In a post for Government Executive, Patrick Lester discusses early lessons learned from What Works Cities engagements, including the GPL's project in Seattle to restructure homelessness services contracts. Read more.
The GPL announced that it will award technical assistance to Colorado, a finalist in the GPL's national competition for TA. The GPL will work with the Office of the Colorado Lieutenant Governor & Chief Operating Officer on improving the results of the state's core human services spending. ...
Ana is the Director of Criminal Justice overseeing the Government Performance Lab’s criminal justice portfolio, providing technical assistance to local...
Are you struggling with how to address an overly administrative, confusing, and lengthy contracting process? Process mapping is an excellent first step toward cutting down cycle times and engaging members across different departments to jumpstart procurement reform. Process maps help you come to a shared understanding of all steps involved in a procurement process and foster discussion around which of those...
Feeling overwhelmed by the number of low-stake solicitations your central purchasing team has to review? Receiving complaints from department partners that your formal purchasing process is slowing them...
In many governments, procurement is undervalued or misunderstood by leadership, leading to purchasing offices that are overworked, under-resourced, and underutilized. In a government where procurement is elevated, valued, and...
How should a city, state, or county government organize its procurement function? What level of responsibility should sit within a central office versus at the department or agency level? Should authority for certain categories of purchases always be delegated out to departments or agencies?...
How should a city, state, or county government organize its procurement function? What level of responsibility should sit within a central office versus at the department or agency level? Should authority for certain categories of purchases always be delegated out to departments or agencies?...
State and local governments are responsible for contracting out many consequential products and services for residents – but historically, some communities have received disparate access to services and experienced disparities in outcomes which still persist today. To correct these disparities...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
Improving workforce participation and employment outcomes for TANF employment programs through more integrated service array and active contract management
The GPL announced that it will award technical assistance to Colorado, a finalist in the GPL's national competition for TA. The GPL will work with the Office of the Colorado Lieutenant Governor & Chief Operating Officer on improving the results of the state's core human services spending. ...
