Introducing Data Analytics

September 14, 2018 by Richard Todd

What is it?

Earlier this year, the newly-created Innovation & Performance reorganized its work around three service offerings for the City of Seattle:

Results driven management: defining, monitoring and acting upon measures of performance
Service innovation: redesigning services and processes for greater impact
Data analytics: using data to solve problems and work smarter

Of these, Data Analytics represents our newest offering; albeit a natural extension of the work done in the previous Performance and Innovation teams. But what is it? We define it as follows:

Using data to generate new insights and provide new actionable information, using these to improve all manner of city services to work smarter - delivering better outcomes with the same level of resources

A simple analytics definition

Put simply: analysis informing action. We are flexible in the tools that we use – from long division to machine learning – but inflexible in wanting to see positive change as a result of our work.

In pursuing this offering we have taken inspiration from cities across the country who have developed Data Analytics programs. These specialist units do not seek to replace data teams within City departments, but rather to augment and empower them on specific projects. Our position within the Mayor’s Office allows us to support emerging priority issues wherever they may be and hone our ability to deliver by bringing insights from across policy areas.

What types of projects do we pursue?

Building upon work done in New Orleans, in which I may have had a small hand, we source projects in Seattle using a framework that seeks to bridge the gap between data science and service innovation. We explore potential projects with reference to the change that we want to see, not the data tool that we will use.

Typology of major project types: A) Finding the needle in a haystack, B) Prioritizing work for impact, C) Early warning tools, D) Better, quicker decisions, E) Optimizing resource allocation, F) Experimenting for what works

A typology of analytics projects

What’s next?

We are working on a number of exciting data-driven projects for the City. Over the coming months we will share examples of our projects and the impact that they will have on improving services for those who live in, work in and visit Seattle. We are excited to share these with you!

Come share your ideas about economic opportunity for young people with us!

August 31, 2018 by Amie Thao

Are you interested in identifying opportunities to create or improve policies, programs, and services for Seattle’s young people?

Mayor Durkan’s administration wants to find ways to connect youth with good jobs by creating a citywide strategy for youth, economic opportunity, and the future of work. We recently completed a nearly three-month research phase.

We are now hosting several public events in mid-September to share the stories we heard and for you to contribute your ideas on ways that the City of Seattle can better serve our young people. These events will be interactive and fun! If you are a young person or have a young person in your life that you care about – we want to hear from you!

Join us to:

Share your career journey
Cultivate a deeper understanding about youth and young adult experiences
Learn about and use human-centered design to move from insights to opportunities

Let’s harness our collective wisdom to facilitate creative breakthroughs that will result in a set of ideas that will make a difference for Seattle’s residents.

No previous design or innovation experience is required. All you need is an optimistic mindset.

These are drop-in events. Plan to spend at least 30 minutes with us. Refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP below. This list will be updated as events are added.

Monday, September 10th
3 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Douglass-Truth Branch Library
2300 E Yesler Way
Seattle, WA 98122
RSVP

Tuesday, September 11th
3 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Youngstown Cultural Arts Center
4408 Delridge Way SW
Seattle, WA 98106
RSVP

Check back on our website for updates.
Read or share our report at bit.ly/youthofseattle
Do you have a question? Email amie.thao@seattle.gov

Researching Youth Economic Opportunity

August 23, 2018 by Amie Thao

Mayor Durkan’s administration wants to find ways to connect youth with good jobs by creating a citywide strategy for youth, economic opportunity, and the future of work.

We have just completed a nearly three-month research phase focused on understanding the opportunities and challenges facing youth and young adults when considering their future – particularly when taken into consideration with the implications of changing employer expectations and forces like automation.

Our deliverable for this research phase of this project is an interactive report of all our findings including qualitative research, quantitative analyses, and supporting secondary research.

To view, go to bit.ly/youthofseattle

Research Process

To scope our project, we created a research plan and carried out literature reviews and landscape analyses. We conducted organizational research by interviewing directors and staff from departments that serve young people.

Then we hit the streets to hear directly from residents.

Staff members and interns volunteered to interview young people at different locations around Seattle. Research activities included hour-long scheduled interviews as well as pop-up photo booths.

The photo booths elicited interest from people passing by, who–in exchange for a short interview–would receive a free photo for professional or personal use. We created several pop-up photo booths to capture people’s stories.

One location was at Seattle Central.

Another location was inside The Armory at Seattle Center.

Between our 1-hour scheduled interviews and our quick intercept-style interviews, we had over 25 hours of tape. We transcribed the the audio and pulled out interesting quotes.

In ten weeks, we were able to talk to over a hundred young people, parents, and employers.

Our interviews produced hundreds of data points and to make sense of it – we externalized it all by putting individual notes on the wall.

We interpreted each data point by asking ourselves, What does this mean? Why does it matter? We organized the notes based on inferred likeness. We started seeing patterns across people.

For example, a theme emerged around the need for young people to have support from caring adults.

Our core project team of two collected, processed, and synthesized the data, but we invited other staff to join us at every step of the process.

This served to create a shared sense of what happened in the research and helped us to make meaning out of data and come up with actionable insights.

Our research generated hundreds of data points and dozens of themes.

Ultimately we ended up with 16 insights to refine. We used flow diagramming and combined insights and used other methods to find new ideas.

We shared our work with our partners as we went.

We facilitated activities to have staff learn human-centered design tools and have the opportunity to contribute their own observations and insights.

Through our research, city staff cultivated a deeper understanding of youth and young adult experiences and how to better support their needs on their journey to careers.

Our work took a human-centered approach to shift the conversation towards designing ideas, policies and initiatives to address our young residents’ strengths and needs.

Next Steps

The insights generated from our research will be used to inform a series of public workshops on the week of September 10^th.

If you are interested in identify opportunities to create or improve policies, programs, and services – join us!

Check back on our website for updates.
Read or share our report at bit.ly/youthofseattle
Send an email to amie.thao@seattle.gov

This work will ultimately contribute to informing Mayor Durkan’s portfolio of youth initiatives. We’d love to hear from you.

Thank you!

Thank you to all our participants and research partners! Special thanks to Seattle Center for hosting a photo booth and to our photographer, Olli Tumelius.

Stay tuned to hear more about our research activities in our next post.

Innovation & Performance Blog