In January, Innovation & Performance worked on a project to explore opportunities to increase access to city benefit programs and streamline program processes. At the outset the solution was predetermined, an online portal which would provide a one-stop shop to all city services and programs. Innovation & Performance doesn’t do predetermined solutions, so we set off to do our own research to test assumptions. We used many approaches to investigate and develop ideas to address the problem such as interviews with city staff, observations of community hubs, and interviews with city residents.
