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...
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...
Hosted by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the Partners in Prevention conference is the largest annual gathering of prevention and early intervention professionals in Texas. The conference attracts parent educators, youth service providers, civic leaders, policy advocates, researchers, Prevention and Early Intervention grantees, and others with a professional interest in child and family well-being, youth development, and juvenile justice.
As part of the 2021 Partners in Prevention Conference, GPL fellow...
Nationally, a growing number of jurisdictions are launching alternative 911 emergency response initiatives. The goals of these programs are to help more individuals in crisis get the right kind of help at the right time, reduce overreliance on law enforcement, and free up the...
In November, 47 representatives from 16 jurisdictions across the country gathered at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) for the inaugural HKS Government Performance Lab (GPL) and HKS Executive Education program “Driving Government Performance: Alternative Emergency Response.” Leaders from police and fire departments, 911 call centers, social service providers, and other agencies participated in five days of management and leadership training to advance their work on alternative emergency response.
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...
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...
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.
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL supported the City of Mesa, AZ in procuring for a partner organization to implement the Love Your Neighborhood (LYN) program, which is a community engagement and home rehabilitation initiative. The City wanted to provide residents with resources and services to create sustainable improvements in a neighborhood that was particularly challenged with high instances of code violations, graffiti, police calls, and vacancies. A program was launched to help homeowners qualify for and implement home...
A purchasing office can be a valuable partner in collaborating with departments or agencies on solicitations by providing strategic support, whether through helping staff write effective and clear specifications, guiding them to use correct procurement processes, or by informing them of...
A purchasing office can be a valuable partner in collaborating with departments or agencies on solicitations by providing strategic support, whether through helping staff write effective and clear specifications, guiding them to use correct procurement processes, or by informing them of...
Writing a Request for Proposals (RFP) can feel daunting. As you face an upcoming need for goods or services, you may be tempted to fall back on a previously issued version of an RFP, simply mimic what a peer city or state has done, or renew an existing contract - even though you know you could...
In 2014, California passed a bill authorizing the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to grant $5 million dollars to up to three counties to launch outcomes-driven recidivism reduction projects. With pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, BSCC designed and implemented a competitive process to select county projects that would reduce recidivism while shaping a new model for how local governments deliver programming - focusing on tracking and using data effectively, reducing traditional siloes within...
In Illinois, approximately 700 youth per year become simultaneously involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. These dually-involved youth experience very poor outcomes; on average 1,300 arrests per year and 230,000 days spent in congregate care. With pro-bono technical assistance from the GPL, the state tested a new model for supporting families involved with multiple agencies and has re-engineered data systems to improve performance management and referral processes. It now takes the state child welfare agency less than three days to identify a dually-involved youth,...
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Indianapolis increase competition, reduce costs, improve service quality, and enhance the City’s information technology (IT) capabilities by adopting results-driven contracting strategies for its IT application services contracts.
The Government Performance Lab is using results-driven contracting strategies to enhance IT capacity in local government. In Indianapolis, the city sought to improve the performance and value for money of its...
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...
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
Nationally, a growing number of jurisdictions are launching alternative 911 emergency response initiatives. The goals of these programs are to help more individuals in crisis get the right kind of help at the right time, reduce overreliance on law enforcement, and free up the...