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Guest Post: Working on Affordable Seattle, by IP Intern Benaja (Ben) Tchamba

November 27, 2019 by Tina Walha

Hello world. My name is Benaja Sandrain (Ben) and I worked as an intern on the Innovation & Performance team. I started my internship while I was at North Seattle College and am now at Seattle University. I enjoy exploring ways to improve the system and helping people in getting the services they need as smoothly as possible; which is why I was so excited to work on Affordable Seattle with Expedia.

Ben and other Summer 2019 Mayor’s Office interns with Mayor Durkan

Technology is a passion of mine and I was first in line when I heard our team needed support to carry on the development of the Affordable Seattle website. Expedia developed a prototype that was a website with thousands of lines of code, multiple files, a ready structure waiting for content.  Our job was to get all the department content into the website and make additional refinements to get the prototype into a working state. Alongside my co-intern Lindsey Wallace I oversaw the technical aspects of the portal. Studying Computer Science, I told myself that this was an important learning opportunity and challenge I should make most of.

Jumping into the project, I quickly learned the portal was coded using the JavaScript and Json as well as the React Web Framework. I had very little experience and exposure to those technologies. Nonetheless, I dove in and quickly started learning more about these tools, how they connected and how they are used. I was supported by the software team at Expedia, who would assist me, answer my questions, and provide guidance when needed.

I ran into many walls spending hours and hours attempting to make changes that didn’t always work. However, my efforts paid off, and one by one I was able to conquer these challenges and move forward.

Slowly getting the hang of it, I became faster and more comfortable changing the content of the site. Relying on my knowledge and my understanding of programming in general, I figured out how most of the pieces held together. By playing around with the tools, I became very confident with each of my actions.

More than a software tool, working on the portal knowing the why I was doing what I was doing and the range of people that the portal will be helping really kept me going. I am thankful for the learning experience and feel proud of being part of a project that will have such a great impact on the daily life of many people. I look forward to having people take advantage of the portal (combined with other city services) as it will be seen helpful at many levels.

Now that the portal is officially launched and transitioned into the City fabric, I am confident the new holder of this tool will do great things in continuing to nourish the portal. I am excited about the future vision of the portal and for myself, am looking forward to working on similarly impactful projects.

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Filed Under: Innovation & Performance

Tackling hiring, recruitment, and retention for Seattle Police Department

July 26, 2019 by Amie Thao

The Mayor’s Office, in partnership with the Seattle Police Department (SPD), convened a workgroup comprised of the Innovation & Performance team, Seattle Department of Human Resources (SDHR), Central Budget Office (CBO), and City Council to perform a deep dive into the challenges SPD is currently facing recruiting and retaining officers. Like many other agencies across the country, SPD is experiencing a decrease in the number of people applying to become police officers despite increased hiring demands. The SPD Recruitment and Retention Workgroup kicked off in February 2019 and was tasked over the course of six months to evaluate national best practices, conduct in-depth research and data analysis of current trends, and then to recommend short- and long-term strategies to increase the number of annual new hires and decrease voluntary separations. 

Seattle is following in the path of other major cities, such as Baltimore and Los Angeles, by leveraging their Innovation & Performance teams (i-teams) to partner with their police departments to better understand recruitment, hiring, and retention challenges. Seattle, like Baltimore and Los Angeles, adopted a two-prong approach which leverages in-depth quantitative analysis of trends with a more qualitative human-centered design approach. The human-centered design approach complements traditional quantitative data analysis by involving those most impacted (in this case prospective hires, candidates, and staff) in all steps of the problem-solving process. Deeply understanding the needs and requirements of our officers will help us build more effective programs going forward. In practice, this meant Seattle’s i-team spent considerable time in March and April interviewing job seekers, prospective recruits, applicants, SPD rank and file, City staff, entities connected to SPD, and local and national subject matter experts to better understand how applicants and hires navigate their systems. The officer surveys requested in this public disclosure request are from this research effort.   

