Jason suggests that city employee minions can actually sit across the desk from their director boss and have a conversation (I chuckled when he said that employees told him they were never allowed to share their ideas with the directors one on one in the past administration – wonder where that directive came from?)
He also says the city should use active data to make the city run more efficiently. I thought they did that already? Anytime they want to raise our taxes or fees they just hire a consultant to run those numbers and tell us they need to raise our taxes.
Jason also makes the goofy claim that the mayor is the CEO of our city. They just can’t get over the fact that government and business don’t run the same way. They need to take a gander at the charter, the Mayor is actually a employee manager. Policy is to be set by the legislative branch, the city council, not by the mayor or his Innovation Guru.
All this aside, Jason has some good ideas, data should drive decisions. When Bruce and I put together 4 winning campaigns our strategy was always based on data first. Messaging and fancy graphic design is secondary. We have to know if candidates can win, and the only way you figure that out is by running the numbers and telling those candidates what they have to do to achieve their goals. I have often been surprised that the city doesn’t have a full time data mining and analytical department running the numbers in all departments constantly. Maybe Jason will change that. Also, I have often been baffled we can’t fix our transit problem. You simply put a team on researching other markets as to what they do and what works. This isn’t rocket science kids. We have to admit it will cost money initially, just like a public ambulance service, but if you do it right to start with, you can make it efficient. Jason said it, it’s not going to be his ideas that fix problems but others. The most successful people in the world have never had original ideas, just fragments of other great ideas.
