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| Public Finance |
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Residents of Marlboro, New Jersey, have an opportunity to reduce property taxes while supporting local businesses. By using a town loyalty card at a participating business, residents earn credits towards their property taxes. Each merchant decides how much credit to offer; and, while profit margins are reduced, officials and participating businesses expect them to be made up for in volume. The program has already yielded $8,000 in tax savings for 1,700 residents and is believed to be the first of its kind in the country.
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| Policing and Crime Prevention |
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New York City will combat the theft of highly addictive prescription medicines by working with pharmacies to stock fake pill bottles fitted with GPS devices in their inventory. The NYPD hopes that the “bait bottles” will help investigators track stolen drugs and locate suspects. Related initiatives include a drug diversion task force, public education initiatives, and enhanced training of new recruits.
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| Public Health |
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San Francisco is partnering with Yelp to post the city's restaurant health-score data on the review site so users will have another piece of data at their disposal when choosing somewhere to eat. Underpinning this effort is a new national open data standard — the Local Inspector Value-Entry Specification — that enables any city to voluntarily share health and safety data with websites. New York City and Philadelphia are also planning to provide their data to Yelp.
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| Health Care Administration |
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Arkansas has teamed with Wal-Mart to create a more cost-efficient health payment system that promotes higher quality care. The Arkansas Payment Improvement Initiative will help transition the state from a fee-for-service model, in which payors reimburse providers for each instance of care, to an incentive payment model for the provision of high quality, cost-effective care. The retailer has chipped in $670,000 to a program believed to be the first of its kind at the statewide level. It is currently in the first phase of its implementation in the diagnostic areas of congestive heart failure, hip and knee replacements, upper respiratory infections, attention deficit disorder, and pregnancy care. Ten further areas are expected to be added this year.
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| Performance Management |
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Boston About Results (BAR) is a new performance management initiative that takes the treasure trove of data that the city collects and makes it available to the public through a website and a mobile app. The goal of BAR is to increase the accountability of city officials by sharing performance information, such as the number of potholes being filled or parking tickets being issued, that city officials already collect to evaluate their departments.
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| Planning |
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Louisville, Kentucky, has embarked upon a wide-ranging, million-dollar collaborative planning initiative to chart its next 25 years. Vision Louisville will collect ideas from residents through community events such as the city’s “Ideas Festivals” and the initiative’s website and Twitter feed regarding how the city should develop over the coming decades. The city will incorporate ideas that emphasize the concepts of livability, sustainability, and connectivity while maintaining Louisville's character into its development plans, which it hopes to fund through public-private partnerships.
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| Government and the Unmanned-Systems Revolution |
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From aerial drones to underwater robots, unmanned systems are moving beyond their military roots. Technological advances and limitless applications of unmanned systems have ignited serious debate in academic, commercial, and policy circles, and they have the potential to transform government services.
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| What Darwin Can Teach Government |
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'Positive deviants' within a workforce can be the key to solving tough problems. They can be especially useful when other efforts have failed to bring about the desired results, and are more effective when the issue requires behavioral change instead of technical solutions.
Newsletter produced by: Jessica Engelman, editor; Brendan St. Amant, researcher and writer.
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About the Ash Center
The Roy and Lila Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation advances excellence in governance and strengthens democratic institutions worldwide. Through its research, education, international programs, and government innovations awards, the Center fosters creative and effective problem solving and serves as a catalyst for addressing many of the most pressing needs of the world's citizens. The Ford Foundation is a founding donor of the Center. Additional information about the Ash Center is available at http://ash.harvard.edu.
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