At 3:34 a.m. on February 27, 2010, Chile was hit with an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, the world’s sixth largest earthquake in recorded history. From its epicenter off the Pelluhue commune coast, the quake and subsequent tsunami damage spanned 600 kilometers from coastal to mountainous regions home to 80 percent of the country’s population.

The disaster killed 562 residents and destroyed an estimated 370,000 homes, causing over $30 billion (US dollars) in widespread devastation and economic loss. Certain small villages and towns closest to the quake’s epicenter and along the coast experienced devastating losses: in Cobquecura and Dichato over 90 percent of residents lost their homes.

Two years later, the country is making impressive progress towards recovery. The government removed all disaster debris in a matter of months; by comparison New Orleans took upwards of three years to complete trash removal after Hurricane Katrina. Of the 80,000 temporary housing units known as mediaguas, 75,000 were built on residents’ actual land. Permanent housing for the homeless is well underway.

The current administration has an ambitious goal of building the remaining permanent homes for all 220,000 families by February 2014. While building homes and infrastructure requires master planning and cannot be done over night, many residents remain frustrated at the pace of reconstruction. And in smaller, rural villages like Perales destroyed by the tsunami, recovery efforts have been largely overlooked, abandoning residents to rebuild their homes and livelihoods on their own.

Community Recovery Immersion Course

Designed to give students a rare, insider’s view of the complex issues surrounding Chile’s recovery efforts, the “Community Recovery: Rebuilding Disaster Damaged Communities in Chile” course was held January 2nd through 14^th, 2012. Created and taught by Doug Ahlers, adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a faculty affiliate of the Ash Center’s Program on Crisis Leadership, the course included a week of field work whereby teams of students lived and worked in Cobquecura, Dichato, and Perales, three quake- and tsunami-affected areas.

Because these towns mirror the damage and devastation felt in other regions throughout Chile, Ahlers hopes the economic recovery strategies and plans created by the students can be adapted around the country as models for community-based recovery.

This course is part of a larger effort of the Kennedy School to provide students immersive experiences to translate the skills they have learned in the classroom into practice. “Experiential learning courses like this one follow a ‘throw you into the deep end of the pool’ philosophy by really immersing our students in the communities they are studying to gain a better understanding of the complexity of the challenges faced,” said Ahlers. “Instead of getting a perfect problem set, they are getting a messy problem set, and from their toolbox of theories and frameworks, they must find ways to apply them in real time under real life pressures.”

Meeting with the families, community groups, foundations, and businesses hard hit by the disaster, students gained an on-the-ground understanding of each community’s day-to-day struggles. During the final week of the course, each team crafted a detailed strategic plan for improving the area’s economic growth in both the short- and long-term using the information they had learned doing field research.

A key component of the Community Recovery course was to help residents of Cobquecura, Dichato, and Perales identify promising public and private grants for individuals along with start-up and existing businesses. As the grant application process can be overwhelming for even the most seasoned professional and many residents were not familiar with the resources available to them, students offered one-on-one assistance with navigating the grant application process and facilitated with application writing so residents could best take advantage of available financial support.

Building Out of Rubble

Ruthzee Louijeune, HLS JD and HKS MPP 2014, and her fellow team members met with many of Dichato’s residents. She explained “the people of Dichato know best what their needs are—they’ve already identified them. Our primary objective was to listen to their ideas and help them strategically translate their vision to best gain access to resources and funds to start and rebuild their livelihoods.”

In one such interview, Louijeune met with 18 women all originally living in a temporary housing camp who, by hand, had built their own greenhouse of wood and plastic sheeting. Currently selling organic fruits and vegetables, the women hoped to become the town’s only flower vendor and take advantage of the built-in market promised by the nearby cemetery as well as the town’s many holiday festivals. Louijeune and her teammates aided them with crafting a business plan and applying for a start-up grant.

Because Cobquecura, a town of 5,500 residents, is relatively isolated—the nearest city is over an hour away—it has not been able to attract construction companies skilled in the adobe trade to aid in rebuilding efforts. José Ríos, MPA 2012, and his fellow HKS teammates proposed alternate building models including starting a local construction company trained in making seismic code-adobe and led by experts at the University of Peru and Harvard Graduate School of Design Lecturer Miho Mazereeuw, an expert in earthquake and tsunami-building techniques.

“This experience was very meaningful to all of us,” said Ríos, “but for me as a native Chilean, the class was very personal. It was an amazing opportunity to return to my country and try to help.”