The i-team then synthesized the quantitative and qualitative data into summative insights. These insights were brought back to the stakeholders engaged in March and April to solicit their recommendations for how SPD might expand recruitment efforts, increase the number of applicants, and retain officers. The Workgroup is reviewing recommendations and will spend the next month testing and refining ideas to identify a portfolio of short- and long-term strategies to deploy. Final recommendations will be documented in a report in early fall 2019.   

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Filed Under: Innovation & Performance

Partnering to provide better access to City benefits for our neighbors in Seattle

June 28, 2019 by Amie Thao

Seattle is in an unprecedented period of change and growth. Our economy is prospering and attracting new people from across the country for jobs and opportunity, but for many, this is a difficult time. The City needs to address the crisis of affordability in order to be a city that represents opportunity for all.

In November 2017, Mayor Jenny Durkan signed Executive Order 2017-12 and directed City departments to address the increased cost of living in Seattle through, among other actions, the creation of a common affordability portal and exploration of opportunities to streamline and coordinate activities across benefit programs.

Our team co-created a plan with residents, City employees, and community-based organization staff and put forth recommendations in response to the Executive Order and to this key question:

How might the City of Seattle better connect low-income households and residents to programs that would lower their cost of living?

Last August, Mayor Durkan launched The Innovation Advisory Council (IAC) to bring together some of our region’s most innovative companies to share insights and expertise with the City.

IAC members Expedia Group, Tableau, and F5 signed on to help us implement our recommendations. Over the past few months, we’ve partnered with Expedia to develop an online information and screening tool to connect individuals and families to City of Seattle benefit programs and services that can lower their cost of living.

The Affordability Portal will support both benefit seekers and the professional and informal navigators such as case workers and family members who support them.

We’re looking forward to sharing more with you over the coming months. For updates, go to the project page on the IAC website.


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Filed Under: Innovation & Performance

Using behavioral science to improve court ticket outcomes

March 12, 2019 by Richard Todd

One of my favorite things about our work in data analytics has been the chance to support varied parts of the City do more with their data. In 2018 we partnered with the Seattle Municipal Court (“SMC”) to explore how we could improve the outcomes of parking and traffic tickets issued in the city.

This is no small issue: SMC issues some 600,000 parking tickets and traffic camera citations per year. Joint analysis of 2016 data showed that some 40% of issued tickets defaulted, and some 25% of tickets were referred to debt collection agencies; bad outcomes for drivers and for SMC. We wondered whether a redesign of communications – informed by behavioral science, similar to our work on pet licensing – could help, and whether we could leverage this same administrative data to track a low-cost but and robust randomized experiment.

Our approach

Motivated by a desire to reduce default and referrals to debt collection, we designed two new communications:

  1. a new version of the default reminder card sent to each driver after 19 days; and
  2. a new courtesy notice reminding drivers of their payment obligations that would be sent after 9 days (prior to any default).

Old (left) and redesigned (right) default reminder card

 

 

New courtesy notice

We ran two simultaneous randomized control trials (“RCTs”) to evaluate the impact of these changes. This approach would allow us to test not only the individual impact of our two interventions was incremental.

The results

The results of the trials, conducted over 10 weeks, showed significant impacts on ticket outcomes. Even controlling for impact of the other intervention, the new courtesy notice demonstrated a 13% reduction in the likelihood of tickets defaulting and the new default notice design demonstrated a 9% reduction in the likelihood of tickets ending up in debt collection.

These outcomes are more than just interesting statistics. The new designs would lead to about 22,000 drivers annually – including around 8,000 people of color each year – to avoid debt collection over an unpaid ticket.

Next steps

Inspired by some fantastic examples in other cities, we’re looking to deepen our use of behavioral science, data and design to improve City services. We’d love to hear of ideas and examples of where some of these approaches could be used to better-support those who live and work in Seattle.

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Filed Under: Innovation & Performance

A Day in the Life of a Data Analytics Intern

January 11, 2019 by Richard Todd

Guest post by Namrata Kolla – a proud IP alumnum.

Group of interns with mayor Jenny Durkan

Nam finds herself well-positioned under wall-mounted arrow

 

On the first day of my internship, my manager took me to Caffe Vita[1], a coffee shop a few blocks from City Hall. When I asked him which projects I would have the chance to work on, he slapped a white sheet of paper on our tiny tabletop and said, “Here’s a Kanban!”.

