Governing magazine: San Diego Ranks No. 1 Nationally for Data-Driven Solutions in Government

Congratulations to the great city of San Diego. The following press release just crossed our desk:

Confirming his commitment to making the City of San Diego as innovative as the people it serves, Mayor Kevin L. Faulconer today announced that San Diego has been named the nation’s top performing data-driven city by Governing magazine.

The magazine’s annual “Equipt to Innovate” report ranked San Diego No. 1 nationally for using data to improve performance and create a culture of efficiency. It also recognized San Diego as one of the top five cities nationwide for being resident-involved, employee-engaged and smartly resourced.

“This recognition reflects our efforts to ensure government is as innovative as the people we serve,” Mayor Faulconer said. “San Diego is using data to fix our roads, make neighborhoods safer and cleaner, and create more opportunities for residents. These are services San Diegans depend on and we’re using data to get results.”

In recent years, the City has focused on increasing its use of data and technology to improve transparency and performance. Key measures include:

· Becoming the largest City in the country to create a data portal where residents and employees can download datasets

· Hiring the region’s first Chief Data Officer

· Developing StreetsSD so users can monitor street conditions and schedule road repair

· Making San Diego the largest city in the nation to have a user-friendly online portal for public records requests

· Providing dozens of city data sets to the public through the City’s first Open Data Portal

· Creating PerformSD to allow the public to track performance through 40 visualizations linked to key performance indicators

· Deploying the Get It Done application to allow residents to report neighborhood issues, including potholes, graffiti and illegal dumping San Diego’s biannual resident and employee satisfaction surveys, work with public and private sector partners and communication efforts also helped secure this recognition.

“We are utilizing technology to empower residents, streamline government and drive civic engagement,” said City Councilmember Mark Kersey, whose private-sector background is in the technology industry. “In 2013, I drafted our Open Data policy with the help of local tech experts, because the City’s data belongs to the people of San Diego. Mayor Faulconer has taken that commitment to transparency and innovation to the next level and made San Diego one of the highest-performing cities in the nation.”

San Diego and other high-performing cities will be recognized at the 2018 Summit on Government Performance & Innovation, an annual gathering of more than 600 innovators, public sector change-agents, disrupters and civic entrepreneurs making government work better for local communities.

The 2018 ranking surveyed 74 cities, up 23 percent from 2017. Those cities represent 53 million residents, including all 10 of the largest U.S. cities.

“Residents and businesses expect cities to provide nimble and robust responses to today’s challenges and opportunities,” said Mark Funkhouser, publisher of Governing. “The results of the second annual Equipt to Innovate survey show that a critical mass of American cities – along with their diverse networks of public, private and civic institutions – are investing in and building the many things that make communities good places to live.”

For a comprehensive overview of the survey findings and a discussion of how cities fared across the categories, download the report “Profiles in High-Performance Government: Cities on the Move.” “Equipt to Innovate” is a joint initiative launched by Living Cities and Governing magazine.