Leveraging Data in Decision-Making

New technologies and an overall emphasis on government efficiency have prompted many mayors to devise data dashboards and integrate these tools into their decision-making processes. Increasingly, mayors require data to evaluate the complicated policy areas and city operations explored throughout this report.

This year, the Menino Survey delved into the types of data mayors look to when they are making decisions about particular policy areas. Some policies, such as education, lend themselves to clear evaluative metrics; mayors homed in on graduation rates when considering how best to evaluate schools. Similarly, when asked about how they evaluated public safety and police department performance, mayors emphasized crime. For constituent views, mayors highlighted surveys, though a variety of other metrics, including email, complaints, neighborhood contacts, and the media, also received frequent mentions (see Figure 23).

In contrast, there is considerably less consensus about how to measure economic performance. While unemployment was the most common mayoral metric, mayors also considered a wide variety of other factors related to income, sales, taxes, and jobs. Even more strikingly, there was virtually no agreement on a set of clear measures of housing affordability and equity. While many mayors say that these issues are top priorities, there is little agreement on how to evaluate whether a city is succeeding in addressing or struggling with these problems.

The word clouds used to analyze mayors’ responses are particularly revealing when compared to one another. Smaller clouds are an indication of the greater homogeneousness or consistency in responses, while the larger or more diffuse clouds indicate the potential difficulty mayors face in homing in on specific evaluative metrics in these areas.

The lack of responses to some of the other topics posed was also telling. Mayors were asked which data metric or piece of information they rely on to assess how their city is doing with relation to the issue of equity. In most cases, mayors were simply unable to provide a specific answer. While national and local political rhetoric often focuses on the lack of equity and inequality, there appears to be no easy or single mechanism by which a mayor judges how their city is performing.

Figure 23: Data Metrics Mayors Rely On By Policy Area
Data is an increasingly important part of city operations. For each of the following, which one data metric or piece of information do you find most helpful in assessing how your city is doing?