My first thought was, “What’s a Kanban?”

My second thought, “Holy smokes, that’s a lot of options!”

Until I started my internship, I did not realize the breadth of services that municipal governments provide. I had some vague ideas via my interactions with the City, but through my Data Analytics internship I suddenly saw many more. Below are three takeaways from my time as an official Seattle government insider:

1) City government collects a lot of awesome, important data.

Just last month, I was listening to a presentation where my professor stated that the three organizations that have the most data in the world are Google, Facebook, and Amazon. I spoke up in class that day to tell the professor he forgot a big one: government!

Our city has some of the richest datasets in the world. While there are valid reasons to be wary about data collection and storage, government data, in particular, are pretty special. My favorite reason is that government data tend to be more inclusive than what most private companies can generate. For example, one of Amazon’s biggest datasets is the purchasing behavior of millions of people. At the same time, in the service of making its services better, Seattle City Light collects data about the quality of its power supply to almost every household in Seattle – not just those people that have computers or use particular websites. To protect this data, the City has some of the strongest privacy and data security policies in the world.

The power and extent of administrative data was a big lesson during my internship. There are many obstacles in the way of using administrative data to their full potential, some of which were placed with purpose. But, I feel that too few administrators are aware of how much more certainty and nuance they could have in their program decisions if they better (and safely) employed the data we already have at hand.

2) Analytical innovation will never be as important as trust and communication. 

After spending 70% of my time crunching numbers on a computer screen, 20% percent talking to partners in meetings (and 10% getting coffee), I found time and time again that the conversations I had in the 20% of my time decided the fate of my projects far more than any discovery I made in that 70%.

While getting desk time with no distractions is definitely something to relish, analytical problems are always easier to solve than organizational problems. When I ran into a bug trying to manipulate shapefiles from the American Community Survey, I spent an hour brainstorming with a colleague in public utilities, two hours on the phone with the University of Washington’s statistics department, and at least four hours with Dr. Google. When I ran into hurdles trying to access data to complete a project for a department partner, I spent an hour sending emails and three hours in discussions. While the first problem may have been more laborious, I never felt as stressed as I when I was trying to solve the second problem. I usually feel confident that I can solve a technical problem or find someone to help me, but I am rarely confident about problems requiring motivating people. Fortunately, I have been able to observe my colleagues in the Innovation & Performance (IP) Team and the City Budget Office and learn more about how to communicate intent and value building relationships over short-term success.

 3) Analyzing data in government doesn’t have to be a lonely job.

I heard myself and several City data analysts mention feeling lonely at some point or another while trying to solve day-to-day problems. While this is not unique to our role, often there are only a handful of people who use data in the particular way that we do and there is nobody else to ask for help. The silos that naturally grow from the organizational structure of the City also made it hard for me to find help in other departments when I initially started my internship.

However, I was lucky that the IP team organizes monthly City Performance and Data Science meetings where I had a chance to meet city workers in similar problem spaces. Additionally, the nature of our work being conducted in departmental partnerships helped me build authentic connections with other analysts while working in the weeds. Nothing cultivates a relationship with another person better than going through something hard, and I have found that to be as true in city government as in my personal life!

Looking back at my time on the IP team, I am so grateful to have been a part of this family. It has made a huge difference in my life to see city workers so passionate and committed to bettering communities and making long-term, systemic change. While there were countless challenges, there were many more celebrations and I have only become more humbled and excited to pursue a career in public service.

 

[1] Other excellent coffeeshops are available and are indeed patronized by the IP team

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Filed Under: Innovation & Performance

Princeton Behavioral Cities Summit

December 14, 2018 by Richard Todd

Last month, Tina and I attended the first Behavioral Cities Summit organized by the Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Public Policy at Princeton University. The Center hosted representatives of five cities committed to the use of behavioral science to improve city government.

No shiny presentations to share

The event was different from many conferences in that there were few project case studies and little self-congratulation. Rather, the Summit was built around frank discussion of what had and hadn’t worked for each team: from day-to-day operating models to managing external partnerships. Our shared hope was that the connections made during that day would form the basis of a network of practitioners who could share learning across our different cities.

