QUESTION
What is the structure and staffing of the Mayor's Office of Operations, including details on the performance and project management teams?
0:16:34
·
6 min
Dan Steinberg provides an overview of the Mayor's Office of Operations, detailing the roles and intersections of the performance management, project management, and the data management and analytics teams, along with staffing numbers.
- The performance management team is responsible for data collection, analysis, and indicator development, supporting projects and producing mandated reports.
- The project management team functions as an internal management consulting shop, driving the mayor's agenda and focusing on policy and program implementation, strategic planning, and emergency response roles.
- A new data management and analytics team was created post-pandemic to handle sophisticated statistical analyses and geospatial mapping, contributing to product development and data engineering.
- The office comprises about 60 people overall, with the project management and performance management teams having similar sizes. Other functions include rulemaking, inspection, insurance program administration, and customer service projects.
Lincoln Restler
0:16:34
The charter places significant responsibility on ops to ensure effective delivery of services, maintaining the MMR and PMMR, making recommendations on the city's operations more broadly.
0:16:46
Could you just help us provide an overview of the structure of the office of ops, the number of employees on each team?
0:16:52
And in particular, could you describe the role of the performance management team and the project management team and how many members are on each team and kinda how do those teams intersect?
Dan Steinberg
0:17:04
Sure.
0:17:05
The the the real kind of pillars of operations It does start with our performance management team to some extent, which is the the team that produces the MMR.
0:17:16
They're in charge of data collection or reporting, indicator development, and analysis.
0:17:21
They support projects when when indicators are required to monitor.
0:17:26
The the efficacy of an intervention.
0:17:29
And they also produce at least 5 mandated local law report at different cadences annually, bi annually, monthly.
0:17:37
So they they have a lot of responsibility.
0:17:40
But really, you know, what's important to know about them is the way they're structured and and how they've been professionalized.
0:17:47
They they each analyst on support portfolio of agencies and corresponds frequently with with their counterparts at at agencies, and it's their job to really be data detectives to to understand the data we're looking at and why it's moving the way it is.
0:18:02
They're put in a hot seat very often.
0:18:05
They they often brief deputy errors directly, and the deputy mayors expect them to know the answers to questions that around what's pushing the numbers in a in a given direction.
0:18:17
So we're very proud of that team and its growth.
0:18:21
The project management team, which you're an alumni of, I believe, senior policy adviser, and and we're well aware of your accomplishments at the office and and proud of of the work you did in IDNYC.
Lincoln Restler
0:18:34
That's under oath.
Dan Steinberg
0:18:35
I know.
Lincoln Restler
0:18:35
Yeah.
0:18:36
I
Dan Steinberg
0:18:36
know.
0:18:37
I considered that.
0:18:39
Maybe not enough.
0:18:41
So the project management team acts as an internal management consulting shop for City Hall.
0:18:49
And really is is charged for driving the mayor's overall agenda, but also to drive efficiency in government.
0:18:55
The PM team supports.
0:18:58
Obviously, they bring structure and process to anything that they're working on.
0:19:03
Policy and program implementation, They launched new initiatives, often incubating programs at ops like IDNYC before it it's moved to the agency.
0:19:13
But they also work on program design and launch strategic planning.
0:19:17
They've been instrumental in many of the plans that have come out of city hall and organizational improvement, and and they often support emergency response in in ad hoc ways.
0:19:31
They're they're one of the more nimble and talented teams in the city hall orbit, and and they're sort of used very flexibly.
0:19:39
A new brand so that's the 2 teams.
0:19:42
A new branch that we created is data management and analytics.
0:19:45
This to some extent came out of the pandemic where where operations played a a very central role in coordinating data across government.
0:19:53
So everything from the epidemiological data to the outreach data, you know, that that was key toward toward reaching the public.
0:20:04
And so what we did was we built a a more formal yet very small data management analytics unit.
0:20:12
They specialize in in in more sophisticated, kind of statistical techniques.
0:20:17
So if there's something that needs more probing from the performance data or elsewhere, that's that's the team that will sort of apply more sophisticated methods to the analysis.
0:20:26
But they also have geospatial skills in terms of GIS mapping.
0:20:30
And and that's one of the big contributions they make also to the city hall orbit.
0:20:35
And to some extent mostly for internal purposes, they they do product development, and data engineering.
0:20:39
So when we need to build a database or we need an internal dashboard, They do a lot of the back end work that's required and a lot of the automation.
0:20:49
1 of their public facing products that that recently was vastly expanded and it's about to go through another expansion as the capital projects dashboard.
0:20:58
When when you accounts member were at opposite had about 400 projects in it.
0:21:03
Now it's got about 10,000 projects in it, and and that was accomplished through back end.
0:21:10
Magic in the sense that it's combining data from Pfizer and the financial management system with project scheduled data from over 20 different agencies from their project management system.
0:21:22
So we're very proud of that work.
0:21:24
And I don't think it'll ever get the credit deserves, although it will be the subject of a lot of scrutiny, which is, you know, in the spirit of today's hearing and our mission.
0:21:34
Those are sort of the core teams, but we do have other functions.
0:21:37
I should have said we have about sixty people overall in the office.
0:21:41
The project management team was actually down to 9.
0:21:44
Right now, I believe it was more robust when you were there.
0:21:48
We're working on that.
0:21:49
The performance management team is similar size.
0:21:53
But we get to 60 through all these other functions that I'll just quickly mention.
0:21:58
We do rulemaking where we administer the the Administrative Procedure Act, Capa, that and facilitate key elements of rulemaking process like play language review.
0:22:08
You may remember we have a a inspection team.
0:22:11
Called Scout that survey city streets in search of commonly reported quality of life issues.
0:22:16
They actually have a very important project right now.
0:22:21
Focused on privately owned public spaces.
0:22:24
We administer the citywide central insurance program.
0:22:28
That provides nonprofit vendors that has human service contracts with the required insurance coverages.
0:22:35
So another not glamorous, but really crucial function.
0:22:39
And we also admitted to the HUD consolidated plan, which is a really massive compliance document that required to get federal money from the HUD program and and from CB GB grants.
0:22:53
And we have some roles in customer service.
0:22:57
You may remember, we we still run the language access secret shopper program.
0:23:04
And and we run the customer service awards, which is actually we're very proud of.
0:23:11
And and other projects.
0:23:13
So that that's sort of a sweeping overview of how we're structured.