State & Local

Syracuse i-Team: Upgrading Infrastructure on a Limited Budget

Data-Smart City Solutions: What does a city do when faced with deteriorating infrastructure and a limited budget, but strong mayoral and public interest in building a more resilient urban landscape? For Syracuse, NY, the answer was not obvious at first. “I started off going to the federal government, asking for more money, and going to state government, asking for more money,” said Mayor Stephanie Miner. “Then I realized to make a successful argument, I had to be able to say that we ourselves through self-help had tried to address the problem. What I realized is that data made available a way to effectively look at how we’re spending our resources.”

Yet at the time, in 2013, the city lacked any significant data-driven capacity. “We had five or six GIS people total in all of our departments,” said Syracuse’s recently-appointed chief data officer (CDO) Sam Edelstein. “We had some people who knew a bit about data going back and forth between departments, but no dedicated talent that could rove across city government.”

Understanding the potential of using data to tackle city priorities like infrastructure but lacking the internal capacity and budget to develop a robust data program, the city began looking for help from outside the public sector. In 2014, the then-city planning director applied for and in 2015 ultimately received a three-year, $1.35 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to create a five-person Innovation Team (i-team): a dedicated capacity that helps leaders approach city priorities with innovation. Now working in over 20 cities across the U.S., Canada, Israel, and France, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ i-team program helps cities solve problems in new ways to deliver better results for residents—from tackling poverty and revitalizing neighborhoods to reducing violent crime and strengthening the city’s economy.

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