TESTIMONY
Dan Steinberg, Director at the Mayor's Office of Operations, on Advancements in the Mayor's Management Report for Enhanced Transparency and Accountability
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9 min
Dan Steinberg discusses the Mayor's Management Report (MMR) as a tool for transparency and accountability in city operations.
- Steinberg praises the hearing as a demonstration of democratic governance and expresses the importance of the MMR for oversight.
- The testimony outlines the history of the MMR, its evolution from a pilot program to a comprehensive evaluation tool with about 22,100 performance indicators across 46 city agencies.
- Steinberg highlights the creation of the Dynamic Mayor's Management Report (DMMR), a digital platform that allows for real-time monitoring of city performance with user-friendly data visualizations.
- The report's accessibility improvements and the addition of new indicators recommended by the city council are emphasized, including customer-centric indicators to better track city services.
- The efforts to improve the quality of the reports, increase internal systems of results-based accountability, and expand data disaggregation for equity are detailed.
Dan Steinberg
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Thank you.
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Before I start my formal testimony, I just wanna sincerely thank the chair for holding the hearing.
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It's been over a couple of years since the council had an MMR hearing.
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And and we consider the MMR, the quintessential oversight resource.
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And and so the fact that that you're using it to to criticize that the the administration is something that we consider a triumph of democracy.
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And and evidence that we're meeting the highest standards of transparency and accountability.
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So we're very happy to be here.
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And and and we're mostly going to we're gonna answer all of your questions and we'll provide context and explanations as the report does.
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And and with a caveat that there might be some questions that are directed toward agencies and budget hearings, but we want to be as substantive as possible today.
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Let me start my testimony.
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Good afternoon, chair wrestler and members of the committee on government operations.
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My name is Dan Steinberg.
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I'm director of the mayor's office of operations.
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I'm joined today by Lauren Kinonez, the 1st deputy director of the mayor's office of operations who oversees the preparation and publication of both the preliminary matters management report and the matters management report.
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The MMR stands as a pioneering example of radical transparent and accountability since it's origin.
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And my office has taken a number of crucial steps to modernize it and form and substance.
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In the wake of the fiscal crisis of the 19 seventies, the city pledged to more scientifically manage its operations by deploying data.
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Instead of management by crisis, the city would measure agency performance and proactively address issues that arise.
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It began the pilot program by the fire and highways departments and evolved in July 1976 to management by objectives.
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Which for the first time compelled city managers to articulate and quantify their performance goals as a baseline for evaluation.
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In 1977, the MMR and PMMR were codified in the city charter and had been published by annually ever since.
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The PMMR offers an early evaluation of the city performance in the 1st 4 months of the fiscal year.
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Fair to call it a report card.
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While the MMR released in September provides analysis of the full fiscal year, Each report details agency goals and performance in clear terms, allowing stakeholders to closely monitor government performance.
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The MMR and PMR track approximately 22100 performance indicators across 46 city agencies.
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Each agency provides explanations and context for their performance, documenting successes, and accounting for shortfalls.
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No other city government comes close to this level of accountability to its constituents and to itself.
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This administration has aggressively worked to usher the PMMR and the MMR into the 21st century through digital enhancements and new performance indicators.
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Last year, we launched and codified the Dynamic Mayor's Management Report, the DMMR, we'll call it today, a digital interactive platform that allows users to compare indicators across agencies in time with user friendly data visualizations for each indicator.
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Furthermore, the DMMR provides monthly updates for nearly 1200 performance indicators allowing all stakeholders to monitor city performance more closely, more meaningfully in more real time.
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The the real magic that DMMR obviously is is that it makes very easy to find what you're looking for, whether you're a layperson or an expert in government, you don't need to be an expert or a statistician to find what you're looking for and to understand it.
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And that's really what was our goal.
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It's greatly improved the usability of agency performance data, making it easier to explore historical trends, compare indicators, through DataViz and download the data for their own research.
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In January 2023, operations further increased access to the data by publishing expanded performance indicator dataset on the open data portal.
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This dataset is updated monthly and synchronized with updates to the DMMR.
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Previously, the portal only contains static datasets for each individual publication, severely limiting longitudinal analysis.
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More recently, the mayor's office of operations made several accessibility related improvements to the DMMR, including improved keyboard accessibility, the ability to translate the site's content into 8 languages other than English, and an accessibility statement page with publicly feedback.