I was most interested in learning how other cities had scaled their work. New York and Chicago have embedded teams from Ideas42, a leading non-profit design and consulting firm in the field. GovLabPHL has pursued a strategy of partnership with local academic institutions, bringing the insights of expert researchers to the way that that the City of Philadelphia communicates with its residents. In a time of significant budget pressure for the City of Seattle, we believe that the use of behavioral science could improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the City’s work across many domains, and it was inspiring to see other cities deploying this expertise to such ends.

Photo of attendees at summit

Photocredit: Anjali Chainani, City of Philadelphia

Expanding the amount of technical expertise available to a city government is only half the story. The inspiration for each of our projects came from our colleagues within the City of Seattle; people who think daily about how to improve the way that the City works and communicates. Our job is to bring those ideas to life. Next year, I want to make sure that we reach more teams in more departments to explore how we could help them achieve their goals.

Looking forward

So what will be different? As we plan for next year, we are going to explore options for scaling our work; bringing more external expertise to the City and engaging more of our colleagues. We will make it easier to engage with our team and share ideas. As we develop these approaches, we will share them on this blog. Let us know if you have any ideas!

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Filed Under: Innovation & Performance

FireSTAT

November 29, 2018 by Richard Todd

What is it?

Earlier this year, our team reorganized its work around three service offerings for the City. A central theme within each was the desire to bring more and better data into day-to-day decision-making.

Shortly afterwards, we met with the Seattle Fire Department (“SFD” or the “Department”). Led by Chief Scoggins, the Department is a national leader in a range of efforts to improve services and better serve the people of Seattle. In this vein, SFD had identified an opportunity to drive performance with own operational data, but faced a series of obstacles:

  • Disparate and inaccessible data sets. Operational data was stored in thirteen unconnected data systems, in a wide variety of formats.
  • Reporting tools that for worked for some, but not all. Many of SFD’s systems for monitoring and interrogating performance were static spreadsheets containing Department-level data. Many found them difficult to interpret; those who had narrower operational responsibilities often could not easily isolate the performance of their battalion or unit.
  • Few opportunities to bring data to operational problem-solving. With few regular opportunities for Department-wide interrogation of operational measures, performance management often relied upon ad-hoc communications from leadership to operational groups.

 

Our Approach

In response, SFD and IP worked together to unlock the value in the Department’s existing data. Inspired by examples nationally and locally, we worked with SFD to design and deliver a STAT-style performance program for the Department, built around three efforts:

  • Infrastructure. In partnership with Seattle IT, we automated and transformed key datasets among the disparate data sources maintained by the Department, providing a platform for real-time access and future analysis.
  • Interactive performance tools. Informed by interviews with command and operational staff across SFD, we created operational dashboards that share and allow the interrogation of key operational and performance data over time. To meet the needs of operational staff and from department to battalion-, station-, unit- and even shift-level.
  • Drawing upon principles of human-centered design, we have designed, set-up and prototyped a departmental STAT meeting for SFD. Designed with the unique shift pattern of a fire department in mind, we continue to iterate with the benefit of user experience.

 

Illustrative example of operational SFD dashboard

Example of the interactive dashboards built with Seattle IT and the SFD

 

 

The Results

The first, prototype FireSTAT sessions have taken place in the last months and we continue to refine and develop this practice. Already, the project is bearing fruit for the Department:

  • Deepening use of data and performance measures in by SFD management. The back-end automation and visualization of data has allowed existing performance measures to be better-integrated into operational management.
  • Enabling SFD operational decision-makers to identify, analyze and respond to key trends in fire and EMS demand. Real-time plotting and evaluation of department operations has allowed emerging trends to be tracked, analyzed and responded to within days. Recent trends in illegal burning and hotspots for EMS call volumes were analyzed with FireSTAT.
  • Supporting collaborative problem solving around key SFD KPIs. The new dashboards have allowed surfacing of relevant trends and comparison in nationally-recognized performance measures; prototype STAT meetings have facilitated shared problem-solving around these issues.

