THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT FINANCE.

Cities, counties and states have long craved information from the public to help them make decisions and there’s nothing particularly new about using surveys to gather it. Nearly a century ago, Cleveland’s Metropolitan Housing Survey sought out citizen input about issues like overcrowding. By the 1950s, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, St. Louis and others were using resident surveys to help leaders make decisions.

But in more recent years, with the advent of a host of technologies, the capacity of places to gauge their residents’ sentiments has grown exponentially. As Shayne Kavanagh, senior manager of research for the Government Finance Officers Association, said “With the new technologies available, we have unprecedented opportunity to engage the public and get better feedback from the public.”

This kind of endeavor is of particular importance to engender trust. In fact, Nick Mastronardi, CEO of Polco, which conducts National Citizen Surveys to gauge residents’ opinions on various dimensions of their communities, is concerned about the high failure rates of referendum ballot initiatives. “This is why engagement is so important in finance because you need the trust of your residents to pass your referendums and your ballot initiatives. Asking for their opinions, using that to set priorities and circling back to show you’re making progress is how you build trust.”

The fast-growing County of Warren, Kentucky (which includes the city of Bowling Green) has been a national leader in the sophisticated use of technology to gather citizen input. It uses an AI program developed by Jigsaw, which is a division of Google, to solicit ideas from its residents on what they want the county and city to be like over the next 25 years divided into eight pillar groups including healthcare, education, quality of life, tourism and so on. The citizens submitted over 4,000 unique ideas.

But it didn’t end there. The county also asked respondents to vote on whether they liked the ideas that had already been suggested. “It turned out to be the largest town hall in America,” explained Doug Gorman, county executive. The county and the city sought out responses through every means available, and ultimately it reached 8,200 people or 10 percent of the population, which is “unbelievable for any type of project like this,” said Gorman. “You know if I had a town hall meeting, I like to say I'd have 30 people show up. It'd be about one topic, and, you know, 20 of them would already be upset about something.” 

How to convert all this information into practical decisions? Explained Gorman, “We have eight or ten people on committees covering each of the eight pillars, and I’ve challenged them to come up with the top five or ten things that we could accomplish in the next 25 years from the survey and put them in a report that will be complete by February or March of next year.” 

Long Beach, California, is another leader in this important work. “The city has taken a layered and evolving approach to gathering resident input, blending digital platforms with in-person engagement to better understand community needs and inform public decision-making,” explained CIO Lea Eriksen.

On the digital side, she said, “tools like Zencity and Microsoft Forms are used to collect feedback on a range of topics—from budget priorities to neighborhood planning. These platforms allow departments to deploy surveys quickly and analyze sentiment trends over time.”

Meanwhile, Dublin, Ohio has deployed an app called GoDublin for reporting issues or service requests, for example incidents of potholes, vandalism and so on. It also serves as a launching and reference point for other applications like its recreation center app, the city website, etc.

People can also sign up to GoDublinTXT to receive important alerts and updates directly from the city, including calls for participation in surveys and other public input processes. Said Brandon Brown, the city’s chief innovation and technology officer, “That way the residents are picking what they’d like to hear about and what they want to share, back and forth, which I think develops a trust cycle.”

Additionally, a “TellDublin” button on the city’s website offers a simple way for residents to share feedback of any kind.

Some particularly advanced cities are considering using artificial intelligence to learn about residents’ needs before the complaints even come in. Stephen Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard University who runs programs for mayors, and was one-time mayor of Indianapolis, explained, “We are working now with leading cities on ways generative AI tools in the hands of both public employees and community leaders will dramatically improve responsiveness as much better access to data and insights will lead to quicker and more precise responses.”

For example, cameras and sensors placed on city trucks or poles can detect conditions that need attention such as the emergence of a pothole, helping workers “preemptively solve a problem to which they had merely reacted to in the past,” he explained.

To show residents how their input translates into real action, governments are also using technology to make their feedback visible and show its impact through dashboards, interactive maps and social media. 

Of course, social media is one of the simplest ways for communities to provide feedback to their residents, but it can be a two-edged sword. If comments are allowed, there’s the potential to have them overtaken by people who go off-point and become vitriolic. But if they aren’t allowed, then there can be a sense that the entity isn’t really interested in listening to the public. 

Data dashboards, meanwhile, are a growing tool for cities, counties and states. Explained Liz Steward, Vice President of Marketing & Research at Envisio, a major designer and publisher of ADA compliant dashboards. “They have changed a lot. It’s not just passively putting information out, but they’re allowing residents to be able to go and interact with that information. They can do deep dives into the areas that they’re most interested in and get narrative updates from staff and interact with that information . . .This is part of a feedback loop that is now needed and expected from local governments.”

Boston’s dashboard called CityScore is frequently cited as a model of the breadth and scope of the data that can be provided in an easy to access form to its residents. Among other things, it tracks the percentage of calls to 311 that are answered within 30 seconds; measures EMS response time; trends in shootings, stabbings and homicides; the percentage of park maintenance tasks that are completed on time and much more.

One of the keys to trust in government is for people to feel that they’ve been heard, and that their sentiments are being taken seriously. At a time when trust in government is of major concern at all levels of government, this may never have been more important.

This article is supported by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). The piece, by Barrett and Greene, is also available in the October issue of GFOA’s Women Public Finance Newsletter. 

#StateandLocalCitizenOutreach #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateandLocalTechnologyUseForResidentOutreach #AnalyzingResidentData #ResidentOutreachandCityTechnologyUse #SocialMediaAndPublicOutreach #ResidentOutreachandCountyTechnologyUse #ModernizingCitizenSurveys #StateandLocalTrustInGovernment #GovernmentFinanceOfficersAssocciation #FutureGovernmentFinance #GFOA #ShayneKavanagh #StateandLocalArtificialIntelligence #StateandLocalInnovation #CityInnovation #StateLocalInnovationandResidentOutreach #StateandLocalDataDashboards #CityDataDashboards #CountyDataDashboards #StephenGoldsmith #Envisio #StateLocalGovernmentGenerativeAIPolicyandManagement #StateandLocalStakeholderInput #CityStakeholderInput #CityCitizenInput #UsingTechnologyForResidentFeedback #PolcoNationalCitizenSurvey #BowlingGreenResidentEngagement #BostonCityScope #WarrenCountyKYResidentEngagement #DougGormanCountyExecutive #NickMastronardi #Jigsaw #GenAIandResidentOutreach  #LongBeachCAandResidentEngagement  #DublinOhioResidentEngagement #TellDublin #GoDublinTXT #BarrettandGreeneInc