Learn more in this video prepared for the Ash Center:

Few social ills are more tragic than homelessness, and it’s even worse when families with children are the victims. It is a problem of almost unimaginable complexity, making it easy to conclude that it’s simply intractable. But one program is proving that this scourge can be overcome — and save taxpayers money in the process.

Denver’s Road Home was launched in 2005 with the goal of eliminating homelessness in the city in 10 years. The ambitious program is a joint effort involving the city, the local United Way chapter, businesses, individual volunteers and more than 20 foundations and 250 religious congregations.

By 2009, the program had raised more than $45 million to support its efforts. Programming balances support and compassion with an expectation of self-reliance, and every goal that DRH funds can be quantified and measured.

The DRH strategy is truly comprehensive. Its initiatives include prevention efforts; providing education, employment and training services; developing affordable housing; working with child-support enforcement; and seeking zoning laws that are more flexible when it comes to shelter locations and hours.

To prevent homelessness, DRH intervenes to provide rent and utility assistance to families in danger of being evicted. For those who already are homeless, the program takes a “housing first” approach under which individuals and families are placed in temporary housing and steered into the social services they need.

But the problems faced by the homeless are often far more basic than the need to boost housing development. At one 2009 DRH event that connected the homeless with service providers focused on providing the basic foundations for building a life, 154 people got identification cards and another 175 received their birth certificates. At the same event, 123 participants developed résumés and 69 scheduled interviews. Some were hired on the spot. Training is also provided in skills such as workplace etiquette.

So far, the results are encouraging. By June, 2,662 new housing units — more than four-fifths of the overall goal of 3,193 — will have been developed, while another 5,714 people have been prevented from becoming homeless. As of 2010, 5,253 homeless persons were employed. Other accomplishments include a 92 percent decrease in panhandling in Denver’s downtown business-improvement district and a 22 percent decline in the incarceration of homeless people in the county jail.

Sadly, homelessness is particularly prevalent among those who have served in the military; Denver estimates that up to 20 percent of its chronically homeless are veterans. Thus far, DRH has provided housing and case-management services to nearly 400 vets.

These outcomes are particularly impressive given that they were achieved despite a deep and painful recession that forced even more individuals and families across the nation into homelessness.

The need for coordination, collaboration and case management — the ability to access a disparate array of resources and bring to bear those most likely to help a particular homeless individual or family — runs throughout DRH’s efforts. Together, shelters, service providers and outreach workers identify people who repeatedly use only emergency services and connect them to shelter and other services. A pilot “Vulnerability Index” seeks to identify and provide assistance to those among the chronically homeless who are most at risk due to a medical condition.

Accessing emergency services is far more expensive than getting people into housing and providing them with needed services. A two-year analysis of DRH conducted by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless found a $4,745 savings — an annual total of more than $1.5 million — for each person who was moved into housing and treatment. The study also found dramatic declines in visits to hospitals and detox facilities.

Effectively moving people from dependence to dignity requires a response that is as multifaceted as the problem itself. Many of the 450 U.S. jurisdictions with programs designed to win the battle against homelessness would do well to take a close look at what Denver’s Road Home has accomplished.

Learn more in this video from the Denver’s Road Home website:

In his influential book on transforming communities, “The Power of Social Innovation,” Stephen Goldsmith refers to “discretionary venture capital,” but he does so in a different way than you might think.

Here, the mayor-turned-Harvard professor isn’t referring to pouring money into high-growth startup companies. Rather, he’s talking about an approach for funding innovative ideas.

Consider: In order to start a new business one must take on risk. The more innovative the business, the bigger the risk — and the less likely financing will come from a traditional lender, such as a bank.

As a result, many entrepreneurs end up seeking equity financing — agreeing to give up an ownership stake in their business in exchange for capital.

Such a practice in the private sector could easily translate to the public sector, Goldsmith argues.

To dramatically transform communities, risk is a necessary element. But more often than not, the limitations of public funding force community leaders to compromise, dooming their efforts even before they’ve begun.

Where, one asks, is the capital to fund risk in the public sector in Memphis — and is it finding and funding innovation?

I submit that Memphis needs a true discretionary venture capital fund for purposes of supporting community efforts. This fund, however, should only put money into efforts that meet the same criteria that the private sector uses when it decides to back quality startup businesses.

For example, when a program is proposed to address a community problem, can proponents demonstrate that their approach is likely to yield results? Have they quantified the severity of the problem? Have they explored alternative solutions? Do they have statistics and research to back up their findings? Have they tested their solution in the community first, and built momentum and support? Have they identified who will be served and what value they are bringing to the table? Have they identified key activities and partnerships that will spell success?

