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| Housing |
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The New York City Housing Authority is driving vans equipped with laptops, Wi-Fi, and printers to communities to help residents search for jobs online, print resumes, and access the Internet. The Digital Vans program, launched in February with funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce, deploys vans at locations in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn that have limited or no access to broadband or high-speed Internet. Residents can use these resources for up to 30 minutes and those working on resumes and cover letters are given a free one-gigabyte flash drive to store those documents. The program has been so successful that the Housing Authority is adding another van to its fleet.
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| Public Safety |
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Michigan is aiming to keep men off the roads when they are drunk with talking urinal cakes, making an appeal to them when their attention is most likely to be focused. The talking, motion activated urinal cakes emit a recorded message reminding men to take a cab or call a friend to get home safely. The Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning is currently distributing the cakes to Michigan Licensed Beverage Association members. Talking urinal cakes have also been used by other states.
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| Employment and Labor Supply |
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Nonprofits and other entities are taking advantage of Massachusetts’ new online system for conducting Criminal Offender Records Information checks. iCORI allows employers to conduct background checks on potential employees and volunteers rapidly, transforming a process that had previously taken several weeks into one that takes just a few minutes. The change ensures that ready and willing workers aren't dissuaded by long wait times and gets seasonal workers, such as college students on summer break, into positions faster.
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| Crime Prevention |
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Under the Truck Shield program, the Ohio State Highway Patrol is training truckers to look for signs of danger on the roads. The free training provides tips on spotting and reporting different types of criminal activity including impaired driving, human trafficking, and homeland security concerns. Troopers say truckers can be extra sets of eyes and ears to assist the patrol while doing their everyday jobs. The effort aims to fill in the gap left by a similar federal program that ended several years ago.
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| Recycling |
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Many cities have made significant progress in their quest for zero waste. Alongside collecting food scraps, Portland, Oregon, picks up garbage biweekly, reducing the amount of garbage sent to landfills by 44 percent. A combination of policies has led to San Francisco’s 78-percent reuse rate of what enters its waste stream, and Seattle requires its residents to compost. Although many trumpet the policies, residents and officials also acknowledge the downsides of attracting seagulls and the stench of garbage left on curbs.
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| Emergency Response |
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In South Carolina, the Richland County Sheriff's Department and Hospice Care of Tri-County have teamed up to protect the elderly by ensuring that important health information is available to emergency workers in the form of a pill bottle. Deputies are providing elderly residents with special medication bottles called "LifeScripts," which contain a small form upon which medical information is written down. The pill bottle is then placed in the refrigerator door and a magnet on the outside of the door alerts emergency technicians to its presence. About 600 elderly residents are enrolled in the project.
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| Poverty Alleviation |
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San Jose, California, is now storing possessions of the homeless for 90 days when the city conducts its periodic cleanups of homeless encampments. While the shift in policy under the new pilot may cause additional expenses in sorting and cataloguing possessions, storing the possessions — instead of immediately discarding them — can help ensure that such valuables are maintained safely while limiting the city’s potential legal liability.
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| How 'Ideation' Is Growing Business in Memphis |
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Memphis' Innovation Delivery Team launched a collaborative effort to generate and implement ideas to spark commerce in struggling neighborhoods. The city took the time to understand what was happening on the ground and to respond. The result is a plan tailor-made for the communities that it is meant to help — ideation and policymaking at its best.
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| Our Transportation Funding Disconnect |
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Because gas taxes can no longer provide the revenue to keep up with our needs, radical change is needed in the way American transportation systems are funded.
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| Stretching Dollars to Nurture Factories |
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The Seattle area is leading the nation in a manufacturing renaissance as its governments make strategic investments that build on the region's strengths.
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| How to Reform Pensions at the Ballot Box |
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San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed explains what led up to voters' approval of major changes to the city's retirement system.
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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