State & Local

Achieving Accountability in South Bend Through Strategic Goals

Data-Smart City Solutions: The City of South Bend’s notable ability to set strategic goals has improved city government in a major way: helping Mayor Pete Buttigieg deliver on critical priorities and driving structural changes in the way the city addresses problems and services. By setting clear goals that drive work throughout the city, and reporting on those goals to residents, Buttigieg has created a high-performing government that is accountable for results. One outstanding example is the publicly-stated strategic goal of addressing 1,000 vacant or abandoned properties in 1,000 days, which started in early 2013. Mayor Buttigieg wanted to tackle the issue of blight, which residents told him was a priority during his campaign, in a visible way that allowed citizens to track the city’s progress.

The city’s commitment to addressing the vacant properties was measurable and available on the city’s website. Even when the process had issues, the public value was clear. Local media picked up on a bug in the progress tracking system that erroneously showed 100 pending properties as already addressed. The city’s Chief Innovation Officer Santiago Garces said this media revelation led to structural changes in the way that the city was tracking its progress with code enforcement. These changes, which included simplifying inspector checklists, requiring inspectors to take pictures of the properties, and assigning a central data analyst to do quality assurance, allowed the city to “improve the speed at which we were addressing the properties and we actually exceeded the goal that we had set,” Garces said.

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