The people who propose an initiative must do the legwork, and be expected to answer these questions. The most important thing they should be prepared to provide — the same thing any entrepreneur in the private sector would be expected to provide — is the ability to convey how results-driven the initiative will be and how those results will be tracked.

Then they must sell their proposal just like any entrepreneur pitches a potential investor, showing why they’re uniquely qualified for funding and differentiating themselves from the competition.

It is at this point that the managers of the venture fund will assess and fund only those who show the highest potential for growth.

Just imagine what an impact such a funding mechanism for public-sector dollars — one that opens the door to innovation — could mean locally.

Perhaps groups in Memphis and Shelby County could come together and form a Memphis Civic Venture Capital Fund.

Let such a fund be managed by innovators who are already involved in entrepreneurial activities locally — people already “on the ground,” building businesses and developing communities; people who aren’t politically independent and civic-minded.

Right now, we have too many competing efforts in our community — many worthwhile, many redundant, many complacent, and many hurting our city. It’s time for a way to identify and fund initiatives that actually work.

A more entrepreneurial approach to providing capital to the community might be just what we need.

As state and local governments slowly emerge from the rubble of the recent economic shockwave, many are looking to disburse scarce revenues more effectively to the agencies, non-profit organizations and community groups that address our toughest public problems. Uhran suggests a sophisticated form of cost/benefit analysis developed by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy as a guideline for state governments to follow.

This approach is notable for its use of regularly updated research and meaningful dialogue instead of weak anecdotal evidence and posturing. Washington State has used the model for some time, and makes many decisions by assessing the risks, costs and possible beneficial outcomes of alternative policies.

In The Power of Social Innovation, Stephen Goldsmith writes how funding what works can open space for new and creative ideas. However, determining “what works” is complicated inside the tangled webs of funders, providers, regulators, advocates, professional associations, and individuals and families who comprise the “systems” that have built up around social issues like child welfare or homelessness.

I hope to help make sense of this difficult task by exploring two states and one city that are measuring success across a complex delivery system— the field of child welfare.

Virginia

The Council on Virginia’s Future has assessed the quality of life for all Virginians since 2003. Established by Governor Mark Warner, the council was designed to support the implementation and measure the progress of a roadmap developed by commonwealth leaders. The Council created a report card that measured important issues across the eight regions of Virginia. When the report card flagged a recurring problem in a region, the Council could coordinate efforts by various agencies from multiple jurisdictions.

For child welfare, indicators such as school readiness, 3^rd grade reading levels, and high school graduation/dropout rates, foster care and child neglect are pulled from multiple agencies and brought together in a single report card.

When the Department of Health noticed an increase in infant mortality, for example, the Council re-allocated funds to the 10 districts that accounted for 50% of infant deaths.  Its actions proved to be successful; in 2008-09 Virginia’s infant death rates dropped to among the lowest in the state’s history.

Maryland

Maryland’s Annual Child Welfare Accountability Report emerged from the Child Welfare Accountability Act of 2006, which increased the “legislative oversight” of the Maryland Quality Assurance processes. This Act created a partnership between the Department of Human Resources’ Social Services Administration and the University of Maryland School of Social Work.

The Act triggered reform within the Department’s Quality Assurance processes by requiring the use of data to develop performance indicators. These new indicators fell within four areas: child abuse and neglect; protection of children in out-of-home care; permanency and stability of children in out-of-home care; and the health, mental health, education, and well- being of children in out-of-home care.

Maryland’s Department of Human Resources was then able to analyze how effectively its various sub-agencies were operating. As a result, the state closed wasteful initiatives and agencies. It was also able to assess its staff capacity and effectiveness.

New York City

Created in 2006, New York City Administration for Child Services’ Childstat Initative seeks to improve the accountability and transparency of ACS offices and their staff. Like Virginia, Childstat pulls information from multiple sources and jurisdictions (five boroughs). Data is collected on both social service staff and families under investigation for abuse and neglect.

In addition, senior staff meet weekly to analyze the most recent data from their fourteen field offices and review the borough directors’ reports on monitored cases, repeat cases of maltreatment, and field office statistics related to staffing and day to day operations. Childstat’s model draws heavily form a New York City Police Department innovation called CompStat (read more about this Innovation in American Government Award winner).

Since its creation, Childstat has been improving efficiency and transparency at ACS, while better helping children across the city. According to its annual Child Service Update, a consistent benefit of Childstat is bringing all actors together in one place at one time. This allows for fluid discussion and creates precedents helpful for decision making on other cases.

