Making an Impact: How API's Interns Helped Solve a $30,000 Problem
Swapping Insights with Colleagues from South Bend, Indiana
Earlier this year, we had an opportunity to host the Innovation & Technology team from South Bend, Indiana for a knowledge exchange session covering data management, open data, performance management, and various other topics. Simply put, we learned a lot from what they shared – starting with the elegance of their team’s motto “listen first, build with.”
Summer Intern Cohort Reflection
Over the summer our office was fortunate to have hosted a cohort of very bright and driven interns, you’ve met them in a few of our previous blog posts you can read HERE. During our time together we had the pleasure and privilege to get to know these wonderful young women and work alongside them on a number of different projects and programs where their fresh perspectives and ideas proved to be invaluable to us. Before they left us to get back to their studies at Harvard and Syracuse University we asked them to summarize the work they completed with us over the 8-week internship and to highlight some of their favorite projects. Please read on to see how their summer went and all the great work that they helped us to accomplish!
Meet Summer Fellow, Laveena Lee
Laveena is a rising junior at Syracuse University, majoring in Policy Studies with a double minor in Italian and Information Management and Technologies. She is originally from Brooklyn, New York City, and her family now currently resides in Putnam County, New York. As a first-generation Chinese-American, Laveena was raised by her Taishanese (Hoisanwa) speaking grandparents and did not learn English until she began school. She has always had a passion for learning which made it hard for Laveena to decide on a focus for her college studies but knew that she wanted something involved with cultural studies integrated with the emerging workforce industries of the 21st century. Thus, she chose Syracuse University for its broad range of majors and minors and matriculated as an undeclared undergraduate student. In the second semester of her freshman year, she was introduced to Syracuse University’s Policy Studies program, fell in love with its core values, and admired its alumni stories. With Policy Studies, Laveena is learning how to be a professional problem solver with practical skills that can be applied to a variety of fields including the private business sector, governmental bodies, or non-profit public organizations. She views policy as the infrastructure for change, whether that is involved within the government or not. The importance of Information Management in the digital world motivated her to pursue a minor in IMT, and her personal love for Italian and its culture enabled her to pursue a minor in Italian as well. A blend of these unique skillsets, Laveena is determined to grow as an individual so she can one day give back to her community and help others just like her family had been helped. She recently returned from a semester abroad in Florence, Italy this past year, and is currently a Syracuse University Abroad Global Ambassador.
At Syracuse University, Laveena enrolled in a course on Smart Cities and Urban Policy which introduced the City of Syracuse’s What Works Cities initiatives and their iTeam to her. Subsequently, she had also enrolled in an Information Policy and Decision Making course at the iSchool, where Laveena connected with the city’s Chief Innovation & Data Officer, Nicolas Diaz, and expressed interest in the work their office had been doing. Returning from her spring semester abroad, Laveena joined the team as a summer fellow and is currently working on projects including data governance infrastructure, Syracuse’s Open Data Portal usability testing, and digitizing data for the greenhouses of the Parks Department. Unafraid to make mistakes, driven, and dedicated, she is looking forward to growing her professional network, fine-tuning her professional skills, understanding the inner workings of data governance, and practicing her data processing skills.
Outside of work, Laveena enjoys photography, listening to and studying music, weight-lifting, cooking and trying new recipes, as well as traveling the world and expanding her cultural understanding. Coming from an immigrant family in one of the biggest cities in the world, she has an interest in learning about different cultures, traditions, and languages. She speaks three dialects of Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taishanese; Italian, and English. Her dream position would be to work in an organization that works towards addressing food insecurity and homelessness, women’s rights and empowerment, and is dedicated to giving back to the community. Laveena understands that she is privileged to have the life she does today, and strives to continue to build and use her skills to help others.
Meet Summer Fellow, Amina Salahou
Amina is a rising sophomore at Harvard College, in Cambridge Massachusetts. Amina is interested in concentrating in History & Science (interdisciplinary concertation offered at Harvard) with a secondary in economics along a pre-law track. Amina knows she wants to be involved in a career that gives back. She is interested in exploring data science and the ways finance can be implemented to increase the mobility of impoverished communities. At Harvard she is involved with the Islamic Student Association, Nigerian Student Association, the Women’s Club lacrosse Social Chair, Harvard Science Review, and the Institute of Politics. The Harvard IOP is what allowed Amina to discover an opportunity with local government here in Syracuse.
There's power in numbers, meet our new API team members
Join us in welcoming 4 new team members to the Office of Accountability, Performance & Innovation. In recent months we searched the country for a Data Program Manager, an Innovation Designer, a Data Engineer, and an ARPA Data Analyst. Each of these roles is critical to our team and offers a different set of valuable skills that will add to the expertise and value that our office provides to the City and its residents. We are so pleased with the privilege to attract and welcome such talent to our team here in Syracuse.
How We Right-Sized the API Team’s Project Load and Team Capacity
The role and mission of our team has been constantly evolving since our inception as a Bloomberg Philanthropies Innovation Team in 2015. As part of a cohort of I-Teams, our team members spent the majority of our efforts focused on solving one high-priority issue per year. Past priority areas have included: Water and Road Infrastructure, Economic Opportunity, Housing Stability, Permitting, and Quality of Life.
In our current iteration as the Office of Accountability, Performance, and Innovation, over time our mission has grown to take on a larger and more diverse set of challenges, including leading cross-department change management and data analysis projects, operating an open data portal, guiding the City’s data infrastructure and governance, and managing the City’s performance management strategy, among other supporting roles and responsibilities.
As this transition gradually occurred over time, we found ourselves spread too thin, with too many projects and not enough team members to adequately support our many initiatives. To help address this, we instituted three changes to how our team operates so that we can better serve our colleagues across City departments and deliver better services to our fellow City residents.