Performance & Innovation

Little Rock's Data & Performance Journey

Becoming a What Works City

Little Rock began building our data house in the fall of 2015, when City Manager, Bruce Moore, began the application process to join Bloomberg Philanthropies' What Works Cities initiative. Little Rock was proudly announced as a member city in the spring of 2016 and launched our Open Data portal.

Performance & Innovation Coordinator

The City's Performance & Innovation Coordinator is focused on helping the City deliver efficient and first-rate services and promoting exceptional quality of life for its residents through the use of data driven decisions. The Performance & Innovation Coordinator works to enable City departments and City government as a whole to measure, track, and report on the progress of major goals and initiatives and utilize data and evidence to make policy and program decisions. Performance Management systems and strategies are designed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of services to city residents and services that support departments and operations.
Vision
The City envisions a collaborative and innovative city government working in conjunction with our residents to create and sustain a community where everyone thrives.
Mission
The Performance & Innovation Coordinator partners with city departments to strengthen strategic goals, identify meaningful indicators that can demonstrate service trends and improvements, build capacity to collect and analyze data, and design user-friendly tools to transparently communicate performance metrics and City data internally and to the public.
Performance & Innovation focuses on the following areas:
  • Creating documentation for data standards
  • Reviewing and streamlining performance measures
  • Developing, updating, or refining clear goals, measures, and data collection strategies
  • Data analyses
  • Developing training for building the data literacy of City staff and residents
  • Advancing the City’s Open Data and performance culture
  • Providing framework for data driven decisions
  • Fostering a culture of innovation
  • Leading process improvements
Scope of Work
The Performance & Innovation Coordinator has the following Scope of Work 

Award Winning Sites

In 2017, Little Rock won the Digital Pioneer Award from the State of Arkansas for our Open Data and Citizen Connect sites. 
In 2018, Little Rock received Honorable Mention in the Citizen Service Award category for both our Open Data/Citizen Connect sites and our Mapping Application site.

Employee Training

Over the course of the last few years, the City has been able to hold several internal Data Academies where staff learn how to incorporate data into problem framing and design thinking processes.  We have also held employee trainings on how to use the data site and other tools.  Case Study

Resident Training

Each year in March, Little Rock participates in International Open Data Day by hosting community events to show residents how to use our data tools.  The events include data scavenger hunts and we have partnered with CALS to host them at various branches on multiple days to allow for greater participation. 
The Performance & Innovation Coordinator also gives presentations at community meetings or neighborhood association meetings as well.  

Lights On Little Rock

Working with residents in the Midtown Neighborhood Association, City employees discovered that dark streets were their number one concern.  Looking at the 311 data, outages were not being reported to the City for repair.  To close that gap, City staff worked with residents to create simple maps and the 311 mobile app to canvass neighborhoods and report outages for repair.  The program was a success, so a Community Guide was created and shared with all neighborhoods to replicate in their part of town. 

News, Media and Promotion

Since its creation in 2016, the Performance & Innovation program, which includes open data, performance measurement and innovation in service delivery has been highlighted in local and national news and at various conferences. 

What Works Cities Certification

On July 14, 2021, Little Rock received Silver Certification from What Works Cities.  Read more about it here.