 

The first prototype FireSTAT meeting. Out of tiny acorns…

 

All this is only the beginning. We are excited to deepen the practice of FireSTAT and to expand its reach into other operational datasets. Watch this space!

 

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Filed Under: Innovation & Performance

Reflections on CityLab Detroit

November 4, 2018 by Tina Walha

Last week, I had the pleasure to attend CityLab Detroit, a 2.5 day event that is billed as “the preeminent global summit organized to address the most urgent urban issues of our time”, or in my words Coachella for City Nerds. The event, hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Atlantic, and the Aspen Institute, brings together mayors, city innovators, urban experts, and artists for unlikely conversations that both reflect on and generate new breakthroughs related to what cities are facing. I was blown away by the line-up that CityLab assembled this year, and came back to Seattle with my buzzing with ideas for us to adopt and adapt for use in addressing our own challenges. I also came back inspired, which was helpful a week before the midterms; after hearing city leaders talk about the concrete actions they’re taking to improve the lives of their residents, I was reminded of the power of public service and the good that can be done when you block out the noise and focus on outcomes for those we’re trying to serve.

Highlights

Given Seattle’s own affordability crisis, my favorite one-on-one interview at CityLab was conducted by Jim Fallows with Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California. Mayor Tubbs has launched the nation’s first experiment to test universal basic income, and it was powerful to hear in his words why this pilot – which will closely measure several key indicators for those receiving the monthly payment of $500 a month – is important not only for his constituents in Stockton, but for so many folks across the U.S. right now. The idea of universal basic income has generated a lot of discussion, both positive and negative, and I look forward to seeing what Stockton learns. You can watch the interview with Mayor Tubbs at the 1:39 mark here: https://youtu.be/xb4DtSwXgAA

Another effort I’ve been watching from afar and was keen to hear more about is Sidewalk Labs’ smart neighborhood project in Toronto, Quayside. Dan Doctoroff, who leads the Alphabet company, shared with the CityLab audience the vision for Quayside and addressed the understandable concerns that abound regarding how the project will balance urban placemaking with technology. You can watch the interview with Doctoroff at the 40:30 mark here: https://youtu.be/xb4DtSwXgAA.

Last but certainly not least, the biggest highlight of CityLab for me was spending time with other city changemakers. In a first-of-its-kind convening the day before CityLab began, Bloomberg Philanthropies convened Chief Innovators from over 60 global cities to share our work, get inspired, and develop connections that will generate ideas and collaborations that are sure to be featured in future CityLab events. The day included a great session with Dr. Michael Hallsworth from the Behavioral Insights Team and a panel of civic innovators who shared successes and failures in a candid conversation about their work. For someone who tries to read as much as I can online about the work of other cities, nothing beats grabbing coffee and chatting with someone about their work. It was a great day and the theme of connection was reiterated through a lunch at the end of CityLab with directors of other Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded innovation teams. This is a group that inspires me, and breaking bread with them was a great way to end the trip to Detroit.

CityLab Your Couch

If you’re interested in checking out the conversations from CityLab Detroit – including a great panel discussion on Unleashing Opportunity featuring our own Mayor Jenny Durkan – check out the Aspen Institute’s CityLab website for videos.

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Filed Under: Conferences and Networks

Keeping youth voice at the center of our work

October 19, 2018 by Amie Thao

Three things that Innovation & Performance focuses on is design, research, and development. Part of our model was originally drawn from the Bloomberg Innovation Team Model which centers on design.

To stay up-to-date on best practices, our whole team received training at Stanford d.school, one of the pioneers of design thinking and human-centered design.

One of our goals is to build capacity for this approach within the City in order to help us to better serve our residents.

To do that, we anchor our work on the experiences of those most affected. For example, when we were asked to help think about ways to connect youth and young adults with jobs, we centered our work on the experiences and needs of young people.

We used a collaborative design process to address our primary research question:

How might we connect young people who grew up in Seattle to good jobs and prepare them for the future of work?

