Casey Family Programs published a new strategy brief on creating collaborative relationships between early childhood education and child protection agencies to improve outcomes for children. The brief highlights the GPL’s work with Washington’s Department for Children and Families to “strengthen efforts to provide prevention and early supports by connecting families to community-based...
The GPL is assisting the State of Illinois improve employment outcomes for individuals exiting incarceration by reforming in-facility vocational programming at the Kewanee Life Skills Re-Entry Center. "It makes you start to question some of the decisions you made and the decisions that you will make when you go home...makes you want to become more responsible for your actions as a man," inmate Jovan Lumpkin said. "That's what I feel makes this program so special, because people need a skill set going home...because you are already looked at like you're a prisoner."...
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 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...
As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help the City of Tempe apply results-driven contracting strategies to improve the outcomes of its employee wellness program.
In Tempe, the city’s employee wellness program provides low-intensity supportive health and wellness services to all employees. However, the city had not clearly articulated the goals of the program nor set in place a method for evaluating the impact of the services. With the help of the GPL, Tempe reworked the...
When the procurement process is efficient, inviting, and inclusive, more firms and organizations will want to participate in contracting opportunities, resulting in greater competition. Positive relationships between vendors and governments during the course of a contract can lead to more...
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...
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...
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.
Charting the Course: Reflections on the South Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership Pay for Success Pilot is a brief about GPL's Nurse Family Partnership Pay for Success project in South Carolina. It provides background on the purpose of including a pilot for this project, the “lessons learned” from the pilot, and why incorporating a pilot can improve the launch and operations of complex Pay for Success projects. Read the full brief... Read more about Social Finance: Reflections on the South Carolina Nurse-Family Partnership Pay for Success Pilot
J-PAL is the evaluator for GPL's Nurse Family Partnership Pay for Success project in South Carolina. Results and policy lessons are forthcoming (as of September 2020) and can be viewed at this...
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...
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,...
Improving workforce participation and employment outcomes for TANF employment programs through more integrated service array and active contract management
“Just referring a family to services isn’t always enough. There need to be more intentional efforts to ensure that the families ultimately get connected with those agencies,” said Trista Piccola, the Director of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, & Families (DCYF). The GPL worked with DCYF and the Rhode Island Department of Health to create a plan for reducing child fatalities and near-fatalities due to neglect or maltreatment. Read more about our recommendations ...
The GPL is assisting the State of Illinois improve employment outcomes for individuals exiting incarceration by reforming in-facility vocational programming at the Kewanee Life Skills Re-Entry Center. Former Illinois legislator Jim Nowlan writes about his experience attending a Kewanee graduation ceremony and meeting program graduates. ... Read more about The Dispatch & The Rock Island Argus: Offenders trying to break into this prison
In her latest commentary for Governing’s Better, Faster, Cheaper blog, Program Director Hanna Azemati describes the GPL’s work with the city of Louisville, KY to establish a strategic procurement system. According to Louisville’s director of purchasing, this system has helped the city “elevate the importance of procurement, build trust, and earn credibility” by prioritizing, structuring, evaluating, and managing critical contracts more effectively. ...