Some Lessons

In each of these examples, social services agencies have been relatively successful in becoming more efficient, transparent and cost-effective. State or city agencies are developing policy through results and data-driven indicators, and not by weak, anecdotal evidence.  Other states could learn much from Maryland, Virginia and New York City. These models are not flawless, nor would we expect them to be, as public policy and decision making never occurs in a stable or unchanging environment.

When determining which social indicators to include in a report card, there will inevitably be compromises made and certain readers or stakeholders will advocate for missing components. The presence of different stakeholders with multiple perspectives can be a benefit to decision makers and funders. But pulling data from multiple agencies and expecting to find commonalities or even a consistent set of measures is just one of the many challenges of measuring performance across these delivery networks. However, part of the benefit of a scorecard is in changing the culture across a system (or within an agency) by calling attention to the importance of tracking its effectiveness—and perhaps agreeing together on what goals and measures should be.

Further, how data is presented can greatly alter the transparency of a performance-driven model. One value of a scorecard is keeping the public informed—and in turn helping to keep government accountable for its performance. Often this means using general ratings like A, B, C, D or F or color-coded green (for good) and red (for needs improvement). These general evaluations, however, are less helpful for those within organizations looking to improve their policies and operations.  Finding the right balance or level of specificity is important.

Finally, the general public’s voice is often missing in these performance measurement systems. With the Council for Virginia’s Future, few local businesses and even fewer community groups contribute to the Council’s decisions. Likewise in New York City’s Childstat, only the ACS faculty is consulted in how to improve services. These systems can be improved by combining empirical data with feedback from those most affected by these decisions—or involving other “non-experts” in analyzing the data.

These examples above, along with Washington State highlighted by Susan Uhran, show the promise of wide-reaching performance measurement systems in making better use of public funds. Ultimately, the point is to do more to improve the quality of life of citizens—which can make worthwhile the effort needed to coordinate and reconcile multiple data sets, make your presentation both publicly accessible but also internally useful, and to supplement the data with voices from those most affected.

Many innovators and their supporters have an interest in what it takes to make a city (or region) more innovative, or what would it take to launch a community-wide, local innovation agenda. We ourselves have wondered:

• What does a local innovation agenda look like?
• How does it begin?
• Who leads?
• How are efforts implemented?
• How is progress and performance being measured?
• Who is responsible?

In our work to date, the  Project on Social Innovation has been working hands-on with a selection of cities in crafting elements of their local innovation agendas. Through our website and this blog, we also are able to observe, connect with, and share some of the key stories and lessons learned from exciting innovators in the nonprofit, philanthropic and public sectors nationally.

From this work, the Project team has developed the hypothesis that by improving the local infrastructure for reform and innovation—in terms of capacity, culture and policy landscape—communities can achieve significantly more progress toward solving their critical social issues.

By capacity we mean the collective potential of local innovators from across all sectors. Common functions of nonprofit and business incubators are attracting and retaining talented entrepreneurs, developing business acumen and coaching leadership skills. At the city or system-level however, strategies include developing new platforms and pipelines for community engagement; growing the best models available (or importing when they are not); and improving collaboration across sectors. To gauge progress, one might measure the growth of local exceptional providers; the number of city agencies engaged in true partnership with nonprofits or community groups; or the number of citizens participating in volunteer service.

By culture we mean the degree to which the executive office, foundation heads and other civic leaders reward and protect risk taking. Building community will for innovation and change from the bottom-up—for example highlighting poor outcomes that mobilize public indignation and calls for change—is important in developing the right culture. To gauge progress, one might measure the number of local providers gathering client feedback; the number of media hits highlighting innovative models and policies that work; or the number of organizations rethinking their missions or cultivating new leadership.

Under policy landscape we refer especially to the disbursement of existing social service dollars. Improvement strategies include incorporating performance measurement in funding decisions; leveling the playing field for new and smaller providers in accessing grants and contracts; and developing new mechanisms to leverage private funding like a quasi-public social venture fund. One might measure the number of first-time providers accessing social service dollars; the amount of funding available for testing novel programs; or the number of public or private funding agencies making awards based on past performance.

We have found that one of the critical challenges in testing this hypothesis—or measuring “innovation” at the local or regional level—is the current lack of measurement efforts that use tangible indicators to  benchmark and evaluate progress and performance. Without specific measures—or even dedicated efforts at performance measurement—it is difficult to demonstrate convincing evidence of the specific actions that are proving to be the most helpful in improving local landscapes for innovation and reform.

To address these challenges, and further test our hypothesis, the Project on Social Innovation team is launching a new effort in collaboration with Andrea McGrath of Amplified Impact to investigate effective measures and indicators for local innovation agendas.

