City turns to a new master numbers tool

A call center, some PowerPoint slides, a few new computers and regular meetings.

It doesn't sound like much, but the Nutter administration is convinced it can reinvent city government with those simple tools and a new management method called PhillyStat.

Pioneered in Baltimore under the name CitiStat - and later embraced by New York and Chicago - PhillyStat is a data-driven approach to governing in which senior city officials use hard numbers to closely track and analyze the performance of city departments and managers.

The goal is to vastly improve customer service, deploy city resources more efficiently, and tightly focus city departments on Mayor Nutter's priorities.

"My expectation is that, in time, we will exponentially improve the delivery of city services with PhillyStat," Nutter said after a PhillyStat meeting this month. "I think it will be a home run for the city."

A key component of the system is a centralized citizen call center. By year's end, the Nutter administration has promised, residents will be able to dial a single number, 311, to access city services, make complaints, or request information such as library hours.

In theory, PhillyStat and 311 will help the city respond nimbly to problems both big and small. A rash of West Philadelphia graffiti complaints to 311, for instance, would be noted at a PhillyStat meeting and met with stepped-up cleaning crews.

The new programs are also likely to shake up a city bureaucracy unaccustomed to accountability and transparency.

If, for instance, there was a growing backlog in the issuance of building permits, PhillyStat would bring the delay - and, just as important, the name of the manager responsible for it - to the attention of senior city officials.

"It removes the veil. It will give Mayor Nutter an opportunity to see who some of his best managers are, and he'll also get a pretty quick view of who aren't the strongest members of his team," said Chris Thomaskutty, a deputy mayor in Baltimore and chief of its CitiStat program.

"Some can adjust and move forward. Some can't," Thomaskutty said.

After seven years, most Baltimore officials are accustomed to being held accountable for their work in the public forum of a CitiStat meeting.

But few enjoy it, Thomaskutty said.

And little wonder. Twice a month, Baltimore department heads go before a CitiStat panel and have their unit's every act examined.

At a recent CitiStat meeting on the city's public works department, managers were quizzed on missed garbage pickups, illegal-dumping hot spots, and a slowdown in the boarding-up of vacant homes. Even the department's "seat-belt compliance" rate (a workplace injury indicator) was reviewed.

One overhead slide mapped missed recycling pickups across the city - and the names of the managers responsible for each district. When the panel zeroed in on an area rife with complaints, the department head said she had already suspended the supervisor in question.

Although Baltimore officials say CitiStat has improved the city's delivery of services, they acknowledge it hasn't eliminated bureaucratic inertia. Nor has the system prevented officials from being surprised by problems that crop up from time to time.

"I wish I could tell you that we were like a hovercraft, but we're not that nimble yet," Thomaskutty said.

It is not yet clear how closely Philadelphia's system will resemble Baltimore's, but local bureaucrats are on guard. PhillyStat meetings are already under way, led by the city's demanding managing director, Camille Cates Barnett, and it is clear she intends to hold city supervisors accountable.

The meetings will be opened to the public, she said, after a round or two of "dress rehearsals."

And though she predicted it would take years before PhillyStat was mature, Barnett said Philadelphia was far ahead of most cities in one key respect: It already collects tons of useful data.

The trouble is how it is (and is not) used.

"Our problem is not information," Barnett said. "Our problem is being strategic about it and seeing the connections between the information and how we manage the city."

The Nutter administration has not yet estimated how much 311 and PhillyStat will cost, beyond budgeting an unrealistically low $2 million annually for both programs. Baltimore, a much smaller city, spends about $530,000 a year on its seven-member CitiStat office and $4.2 million on its 311 call center. Baltimore also spent more than $6 million on 311 start-up costs in 1997.

Once the 311 call center is operating, data from its operations will become a big part of tracking department performance at PhillyStat.

The idea behind 311 is simple: a single number for all nonemergency calls, and an end to the voice mail and transferred-call aggravation residents typically encounter when calling about city services.

In Baltimore, for instance, citizens can call 311 to schedule a pickup for an old couch, request a block-party permit, ask that a pothole be filled, report a knocked-over stop sign, complain about a persistent car alarm, and so on.

Callers with problems that cannot be resolved immediately - a request for a tree trimming, say - are given a reference number so they can call back and track the city's progress on their request.

Nobody in Baltimore's City Hall suggests the management tools pioneered there are cure-alls for the city's ills. Violent crime, generational poverty and struggling schools plainly cannot be fixed with a squadron of operators and semimonthly reports.

But that's not Nutter's expectation either.

"I think the practical impact is that residents will know we're focused on customer service," he said. "And we will know what we're doing, how well we're doing it, and what we need to better. That's not bad."