Over the summer, we interviewed over 83 young people as well as parents, supervisors, and staff from 8 departments. Our interviews produced hundreds of data points, such as:

Quote from Jinji: I'm very often complimented on my speech because it's eloquent or well thought out or whatever. I'm an educated human being. When that happens, it's like, Oh, you act very white. What does that mean? What does that have to do with anything?

When we heard similar sentiments from learning experts and secondary research, it became a theme:

Soft skills are loosely defined, and as a result evaluation of them can be culturally biased towards white culture.

This theme combined with others created an insight:

Young people are aware of the importance of soft skills, but inconsistent evaluation of these skills can lead to bias influenced by race and culture.

These insights have been shared with the mayor, our colleagues around the city, and with community partners:

Poster of insight with quotes

We held four workshops (two internal, two public) to give people an opportunity to generate solutions to address these insights.

Idea generation workshop at Youngstown

By consistently, continually, anchoring our work on the experiences of those most affected, we can be certain to keep people at the center of our work.


Next Steps

Our workshops generated over 550 ideas. The next step is to prototype our top ideas to test our assumptions. Once we have our prototypes, we’ll go back out into the community to get feedback on our ideas.

If you or your organization would like to help us to test some of these ideas – Let us know!

  • Download posters of ten insights (11 x 17)
  • Check back on our website for updates.
  • Send an email to amie.thao@seattle.gov
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Filed Under: Design, Innovation & Performance, Innovation Team Tagged With: economic development, youth

Using behavioral science to improve pet licensing retention

October 2, 2018 by Richard Todd

The problem

Seattle is a city known for its love of animals, and our city government has its part to play. From Kitty Hall to sheltering lost pets, Seattle Animal Shelter provides life-saving services to animals in need across the City. To do this work, Seattle Animal Shelter relies upon revenues from the licensing of domestic pets; mandatory for dogs, cats, pigs and goats kept domestically in the City. However, even accounting for those households that leave Seattle, only around 60% of the 3,000 licenses that expire each month are renewed.

As one element of our data analytics work, we wondered whether behavioral science could help.

 

Image of a domestic cat

Meet Ellum, a licensed cat in Seattle

Our approach

With support from the Behavioural Insights Team made possible by What Works Cities, the Innovation & Performance team worked with Seattle Animal Shelter to quantify the non-renewal issue, to use behavioral science to redesign licensing renewals, and run a low-cost randomized control trial (“RCT”) to evaluate the impact of these changes.

We redesigned the standard renewal card with the benefit of behavioral science literature. We made it personal by including the name of the licensed pet, we made it compelling by highlighting the critical work of Seattle Animal Shelter, and we made it simpler to renew the license.

 

Comparison of old (left) and new (right) pet license renewal reminder cards

Comparison of old (left) and new (right) pet license renewal reminder cards

 

In order to test whether the new design had impact, we ran a trial. For two months, we randomly divided licenses due for renewal into two groups and sent the old notice to one group and the new notice to another. This random allocation helps us to be sure that any improvements that we observed with the new notice really were because of the new notice, rather than an outside factor. No new software or mailing was required, and the trial was run at zero cost to Seattle Animal Shelter.

 

The results

The trial showed that the new reminder notice would deliver real progress on a key operational issue. Analysis of trial results showed a 9% increase in renewal rates among the target group of license holders, and an 11% increase in the proportion of expiring licenses being replaced by longer-term licenses. On this basis, switching to the new design across all expiring licenses would deliver some $650,000 in future licensing revenue to Seattle Animal Shelter and help it to continue its incredibly valuable work.

 

bar chart showing selected results of trial

Comparative renewal rates: the new license format showed an increase of 5 percentage points (9%) in renewal rates

 

More broadly, we were excited to help Seattle Animal Shelter unlock insights from its existing licensing database – an exercise that had proved challenging in the past. Our data analytics work is predicated on supporting departments to get more value from existing datasets, and we were delighted to help Seattle Animal Shelter with its important mission.

 

What’s next?

Those who have pets in the city may recognize the newly designed form! More broadly, we continue to work with departments to bring behavioral science to bear on our communications and to run low-cost experiments. If you have ideas for where we could improve our communications, then let us know!

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Filed Under: Data Analytics, Innovation & Performance

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