governments were estimated to have spent nearly $120 billion on information technology (IT), much of which was purchased from the private sector in the form of software subscriptions and maintenance, systems integration, infrastructure, and managed services...
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.
Although the number of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle has risen over the past few years in part due to structural factors such as housing affordability and inadequate mental healthcare, the city’s increased spending on homeless services has had a limited impact on the problem. The city of Seattle held a conglomeration of contracts with service providers, but it renewed almost any contract that complied with requirements and rarely evaluated the effectiveness of the services themselves. The GPL worked with Seattle’s Human Services Department (HSD) to...
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...
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.
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,...
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...
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...
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...
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Wichita reform its solicitations for grounds maintenance and landscaping services to improve the quality of City parks while reducing costs.
Wichita aimed to improve the quality of the city’s parks while reducing costs. In 2015, grounds maintenance bid amounts were up 30 percent over the prior year, contractors were failing to meet parks inspectors’ quality standards, and Wichita City officials had received numerous complaints about the...
The Boston Public Works Department’s contracts for road resurfacing were overly focused on achieving mileage targets to the detriment of other key goals, such as maintaining steady work flows and minimizing inconvenience to constituents. With pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, the city incorporated results-driven contracting strategies to reorient the roadway resurfacing contracts around a holistic set of goals, provide vendors with incentives to meet these goals, and increase the flow of performance data enabling the Department to course correct issues in real-time. The...
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...
Improving workforce participation and employment outcomes for TANF employment programs through more integrated service array and active contract management
Four Jurisdictions to Receive Targeted Technical Assistance to Advance Alternative Emergency Responses
CAMBRIDGE, MA – The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) today announced four jurisdictions will participate in its 2022-2023 Alternative 911 Emergency Response Implementation Cohort, an initiative...
Child & Family Wellbeing Accelerator will support jurisdictions implementing preventative supports that keep families together and contribute to child wellbeing
August 9, 2022
CAMBRIDGE, MA – The Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (GPL) today launched the Child & Family Wellbeing Accelerator, an initiative designed to help state and local...
What Works Cities published a new e-book, Charting an Equitable Future, which brings together actionable tools, case studies, and reports from cities that participated in their City Budgeting for Equity and Recovery cohort in 2021. Featured in Section 3 of the e-book is an article about the GPL's work using... Read more about Charting an Equitable Future