We plan to conduct secondary and primary research including a literature review; conversations with thought leaders in the field of social entrepreneurship, performance management, networked governance, etc; surveys of local initiatives; and in depth research into a handful of cities or regions with a reputation for prioritizing innovation and entrepreneurship. Our deliverables will include case stories of efforts to track and report on local innovation agendas, with highlights from specific cities and recommendations for those working to encourage and advance social innovation in their communities.

Most important, we aim to develop a set of preliminary performance metrics and indicators in a prototype Innovation Dashboard, or Scorecard, that will demonstrate progress and highlight areas for improvement and investment. We plan to share this tool with our Social Innovators community and more broadly for feedback and refinement.

The overall goal is to collaboratively determine an effective performance measurement framework(s) that will help communities to better understand the critical conditions and key actions to improve local innovation. To that end, we would love your input on our new project–and will be actively soliciting your ideas through Friday, April 13.

Listed below are a few specific questions on which we would be keen for feedback, although general impressions and suggestions are equally welcome:

• Recommendations on people with whom we should speak?
• Recommendations on cities to investigate?
• Feedback on our hypothesis for improving the local landscape for innovation?
• Any thoughts/ideas on measuring innovation?
• Feedback on your interest level in a “dashboard” or scorecard?
• Any interest in participating in this effort?

We also look forward to sharing our results in a few months and getting further feedback. Please use the comments section below or contact us directly at:

Andrea McGrath, Amplified Impact (andrea.e.mcgrath@gmail.com)

Tim Glynn-Burke, Project on Social Innovation (tim_burke@hks.harvard.edu)

The films highlight the work of a diverse group of public and nonprofit organizations that took part in the Center’s November conference, A Better Welcome Home: Transformative Models to Support Veterans and Their Families. This day-long event showcased a number of innovative programs that help veterans and their families adjust to post-military life.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced more than 2.4 million veterans. While historians note that the post-9/11 era is the longest volunteer military effort since the American Revolution, active military represent less than one percent of the general public—numbers that Pew Research Center notes have created a disconnect between veterans and the broader American public.

Fewer than half (44 percent) of surveyed veterans say their readjustment to civilian life has been easy, according to an October Pew Research Center survey of nearly 2,000 veterans. The report’s authors state that 84 percent of surveyed veterans believe the general public does not understand the problems they face as they return and attempt to adjust back to civilian life.

As the country prepared to welcome large numbers of service men and women home from Iraq late last year, November’s conference showcased a variety of innovative approaches to help veterans connect to their communities and leverage their strengths in a tough job market.

The program was separated into the following three topic-specific panels, each featuring a diverse group of public and nonprofit organizations: New Frontiers in Services, Healing through Action, and Creating Community Connections.

“The last decade of wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq has certainly put the challenges faced by our veterans at the forefront of national concern,” said Anthony Saich, director of the Ash Center. “We were pleased to host such an inspiring group of individuals providing notable alternatives to more mainstream models of care. From service dogs to social networking sites, these participants demonstrated that all of us have a responsibility to ensure the homecoming of our veterans is more than just yellow ribbons and flashy parades.”

The Better Welcome Home video library includes conference speakers describing a host of alternative treatments including art therapy, outdoor recreation, one-to-one sessions of individuals listening to veterans’ stories, and veteran-civilian group dialogues that have become integral to overcoming traumatic war experiences and difficult homecomings for many veterans.

Viewers also have access to information about how to participate in a specific presenter’s work and more broadly aid in veterans’ reintegration within their communities. Visit the video library here on the Ash Center’s YouTube channel.

“As the President is bringing back our forces from Iraq, we have the enormous duty of figuring out ways to welcome people home,” said Colonel Macedonia who delivered the conference’s keynote address. Macedonia is a military physician who most recently served as the medical sciences advisor to the former Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen.

Below is one video, featuring Dale Graham of Oklahoma’s Veterans Corner:

A Better Welcome Home was hosted by the Ash Center’s Innovations in Government program, which fosters creative and effective problem solving in government and focuses attention on many of the nation’s most pressing public needs. The Innovations in Government program is comprised of seven individual projects, including the country’s preeminent Innovations in American Government Awards, which is devoted to recognizing and promoting excellence and creativity in the public sector.

Late last year on the Social Innovators Blog I wrote about a pilot project in New York City to bring Participatory Budgeting to the United States. Hailed as a best democratic practice by the World Bank and the United Nations, Participatory Budgeting is a local process through which the members of a community deliberate and decide together how to spend their tax dollars. It was first popularized in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in the late 1980s.

