{"id":7554,"date":"2017-07-21T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-21T07:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/statescoop.scpnewsgrp.com\/washington-d-c-s-new-data-team-is-using-social-science-to-hone-policy\/"},"modified":"2021-09-03T14:07:51","modified_gmt":"2021-09-03T18:07:51","slug":"washington-d-c-s-new-data-team-is-using-social-science-to-hone-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/washington-d-c-s-new-data-team-is-using-social-science-to-hone-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington, D.C.&#8217;s new data team is using social science to hone policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, D.C.\u00a0Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the creation of a new data science\u00a0team under her office\u00a0Thursday, charged with using iterative development and the expertise of social scientists\u00a0to improve\u00a0policy.<\/p>\n<p>Funded by a $3.2 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the 17-person team \u2014 called\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/thelab.dc.gov\/\">The Lab @ DC<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0follows on the administration\u2019s previous work to develop data and scientific analysis that uncover\u00a0the most effective\u00a0ways to solve city problems. Housed within the City Administrator\u2019s Office of Performance Management, the new body will be led\u00a0by Director David Yokum,\u00a0a\u00a0former\u00a0Office of\u00a0Evaluation Sciences director within the General Services Administration.\u00a0Bowser has given the lab broad authority to work across departments and\u00a0act\u00a0as a performance monitor, a hub to ideate on civic tech apps, and a\u00a0collaboration catalyst\u00a0within\u00a0the local technology and academic communities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy standing up a network of scientists inside D.C. Government, we are infusing pragmatic, scientific thinking into our day-to-day operations,\u201d Bowser said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/mayor.dc.gov\/release\/mayor-bowser-launches-lab-dc\">press release<\/a>. \u201cThe Lab at DC allows us to know how well our policies and programs are working, and provides us the opportunity to learn while we act.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Based on &#8220;theory and evidence from academic and industrial research,&#8221;\u00a0the group&#8217;s\u00a0first projects will\u00a0include a study of how body-worn cameras affect law enforcement interactions with residents and court proceedings. The team is also\u00a0assisting with the design and testing of a flexible rent subsidy program. And a proposal for a nurse triage hotline is hoped\u00a0to reduce non-emergency 911 calls and cut costs stemming from unnecessary ambulance trips. Already, the team has 17 projects on <a href=\"https:\/\/osf.io\/institutions\/thelabatdc\/\">its roster<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>City Administrator Rashad Young said the\u00a0data driving projects like these harbors\u00a0a profound potential to redesign and\u00a0improve\u00a0government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t manage what you can\u2019t measure and by using the scientific method we are getting the best possible measurements to inform how we manage the city,\u201d Young said in a statement. \u201cThat means we are learning from the evidence that exists in the world, while taking the next step of generating our own evidence so that we can know what works in the D.C. context.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With staff members\u00a0hailing from academia, the military and both the private and public sectors, a mixture\u00a0of disciplines will be introduced to analyze data. The team has data scientists to look at the hard data, operations analysts to chart workflows, social scientists to catalogue behaviors and\u00a0researchers to study policy issues. <\/p>\n<p>The Laura and John Arnold Foundation\u00a0fund <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arnoldfoundation.org\/policy-labs-research-partnerships-effective-government\/\">several other similar labs<\/a> around the country, including those in Houston, Michigan, and Rhode Island, though those offices differ in that they are housed at universities.<\/p>\n<p>D.C.&#8217;s new\u00a0data group\u00a0joins a growing number of those around the nation\u00a0drawing from a diverse collection of\u00a0social and data scientists oriented around engineering smarter governance. San Francisco\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/cityinnovate.org\/superpublic\/\">SuperPublic<\/a> innovation lab, launched in 2016, created a space for city, state and federal government offices to partner with academia and the private sector to solve\u00a0common challenges.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/transparency-housing-affordability-analytics-key-projects-for-five-new-what-works-cities-members\">What Works Cities<\/a>, a\u00a0program led by Bloomberg Philanthropies that is ramping up to\u00a0assist\u00a0100\u00a0cities on a rolling basis, added Washington D.C. to its roster in March as part of an effort to &#8220;conduct\u00a0low-cost, real-time evaluations to improve results for residents.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new office operating under the mayor will analyze data and conduct surveys to understand how city policies on things like police body cameras, rent subsidies and emergency services policies affect residents and government operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":39356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_grayscale_images":true,"grayscale_contrast":0,"sponsored_content":false,"display_author_bio":true,"story_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4676,20648,20650],"tags":[300,13703,5275,1848,1720,1504,4,173,46,32,29,25,24,23,12],"people":[],"special-report":[],"authors":[],"class_list":["post-7554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city","category-digital-services","category-data-analytics","tag-d-c","tag-digital-services","tag-data-analytics","tag-innovation-lab","tag-the-lab-dc","tag-muriel-bowser","tag-tech-news","tag-washington","tag-big-data","tag-mayor","tag-states","tag-smart-cities","tag-partnerships","tag-innovation","tag-state-local-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- 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