OUR WORK — Innovate Syracuse

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OUR WORK

APPROACH

In the pursuit of equitable, responsible, and high-performing government, we leverage a diverse range of skills and techniques to collaboratively solve problems with other departments in the City of Syracuse.

Some of the methods and techniques we employ are listed below.

  • Creating a visual representation of a process by “mapping” each individual step prompts people to break down large, complicated processes into simple steps.

    Process mapping can be applied to existing processes or used to create new processes. It allows us to learn a process closely and pinpoint specific parts that need improving in a low-stakes context.

    Here is an explanation of how we used process mapping to redesign the Commercial Permitting Process.

  • Utilizing technology to improve performance, enhance services, reduce paper usage, and more.

    We support the delivery and design of digital experiences while also increasing technology adoption across the city.

    To read more about it, check out our Digitization blog posts.

  • Coordinating and overseeing each phase of the City’s software products, including setting the strategy, creating feedback loops, and driving the execution.

    Read more about our work to transform our resident engagement software, SYRCityline, to streamline city operations and produce results more quickly for residents.

  • In every department, we spend day-in and day-out doing all the things we need to do to keep the city running. But how do we know that we are doing them well? How do we know when its time to make changes to our processes before they are broken? Performance management is the answer to these questions! Performance management is the process and structure that helps you to identify indicators that tell you if you are producing your widget well or not, but also the process of evaluating those indicators on a regular basis to tell you when it might be time to tweak your process.

    Example: Let's say that we improve the procurement process for the city. While we are making these improvements we also take the time to identify indicators that can tell us if our procurement process is efficient and equitable. We can help you to identify those indicators, collect them and we can help you in creating visual tools that will monitor those indicators.

  • Mayor Walsh envisions Syracuse as a data-driven city. We strive to follow through on this vision in the following ways:​

    1) We work across the City to apply data techniques and analysis to synthesize data and make decisions.​

    2) We build tools, document data, and break the silos between data sources.​

    3) We lay the groundwork and rules for good data governance in Syracuse.​

    For an example, check out this blog post about utilizing data to review the quality of city sidewalks.

  • A cross-department effort to educate, create policies, and facilitate data sharing with effective safeguards.

    Major accomplishments include the appointment of data stewards for each department, inventorizing the city’s data, developing a data sharing process, and creating data classification standards to protect sensitive data.

PROJECT AREAS

The API Office has worked on a wide range of issues. Below are some featured blog posts showcasing our work on the issues we have worked on the most over our history. To see a more complete list of our project areas, or to search or filter from our entire collection of blog posts, please visit our Blog page here.

Infrastructure

API’s first focus area as a team was the City’s infrastructure. We started working on infrastructure projects as early as mid-2015, with projects spanning from water lines to roads, sidewalks, housing, and more.

Trash & Sanitation

We have worked with the Department of Public Works (DPW) since 2015. Our work is ongoing, but most recently included the citywide rollout of standardized trash carts that help prevent sanitation worker injuries and better contain trash on windy days. Below are some of our favorite blog posts covering our work with Trash & Sanitation.

Open Data

The Open Data Portal was launched in 2021 to make the City’s data more accessible to residents, businesses, and other interested parties. But the city’s efforts around open data also include things like surveillance policies, tools like SYRCityline, and more.

 

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