Next week will see another landmark for those following the efforts to bring this important democratic innovation to North America. Residents of the four districts represented by the participating New York City Council members are scheduled to come out and vote for the projects that their peers have been working tirelessly on for the last seven months.

The four participating council members are D45 Jumaane Williams (D); D39 Brad Lander (D); D32, Erich Ulrich (R), and D8 Melissa Mark-Viverito. Each has pledged over $1 million of their capital funds to implement whichever projects the residents of their districts vote upon during the Participatory Budgeting pilot. These are monies that otherwise go to building and repairing infrastructure in their districts.

Why is Participatory Budgeting (PB) an important democratic innovation?

Having followed New York City’s process for the last seven months for my doctoral research, I have seen an inspiring number of residents engage in politics and work directly with their government for the first time. Many are in regular contact with neighbors with whom they have not previously interacted. Citizens of all ages, races and educational backgrounds have been learning from one another.

Through new relationships with their Council Members, residents actually empathize with the challenges that they face when trying to bring change to a highly bureaucratized city.

I have seen people frustrated when they realized that their proposals were not feasible. The concept of democracy becomes real for the first time—and it turns out to be a messy and painstaking process.

One particular question has been repeated over and over: Why does the Speaker of the Majority party determine Council Member’s discretionary funds? Although I am a student of political science and a native New Yorker, I also had no idea that the distribution of funding to Council Members is neither equal nor equitable. Only by participating did we all learn about this lack of oversight and transparency—a not insignificant problem for believers in transparency and accountability.

Participatory Budgeting has the ability to bring awareness to citizens about the workings of their government in profoundly important ways. One outlet for this awareness is engaging citizens in new platforms of participation. Another outlet is encouraging them to hold elected officials accountable and to push for reforms as they see fit.

Many have commented on the decline of American democracy. Whether watching it on TV, reading about it online or experiencing it in person, sometimes this deterioration feels like a “whodunit” mystery: Is it the result of a diminished progressive movement? Is it big business and finance and the lack of government regulation? Or has something more existential been lost: the ability for average citizens to feel like they can be efficacious and transform their local politics?

In my experience, having watched Participatory Budgeting in action over the last seven months, the culprit does not matter.

The truth remains that enough ordinary citizens want to be engaged in their communities. When they are given real responsibility for decision making, they will do whatever it takes—like fight lightening storms–to attend meetings. Citizens will open their hearts and their minds to their neighbors. They will learn to empathize with people like never before.

Let us stop debating why democracy has diminished, and instead look to Participatory Budgeting and other compelling democratic innovations for how we can re-engage American citizens.

Wraparound Maine (WM) is a community based service initiative that grew out of nationally-recognized child welfare reform in Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The state’s dramatic reform efforts were a response to the tragic 2001 death of a 5 year old girl in foster care that died at the hands of a former child welfare worker—later convicted of manslaughter, a story featured on Frontline in 2003.

The result was a broad and deep change in Maine’s approach to out-of-home care, including a new vision for DHHS: to ensure that every child is safe and that he or she grows up in a family connected to a community.

When I joined Wraparound Maine in the summer of 2011, I was fresh from graduating from the Masters in Public Administration program at Harvard Kennedy School though not without experience, having worked in children and family services for over 15 years. Maine’s system-wide changes happened at a time when the field of child and family services, both nationally and regionally, was experiencing fundamental shifts in how services were perceived and delivered.

Like many other states, Maine would be challenging long-held beliefs and practices that shaped an “old-school” culture of caring for kids in a welfare system—namely that families already in the system couldn’t be trusted and were a big part of the problem. This bold shift prompted a broad array of reforms in the Office of Child and Family Services (OCFS). Among them, Wraparound Maine was launched in 2007 as a key initiative to integrate services for youth with complex needs who are involved in multiple agencies and to provide family-centered services with a focus on permanency. Wraparound Maine functions as an alternative to residential treatment for youth ages 5-18 with serious emotional or behavioral disturbance who are in residential care or at high-risk of such placement.

After ground-breaking work with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in ten years time, Maine’s reform efforts including Wraparound Maine cut in half the number of youth in out-of-home care and decreased by 76% the percentage of youth in out-of-home care who were placed in an institutional setting. Yet the Director of Special Projects for OCFS and WM Project Director, Frances Ryan, saw the potential for more progress. She wanted to explore “how to best evaluate Wraparound Maine sites to delineate factors predicting excellence, especially factors that presumably lie just outside the usual program parameters.”

Ultimately, Ryan believed that a modern performance measurement system might allow the Department to institutionalize its best innovations and reform efforts. As a summer fellow, my role was to help with three elements of this ambitious project: planning, implementation and sustainability.

