Telling Your “What Works” Story

Effective Communications Examples from Cities

There is a real opportunity for cities in crafting and sharing compelling stories about progress using data and evidence. It’s a chance to celebrate your accomplishments, bolster the efforts of city staff, engage the community in your work, and also share what you’ve learned with other city halls. Indeed, there’s ample reason to believe that publicly communicating the work is actually critical to its success.

Despite this opportunity, many cities aren’t sure about the best avenues for sharing their work or when they have something of value to discuss publicly. But the storytelling toolkit is expansive, and contains tools suitable for sharing your city’s biggest successes as well as more everyday forms of progress.

This guide — a living document that we add to regularly — contains examples of storytelling both large and small, including effective social media use, amplification of “what works” practices in original content and public appearances by city leaders, secured news coverage, and more. We hope it helps to expand notions of which stories are worth telling and how you might share them.

Social Media

Now more than ever, communities anticipate that they can learn about their city’s progress and important updates via social media. And increasingly, there is also an expectation that the exchange be two-way, with residents seeing social tools as a way to engage with their local government. Maximizing your social media presence can achieve all of these goals while serving as an invaluable avenue for celebrating your achievements.

• Share regular updates and progress with residents — including those that may surface in routine meetings — using your city’s social media channels. For example, Kansas City, Missouri, turns to its Twitter handle (@KCMO) to share updates about KCStat, the City’s performance management program, using the hashtag #KCStat.
• National opportunities such as City Hall Selfie Day or Open Data Day are great moments to align your city with others doing this work, join an ongoing social media conversation, and connect yourself to a larger data and evidence community.
• Mayors and other city leaders can take advantage of social media to connect with residents and better understand, and respond to, their concerns. Smart Cities Dive recently highlighted seven mayors using Twitter to foster engagement.
• If you’re facing an abundance of content for your city’s primary social media channels, a unique social media profile for concentrated initiatives can serve as an outlet to showcase more detailed updates. For example, Washington, DC, shares the latest news from its in-house data science team, The Lab @ DC, via its @TheLab_DC Twitter handle.

Blog Posts

Blog posts are a great way to get the word out about your accomplishments while controlling your own narrative. They’re also an avenue to showcase more informal or conversational content, such as listicles. You can publish on your own blog or seek to author a guest post on a blog managed by another organization or outlet.

• In Albuquerque, open data has become a path to open communication with the community, making a more resident-friendly city, and saving public funds, writes the Deputy Chief of Staff for former Mayor Richard Berry.
• San Jose describes how it put behavioral science to work to curb illegal dumping.

San Jose blogged about using randomized control trials to determine which messaging on postcards encouraged more residents to dispose of large items correctly.

• Chief Data Officer Joy Bonaguro shares what winning What Works Cities Certification means for the future of data-driven government in San Francisco.
• Kansas City, Kansas, blogs about the launch of a new dashboard to track progress on its SOAR initiative, which focuses on eradicating blight and making neighborhoods safer.
• Las Vegas breaks down data from its Results Vegas performance management program and charts key gains.
• Little Rock’s Jim Brooks describes the transition from being a journalist seeking police data to serving as Crime Analyst Supervisor for the local Police Department — and why he is still advocating for transparency.
• Performance Management Analyst Shannon Carney explains how Portland has sustained its performance management program across mayoral transitions.

State of the City Speeches

Your mayor’s State of the City address or other public appearances are ready opportunities to communicate to residents what they stand to gain from your city’s commitment to using data and evidence. Similarly, other city leaders or staff can take advantage of their participation in public events, such as panels or conferences, to amplify your work.

• Independence: Mayor Eileen Weir shared how enhancing the City’s performance management dashboard “lets citizens know whether or not we are meeting our service delivery goals, and improving its open data portal means “information that once required a trip to City Hall can be accessed online from anywhere in the world virtually instantly.”
• Laredo: Mayor Pete Saenz said that “analytically evaluating existing programs and systems through the use of data” allows Laredo “to make informed decisions to improve the City’s overall performance, including customer service and quality of life issues.”
• Little Rock: “Open data opens doors for all of us, our citizens to be empowered to not just find, but to also use publishable data that is freely provided by the City of Little Rock. … Our city officials and departments will be able to make more informed decisions, stream-line processes and improve operations,” said Mayor Mark Stodola. He also explained that data will be used to measure performance, as well as make better procurements and track vendor performance.
• Syracuse (see pages 18–19): Former Mayor Stephanie Miner described the City’s use of data to target investments in its water system and to identify properties where smoke detectors could be missing or malfunctioning. She also spoke about the increased public transparency being provided through open data.

Op-Eds

Mayors and other city leaders have a lot of experience to leverage. Placing op-eds they author allows your city to position itself as an expert in existing conversations or to lead the way in initiating new ones. Additionally, op-eds can serve as a useful vehicle to make the case for a fresh way of thinking or for sharing valuable lessons learned with other cities.

• Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, late Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco, and Mayor Sam Liccardo of San Jose argue that, by using data-driven practices, cities have increasingly become models for effective government.
• Former City Manager Elizabeth (Betsy) Fretwell details Las Vegas’s data-focused approach to address challenges like traffic safety and sustainability.
• Chief Innovation Officer Mike Sarasti outlines Miami’s efforts to modernize its permitting process and takes on the myth that “government doesn’t care” and “doesn’t have the DNA to innovate.”
• Chief Innovation Officer Shireen Santosham describes the importance of bridging the digital divide to address inequity and serve San Jose residents.
• Drawing on lessons he learned from contracting reforms in Seattle’s Human Services Department, Deputy Director Jason Johnson describes how procurement can drive better outcomes for cities, in a piece coauthored with Andrew Feldman, host of the Gov Innovator podcast.

Media Coverage

Think about the local papers or trade outlets that may be interested in covering your data-driven initiatives, and cultivate relationships with journalists there who can help tell your story. Also consider the people you can put forward to be interviewed. City leaders are always a strong go-to, but also think beyond the usual suspects; strong spokespeople can often be found in places you might not expect, such as among your data practitioners, frontline staff, or local civic tech community.

• Inc.: Albuquerque’s tech and data initiatives are propelling the work of local startups.
• Government Technology: Anchorage has advanced its work by hiring a chief innovation officer, launching an open data portal, and more.
• The Advocate: Data-driven efforts are helping Baton Rouge advance flood-related housing recovery efforts.
• StateScoop: Birmingham makes history by passing an open data policy, becoming the first city in Alabama to do so.
• Quartz: Behavioral-science-informed randomized control trials have helped Chattanooga increase diversity among police recruits.
• GOVERNING: Denver’s Peak Academy has trained thousands of municipal staff who have gone on to save the City millions of dollars.
• Indianapolis Business Journal: Indianapolis develops plans to use data to anticipate and prevent crime and to alleviate food deserts.
• The Cap Times: Madison introduced a mapping tool that allows residents to interact with finance data, following a capital budget announcement.
• Smart City Memphis: Memphis’s new performance dashboard and open data policy “may not grab media headlines, but they should, because they ultimately have the power to transform decision-making and the relationship between the public and City Hall.”
• Chicago Tribune: A public safety incident map allows Naperville residents to see where firefighters or police officers have been deployed each day, along with the time and nature of each incident.

Naperville secured news coverage when it launched its public safety incident map, a way for residents to learn more about what’s going on in their city.

• GovLoop: An interview with Chief Data Officer Sam Edelstein unveils how Syracuse’s open data portal can foster problem-solving around such issues as older buildings that pose a risk of human lead consumption and drinking water quality.

Broadcast TV

Engage your local news station to cover events related to your work, to help you tell particularly visual success stories, or to amplify your what works practices via live interviews with city leaders.

• Greensboro’s IT Director spoke about why the City is committed to making data available online.
• Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin discussed the City’s Youth Service Corps, which fosters workforce readiness among at-risk teens, and how data is increasing the effectiveness of the program.

Hartford secured a TV interview in which Mayor Luke Bronin spoke about the City’s data-driven Youth Service Corps program.

• Laredo spotlighted accomplishments from its first year as a What Works city, including working toward its goal of financial transparency.
• Topeka Mayor Larry Wolgast and City Manager Jim Colson talked about the City’s engagement with What Works Cities in a “roundtable” hosted on a local news station.
• Speaking to a local TV station after her State of the City, Mayor Jeri Muoio provided additional details about West Palm Beach’s commitment to using data.

Editorials

Don’t write off your local editorial board as an ally. A commitment to using data and evidence is commendable from a civic point of view. Finding time to meet with editorial board members to share your progress may lead to their commending your work.

• The Lincoln Journal Star: “If the concept [of ‘catching someone doing something right’] works in the private sector, presumably the same principle applies in the public sector. So the Journal Star editorial board wants to be among those offering a word of praise to City Council member Leirion Gaylor Baird. It was Gaylor Baird who first put Lincoln on the list of more than 100 cities who sought help from Bloomberg Philanthropies on how to more effectively make use of the mounds of data that have become accessible as city government gradually switched to digital records.”
• The Pioneer Press: “We expect government leaders to stretch every taxpayer dollar. Innovating to do so — and thereby delivering better service to citizens — deserves notice. With city-budget season underway and bringing due attention to resources and how they’re used, it’s a fitting time to look at results. We checked in with Scott Cordes, St. Paul’s director of innovation and budget, about a foundation-funded initiative — Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “What Works Cities” — to help 100 midsize municipalities better use their data to improve service. It’s working here in varied ways.”
• The Topeka Capital-Journal: “When it comes to the civic health of any community, nothing matters more than the ability to learn about what government officials are doing and ensure that they’re doing it well. But this can’t be done without ample access to official information, which is why our city government [Topeka] should be commended for recent efforts to make public records available and digestible.”

Podcasts

Podcasts are an increasingly popular way for people to follow their interests. You can host your own or look for existing podcasts that may wish to feature your city staff as guests.

• Enterprise Data Strategist Janelle Bailey talks about Cary’s open data program.
• On its own Government Gone Digital podcast, Gilbert explains what it means to be a What Works city, and how the Town is approaching data and making it accessible to everyone.
• Performance & Innovation Coordinator Melissa Bridges and City Clerk Susan Langley speak about innovation, performance, and public service in Little Rock.
• Assistant City Manager Brent Stockwell discusses Scottsdale’s work on performance measurement and behavioral insights.

Want to keep expanding your storytelling toolkit? Check out our guide on seven best practices for communicating with a “what works” state of mind.