Bloomberg Administration Measures and Publishes It's Effectiveness Governing NYC - Why Not RIOC?

You Tube Ed Koch clay animation video

Former Mayor Ed Koch loved to ask New Yorkers "How'm I doing"? Now Mayor Mike Bloomberg has instituted an online municipal performance tool that will allow New Yorkers to evaluate how well the New York City government is operating and answers Mayor Koch's question of How'm I doing.

Newsday reports that:

New Yorkers now can go online to find out how city government is serving them, like how fast the fire department responds in emergencies, whether rodent complaints are up and how the city's crime rate is doing.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that the database, which will be updated monthly, is online at the city's Web site, nyc.gov. It is known as the Citywide Performance Reporting, or CPR, tool.

"This is the first opening step in empowering the people who live in this city and giving, what in past years I think has always been viewed as the government's data, but I think it is the public's data," Bloomberg said.

Government Technology provides more detail on the New York Citywide Performance Reporting tool:

CPR uses a uniform, standardized reporting format across all agencies and all data types, and provides a single point of access for all users. Most notably, it aggregates data across agency into "citywide themes," which represent groups of related services such as infrastructure, education, or public safety. The system also provides easy downloading to help users analyze and present system data. It will increase accountability by making it easier to monitor agency performance for the most important "outcome" measures - those directly reflecting how citizens' lives are affected by government. CPR includes 500 hundred "critical" outcome measures. More than 200 of these critical measures are being reported for the first time.

Here is the web site for New York Citywide Performance Reporting:

Will Roosevelt Island be part of this reporting system? I have been told that Roosevelt Islanders who call 311 operators to report problems encountered on Roosevelt Island are advised that either the operator does not have Roosevelt Island in their data base or that Roosevelt Island is not part of New York City so the operator cannot help the caller. I hope this gets rectified now.

Can RIOC institute a similar system of operational metrics to evaluate it's effectiveness in running Roosevelt Island and make this information publicly available? To date, it has been difficult to answer the question how well, or not, RIOC is doing it's job? The difficulty in answering this question is that there is no objective standard or measuring device to accurately and fairly evaluate RIOC's effectiveness other than individual anecdotal evidence, at least that is publicly available. For example is there statistical information collected and analyzed regarding:

1. how often do the Red Buses bunch up during their Main Street route and one bus is packed with passengers and the next bus right behind it empty?
2. how often does the Red Bus achieve the goal of meeting the incoming tram or an unsafe condition arises because of overcrowding on the bus?
3. Are the street cleaned and garbage picked up regularly?
4. Are streetlights lit at night and replaced on a timely basis when they go out?
5. Is the Tram service sufficient to meet the needs of the public?
6. How is Public Safety performance measured?
7. Is Rodent infestation being controlled?
   

This is just a small example of the kind of information that, if properly measured and analyzed, would not only be helpful in evaluating RIOC's performance but would also help RIOC do a better job!

This is one of my favorite Ed Koch moments. Be warned there is an expletive that is not deleted at the end.

Quintessential Ed Koch moment from You Tube