The challenge appeared to be identifying the factors that ignite real change in the complex lives of children and families. To find these factors, measurement needed to come first. Wraparound Maine had been working with an evaluator since its inception, so we started there. But we needed to find a way to move beyond short-lived, retroactive program evaluation information and into data-based decision making processes that could be embedded into the culture of the organization.

We also considered the fact that performance measurement would require comprehensible terms so that a diverse range of stakeholders could use the information for continuous improvement practices. To design the new system, I first conducted an extensive study including review of historical Wraparound Maine documentation and data, a literature review, research of the National Wraparound Initiative, WM site visits, key staff interviews, organizational analysis, and research into various performance measurement methods and tools. We focused on a very helpful guide from the nonprofit research and consulting firm Root Cause titled Building a Performance Measurement System: Using Data to Accelerate Social Impact.

We embarked on Root Cause’s “Performance Measurement Cycle” of measure, report, learn and improve. While this pathway continued to guide us, it was also their 5 Step Process that gave us our day-to-day direction. Those steps are: Planning to Measure, Choosing What to Measure, Determining How to Measure, Preparing to Use Your Data and Putting your Performance Measurement System into Action. To more easily navigate between cycle and step, I created a one-page chart describing the tool that could be easily understood by multi-level staff.

Unexpectedly, the process of designing this system became equally important to delivering the system itself. In particular, the process initiated a cursory understanding of performance measurement for key staff and a necessary change in organizational behavior. It also led to Wraparound Maine’s first program-level dashboard. Perhaps most important, Project Director Frances Ryan fully embraced the approach and grasped all pertinent functions and before the end of my fellowship, she was leading the process. Ryan introduced our work to three different stakeholder groups with an eye toward further refinements to the dashboard and the performance measurement project overall.

Ensuring the project’s sustainability involved in-depth consultations that relied on both my professional expertise and knowledge gained from my HKS experience. Consulting sessions revolved around strategy management and organizational development including a new meeting structure and committee repurposing. We re-assigned staff who might best deliver the new data tools and help facilitate the shift to data-based decision making. We conceptualized how feedback loops could be utilized to continue informing the process. New language was inserted into contracts that aligned with performance measurement as well as into the process for annual site reviews. Considerable effort also went into coordinating with key departments to develop inter-departmental and interagency dashboards.

To ensure political sustainability, we identified the best channels to articulate the impact of Wraparound Maine, both internally and externally. For example, I arranged a meeting with the communication director from another government agency to understand best practices for accessing and messaging to legislators.

Despite our best efforts and Wraparound Maine’s impressive results, we could not guarantee its sustainability. It is frustrating to know that its future is threatened in the current economic and political climate it finds itself in as noted in a recent Governing blog article. Working on this project helped lead me to the larger question for other innovators as well: Which elements of organizational and institutional capacity need to be further developed that will allow effective approaches to transcend the predictable tumult of leadership changes, shifting priorities, and diminishing resources?

Over the past decade, the NYC Department of Education has enacted many reforms. The Department has replaced, for example, 117 large, historically struggling schools with 535 small, high-performing schools. It has also empowered school leaders in their efforts to improve student achievement.

The results of these reforms have been promising, including high school graduation rates that have reached an all-time high of 65%. But we still have more work to do. We also have to better prepare our students to succeed in higher education and 21st century careers.  As President Obama stated during his run for office, “today we are failing too many of our children. We’re sending them out into a 21st century economy by sending them through the doors of 20th century schools.”

Preparing our students to compete successfully in a global, technology-driven economy will require us to rethink how we define learning and the classroom environment:

• Where, when, and how does learning happen?
• What do students need to learn?
• How does a student learn best, and how do we reorganize schools to accommodate the individual needs and strengths of students?

The Innovation Zone (iZone) is a community of NYC public schools exploring these very questions.

Challenging what we have known for over 100 years is of course not easy, especially given the daily trials that schools face, including budget cuts and students often with a great deal of instability at home. But we know that we must transition away from the classic, classroom-centric model where scheduling, curriculum, space and staff are organized around cohorts of 25-30 students. We must instead move toward a model that allows personalized and flexible learning environments that address each student’s unique educational demands.

On behalf of schools in NYC and throughout the country, schools in the Innovation Zone are incubating, evaluating and diffusing transformational new teaching practices and models.  The iZone has shown that a more personalized learning environment can be accomplished through four primary levers.  These levers are not unique to education or New York City; each is relevant to innovators working across the country and in any policy area.