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We will continue to improve the DMMR with new features such as data stories, that will highlight important trends across agencies showcasing how the public and other stakeholders can leverage the AMMR to conduct their own analysis.
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Following its launch, our office held 2 trainings for the city council staff and another training for stakeholder organizations and how to utilize the platform we'd be happy to host additional trainings for council staff and and to to help you better serve your constituents.
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The mayor's office of operations also works collaboratively with stakeholders inside and outside government.
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We institutionalized the process to sitter, track, and implement new indicator recommendations from the city council for the first time.
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So far, the administration has added about 65 indicators that were recommended by the city council, such as the number of newly constructed schools by the SCA, the number of stop work orders by DOB, the number of litter baskets serviced by sanitation, and the number of active and closed investigations by DOE.
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Oh, and the proportion of New Yorkers who have the man who have management over their diabetes as reported by the health department and many others.
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Under the current administration, Operations has also proactively added customer centric indicators to better track how the city serves its residents.
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There are over 600 indicators in the MMR considered customer centric.
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Nearly a 150 added over the past several cycles.
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Recent additions include the average time it takes for the OKIE to repair a pothole, the proportion of rate complaints addressed by the New York City Housing Authority, and so on.
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The mayor's office of operations continuously meets with our agency partners to reassess the likability, transparency, and accuracy of the indicators within their chapters.
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Our offices led agencies through guided self review process to realign MMR chapters with their missions and services, revising where needed goals, services, and indicators, and updating performance targets, many of which hadn't been updated.
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In a long time.
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The effort has yielded a net of 7 new agency service areas, over 20 new agency goals, and over 200 new MMR indicators.
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The mayor's office of operations also continues steps to improve the quality of the reports.
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This includes recently ensuring consistent and see in the formatting and clarity of indicator names.
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And I'm sorry if this sounds like we're we're deep in the weeds, but this is how the MMR becomes a a democratic through through this sort of nitty gritty incremental progress.
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Clarity vindicator names and establishing a more regular impacted revisiting and program targets.
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Ahead of the fiscal 2024 MMR will be ensuring indicator definitions have more depth and clarity in support of the public center standing of what's being measured.
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1 of the central aims of the MMR's increased transparency on how local government functions that include shown inequities where they exist.
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Operations continues to expand the universe of indicators that that can be disaggregated by relevant geography, such as precinct school districts and community boards, and in partnership with other units, we aim to expand the disaggregation of performance data, geographically and demographic to better understand the inequities and services and outcomes that exist across constituencies in the city and neighborhoods they live in.
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There are over 30 indicators currently labeled as equity indicators indicating that they are disaggregated and reported in the city's annual social indicators and equity report.
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Which you can find online, Equity NYC.
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While the PMMR and MMR are each published annually, and this is kind of the key point, I think, for today, The administration heavily relies upon performance data as a management tool year round and continues to establish internal systems of results based accountability.
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The mayor is a strong proponent of back to performance management, and the mayor's office of operations has a series of monthly meetings with city hall leadership.
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Focused on agency performance issues.
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In recognition of these systems and processes we put in place, New York City was recently awarded a platinum designation by what work cities.
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Making us 1 of 3 cities in the world to achieve this high rate for data driven management practices.
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However, our principal charter mandated deliverable is the MMR and PMMR.
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These reports require a lot of work on attention across all agencies involved.
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My the staff that works on it is here, and they it's a minor miracle that they pull off.
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Twice a year, you see how detailed and and thorough the book is.
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The process to produce often stretches over several months after the close of a reporting period.
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And we oversee detailed schedule with many steps that includes finalizing any changes in shoring timely submission of data, drafting, editing narratives, and, of course, facilitating internal reviews, approvals, and escalation.
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Through the PMMR and and I'll wrap up now.
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Through the PMMR and MMR for nearly 50 years, operations strive for transparency and accountability regarding the performance of New York City agencies.
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We will steward this responsibility and appreciate the partnership with the council to ensure these reports are the most comprehensive insight into the quality and level service delivery.
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We thank you again for calling today's hearing.
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And and look forward to discussing how performance data can be deployed better and how it can be improved, what we're missing, and what we're measuring, and and and what we could do better.
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So thank you very much.