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| Education & Technology |
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In Muscogee County, Georgia, high school students aren’t paying for lunch with cash or a card, but with a wave of their hand over a palm scanner. All nine high schools in Muscogee County now offer the machines that recognize vein patterns below the skin, allowing students to pay for their meal in about four seconds rather then having to take out, present, and swipe physical meal-plan identification cards. Besides being efficient, officials note that the system prevents students from using other students’ identification numbers to purchase meals. While some parents are reticent because of privacy concerns and have opted out of the voluntary program, officials are looking to expand the scanners to other schools.
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| Health & Human Services |
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Connecticut has launched a new, state-run “Nonprofit Grant Program” that will allocate bonds specifically for health and human services nonprofits. The program will allow nonprofit providers to take advantage of a grant pool — authorized to top out at $20 million — to help them create and maintain efficient and enhanced service delivery. Eligible projects include those that address needs in infrastructure, such as energy system upgrades, compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, information technology, vehicle purchases, and implementation of electronic medical record systems. Applications for the first round of funding are due October 4.
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| Community Development |
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Across the pond, villages in Northern Ireland are investing in artistic face-lifts for vacant and abandoned properties to fight perceptions of economic distress and to spur tourism. In Bushmills, vacant units have been painted with nostalgic images of bakers, barbers, and cobblers. The scale of the project has met with such success that tourism in the town is up from past years. While Northern Ireland has spent $2 million pounds on combating blight in the past two years, the Brighter Bushmills Project was created and funded by the village.
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| Economic & Community Development |
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Some Texas cities are using bicycling programs as a strategy to improve public health, enhance quality of life, and attract different types of residents and businesses. For example, new businesses may soon be required to provide bicycle parking in Dallas, and four cities—Austin, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio—have developed or are considering bike-sharing systems. Cities looking to entice a younger generation and high-tech industries believe they need to offer options where those populations can work closer to where they live, play, shop, and eat.
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| Policing & Crime Prevention |
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Transit police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have placed a cardboard cutout of a police officer near the bicycle cage at a high traffic subway and bus station. Officials state that the fake cop has helped to cut bike thefts by 67 percent over a five-week period. Besides fooling opportunistic thieves in the first instance, the cutout is thought to also serve as a psychological deterrent; the paper cop stares directly at the offender at the critical moment that they are deciding whether to do something illegal. It has also helped save the city from devoting full-time police resources to patrol the area. The city may deploy more cutout cops to other high crime areas if the program is successful.
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| Service Delivery |
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To encourage its city employees to provide high quality, efficient service, Denver instituted “Peak Academy,” an innovation training school for city employees. Since 2011, managers have nominated promising staff to participate in five-day sessions where they receive training, develop ideas, and learn performance management skills to take back to their jobs in various city agencies. Over 10 percent of city employees have now participated in Peak Academy, where they have identified nearly $7 million in savings for the city.
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| Data Analysis and the Promise of Speedy Government |
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Combining data with new analytics techniques can help prepare governments to react quickly both in times of emergency and during day-to-day operations.
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| The Civil Service Systems Governments Need for the Modern Era |
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Merit-based hiring systems in government are more than a century old, and some of them make managing the public workforce unnecessarily difficult and complicated. The goals of civil service remain valid, but they need to be updated for the modern era.
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| How a Federal Law Trumps Cost-Effective Transit |
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By threatening to withhold mass transit funds, the federal government is preventing California from realizing savings from its pension reforms. In an era of massive, unfunded pension liabilities and unmet transportation infrastructure needs, federal requirements are killing efforts in cash-strapped states.
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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