Our pursuit of innovation
Currently at the City, there are over 100 fiscal staff enterprise-wide, including 35 employees assigned within individual departments. This decentralization can cause inefficiencies and inconsistencies in our financial operations and is regularly cited as a weakness in our annual audit. To help address the challenges that come with this structure, today, the City of Syracuse is launching a financial operations pilot project.
In August we hosted our first ideas competition called the Civic Innovation Challenge. Approximately twenty ideas were submitted by employees to improve City operations. As part of the competition, entrants had to explain how their idea related to the City’s guiding principles and objectives. One of the winning ideas is to institute electronic permit applications…
[VIDEO] On June 15th, the City of Syracuse Division of Code Enforcement hosted Healthy Housing 101, an event held to teach local residents and service providers how to spot code violations in homes. Our code inspectors reviewed what to look for in homes--mold, infestations, unsafe staircases--as well as who citizens can contact when they have an issue getting problems fixed.
When James Anderson took to the podium last week at the Bloomberg Philanthropies convening of communications directors from U.S. cities, he knew how to get my attention. James, who worked in a role just like mine under Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York City, is now the leader of Bloomberg’s Government Innovation team. He showed us the hard cold reality from the Edelman Trust Barometer: Americans don’t trust government.
For the second year in a row, the City of Syracuse partnered with Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies and AT&T to run a civic hackathon. More than 30 teams and 90 people signed up to participate, and ultimately 16 teams submitted projects. The winners had creative solutions that were well-conceived and built out enough that we could get an idea of how to implement in the future.
Last week, we hosted to Snow Safety Summit to get public feedback and ideas about these issues, with our biggest focus on clearing sidewalks. We structured this event differently than past meetings. It was “open house” style and consisted of several different stations where people could weigh in on different winter related topics. Approximately 150 people attended the Summit, and we were able to collect valuable feedback that we have already sorted through. You can review the ideas, suggestions, and comments that we received on our open data portal, DataCuse.
Here are the biggest takeaways from the Summit...
Today, we are excited to release some of the snowplow data as part of the “Plowing Through the Data” hackathon, put on in partnership with the Syracuse University School of Information Studies and AT&T. We did a similar hackathon last year, and look forward to seeing what ideas and projects people come up with.
As many of you saw in the news a couple of weeks ago, the City of Syracuse is hosting a Snow Safety Summit on February 15th from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Dr. Weeks Elementary School! The i-team will be helping to facilitate the event, and we’d love for you to join us!
