Launched by Bloomberg Philanthropies in April 2015, What Works Cities (WWC) is a national initiative to help a hundred-plus mid-sized American cities enhance their use of data and evidence. The initiative is administered by Results for America (RfA).
The What Works Cities initiative includes a vision for information and knowledge management in which it becomes a world-class learning network for the advancement of data and evidence in city government. RfA has developed a strategy to capture and share knowledge collected by implementation partners across the WWC partner consortium, cities, and the public. That strategy includes the development of a multi-faceted taxonomy, information architecture, and quantitative data system with one or more user interfaces. The goal is to provide clear and accessible knowledge and resources to partner organizations.
In addition to quantitative data, capturing and sharing stories from cities is essential to the success of the initiative. RfA is developing a story-collection framework that includes prompts to help partners collect focused narratives from their work with cities. To ensure that the knowledge created and shared aligns with the WWC standard of excellence, RfA will analyze network information against the WWC standard and surface trends of interest across the network.
To that end, RfA has issued a Request for Information for a data management platform to allow interested integrators and developers an opportunity to present information of availability for solutions. The information will be used by RfA to identify potential platform integrators and developers; verify that a platform as envisioned will meet its functional and technical requirements; verify that a platform is cost-effective and will meet its budget requirements; and gather information for a possible platform Request for Proposal.
The proposed data management platform should support city-centric data for a hundred-plus cities through a staged workflow, unique to each city, but using common metrics to inform WWC program leadership regarding progress against a standard. There is a need to understand not only a city’s progress but also trends across the entire program — and the program’s progress overall.
The database must store baseline data and provide data analysis as cities progress toward this standard. The data in question will include manual updates; links to/exports from external data sources (Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, other accessible data regarding cities); and data currently within Google Sheets that will need to be manipulated and stored within the new data system. For each city, there may be up to fifteen separate data sources among these three source types.
There are also several forms and documents associated with the process that need to be loaded into a forms-fed database, as well as other contractual documents that must either be compiled from underlying data or maintained as documents in the city database or linked from a Google Drive account. In addition, while city-centric in design, there will also be a need for the database to feed views with respect to specific areas of intervention, partner engagement, combined timelines, etc.
For complete information about the RFI, interested parties should contact Andel Koester (info@whatworkscities.org) at What Works Cities. More information is also available on their website: https://whatworkscities.bloomberg.org/