--- The Data Track at Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative helps leaders to the see the people behind city-level data. --- Today, we’re throwing a spotlight on the Data track of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a collaboration between Bloomberg Philanthropies, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and GovEx. Laun…

--- In this episode, we celebrate Women’s History Month by talking to some of the women who made history by leading the development of the Coronavirus Resource Center, or “CRC.” Launched in January 2020, the CRC became the indispensable source for data about COVID-19 for government officials, academics, journalists, and the pubic, surpassing 2.5 bi…

--- In this episode, we discuss City AI Connect, a global learning community and digital platform for cities to trial and advance the usage of generative artificial intelligence to improve public services. --- Generative AI, powered by advanced machine learning algorithms, has the potential to analyze vast amounts of data to predict trends, helping…

In the latest Data Points Podcast from the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University (“GovEx”), GovEx Chief of Staff Dr. Rudy de Leon Dinglas talks to Amy Edwards Holmes, who recently completed her first year as the center’s Executive Director. Amy came to GovEx with years of public service experience in both the non-pr…

In the latest Data Points podcast from the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University (GovEx), GovEx Research Manager Jacquie Greif talks to Justin Elszasz, Chief Data Officer for Baltimore City. Elszasz describes the city’s long-standing partnership with GovEx, including the collaborative development of the ground-break…

Among the lessons many cities learned from the COVID-19 pandemic was that local governments need to be better prepared for disruptions to the food system caused by public health crises and other natural and man-made disasters. To help local leaders address this need, the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence (GovEx) and Johns Hopkins’ Center f…

The past several years have revealed a major shift in the way we relate to our jobs, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing political and civil unrest. Increasingly, the roles of social and emotional wellbeing in the workplace have taken center stage as we negotiate our return to the office. This changing paradigm about our relationship t…

Place-based partnerships can serve a major role in supporting governments’ commitment to serving and improving the lives of residents. But partnerships on a city-wide scale rely on good data governance practices in order to be successful, data-driven, and self-sustaining. In particular, collaboration between government and non-government organizati…

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how unprepared our public data reporting practices were to handle such an event. Incomplete, poorly-formatted, or irregularly-released datasets were a norm, and drawing useful insights from these data presented a major challenge for governments seeking to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. While working on the Coro…

Innovation is about solving problems. Every problem and crisis a city encounters can unlock new opportunities to innovate and create better results for residents. In this episode, Amanda Daflos, the new Executive Director of the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins, shares her thoughts on the role of innovation in government, the…

When tackling society’s big challenges, we often find ourselves collaborating with other departments or organizations external to our own. But as any siloed government employee will tell you, building the relationships needed to rise to the occasion, and sustaining those relationships, is often no easy task. Today, we’re joined by two individuals f…

Governments are often on the hook for some of society’s most pressing challenges. How can city leaders find novel and flexible solutions to address these issues and improve the lives of residents? In a world filled with ever more complex technology, leaders are looking to data science as the answer for previously unsolvable problems. Today, we’re j…

How can cities and their partners help families start saving money for their children’s future college or career training expenses? Since 2013, Lansing, Michigan has been tackling this innovative opportunity with the Lansing SAVE Initiative, a program providing all incoming Lansing School District kindergarten students with a savings account. In th…

Accountable, transparent government is something we all strive for in public service. But how do we make this aspiration a reality? It's not enough to simply collect results from the programs and initiatives we launch - we need to turn these results into meaningful insights about the efficacy of these efforts. Today, we're joined by GovEx Academy I…

Today, we're joined by the Economic Mobility Forum's Policy Fellows as they wrap up a year of research and discussion at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Applied Public Research. The Policy Forum is a community of practice focused on connecting forum members with vetted policy fellows: experts and practitioners who are working on economic mo…

The disruptive effects of COVID-19 were widespread, but that didn't prevent the City of Paterson, NJ from moving forward on mayoral priorities. Today, we join Mayor Andre Sayegh, Chief Data Officer Harsha Mallajosyula, and Business Administrator Kathleen Long to discuss their collaboration with GovEx in developing much-needed foundational data prac…

Is it safe for pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19? What if they're breast feeding? The answer, it turns out, is hard to find, and it depends a lot on where in the world you live. Today, we're looking at COMIT (COvid Maternal Immunization Tracker), a Johns Hopkins initiative designed to track and report the world's nations' stances on…

Today, we're joined by the creators of the eSchools+ Initiative, a program designed to address inequity caused by school closures through connecting parents and teachers with school reopening data and research. We'll explore the initiative's conception and the unique challenges this effort posed given the rapidly changing landscape of the COVID-19 …

In today’s episode, we’ll discuss the Love Your Block program in the City of Lancaster. Love Your Block is a Cities of Service initiative that connects city leaders with residents to help them organize neighborhood improvements, cleanups, and other volunteer-led projects. We’re joined by Lancaster’s Director of Neighborhood Engagement as well as re…

In today's episode, we discuss our engagement with the City of Baltimore and its CleanStat program. We'll also look at how the city relied on this initiative to care for residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.By GovEx Data Points