Providing dedicated resources. iZone schools receive guidance from external partners that help schools vision and implement their new school strategies. In addition, schools benefit from financial resources for teacher professional development and new technologies. These resources enable students to learn from the best teachers in the city, no matter where they’re located, as well as experts and peers from around the world. Further, teachers can use real-time data to personalize instruction, providing students with more challenging material when they’re ready, and providing extra support when needed.

Facilitating a community of like-minded innovators. We believe that innovations are not sustained when mandated by administrators, but rather when they are created, executed and refined by school leaders working within and across schools.  Administrators overseeing the iZone identify the emerging best practices in schools, and structure opportunities for these practices to be seen, adopted and adapted by others in search of continual improvement. A leadership council of iZone principals co-designs the vision and implementation of the iZone initiatives, and iZone principals, teachers and parents support one other in integrating promising reform strategies.

Advocating reforms that facilitate innovation. In their process of questioning accepted norms, iZone schools are identifying and responding to policy barriers that often impede innovation.  For example, they have successfully advocated for greater budget flexibility and changes to the “seat time” rule which bases credit accumulation on hours spent in the classroom rather than on what students have learned.  iZone schools are now working collectively to push education technology developers to better meet their needs.   By making both school and system-level changes, iZone schools are lowering the barrier to entry for all schools that desire to innovate by better personalizing learning.

Sharing best practices and lessons learned. iZone schools are innovating on behalf of schools across NYC and the nation, and as part of their participation in the iZone, commit to chronicling and sharing the process  and outcomes of their innovations. By doing so, the iZone will enable other schools and districts to adopt their own innovations with greater evidence and less risk. In addition, the iZone is working to build the capacity, awareness and urgency felt by administrative staff and policy makers to support transformative innovation in schools.

Improvements to the current school model in NYC and throughout the country will, and should, continue. But it is critical that a pioneering group of schools, such as those in the iZone, simultaneously strives for new models that leverage all we know today about how students learn, and the many tools and strategies our teachers and school leaders now have at their disposal.

We hope that the iZone’s strategy of incubation, evaluation and diffusion of student-centered learning models will create schools and entire districts where the iZone-tested strategies are no longer considered innovations, but the new norm.

Public servants, constantly juggling the demands of efficiency, innovation, fairness and responsiveness, usually are focused on ways to manage their traditional resources: government employees, contractors, infrastructure, technology. Too often overlooked is how a public leader can incorporate the most plentiful human resource–the citizen.

If you work in government, you know what it means to be overextended. But when Laurel Creech, local radio personality in Nashville started work on May 1, 2010, as the city’s first chief service officer, she was already deep underwater.

The Cumberland River and its tributaries were beginning a historic flooding, a disaster that ultimately killed 10 people and damaged or destroyed more than 11,000 homes. After the waters receded, property losses were estimated at $2.5 billion — including $120 million in public infrastructure. Nashville’s response to the flooding illustrates the strength of government when it is adaptable — and the strength of community when it is mobilized.

As the floodwaters rose (more than 13 inches of rain fell in 36 hours), Mayor Karl Dean and his staff sprang into action. Laurel Creech’s first days on the job were spent helping the emergency management team and first responders with whatever needed to be done.

One immediate need was coping with the collapse of utilities, which cut off residents of the hardest-hit neighborhoods not only from electricity and other essential services but also from critical information flows. The city quickly assembled five impromptu neighborhood Disaster Information Centers, where emergency management staff could keep residents informed, distribute critical supplies to them and give them access to phones and computers.

But the heart of the city’s response was an unprecedented outpouring of volunteerism. More than 27,000 people would eventually offer up more than 370,000 hours of their time to help Nashvilleans in need, and an important component of the Disaster Information Centers’ success was their effective deployment of almost 1,800 of those volunteers.

As the waters receded, Dean built on the successful Disaster Information Center model by establishing “Rebuild Clinics” in the hardest-hit neighborhoods. Volunteers again played a powerful role, not only providing free architectural, engineering, accounting and counseling services but also clearing tons of debris and helping to clean and restore more than 500 waterlogged homes. To mitigate future flooding, volunteers cleaned miles of waterways, planted trees and built rain gardens.

Civic pride and service is a potent force in all communities, of course, but Nashville has a particularly strong tradition. From 2006 to 2008, one in every four adult residents volunteered. Just eight months prior to the flooding, Dean had joined dozens of mayors who are part of the Cities of Service movement — a commitment to further community engagement and to connect volunteer service in ways that maximize its impact.

Creech is not the first public official to witness the powerful effect of this kind of community spirit. In my nine years as chair of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), I saw the tangible benefits that flow from one citizen helping another. In 2010, for example, CNCS reported that almost 63 million adults volunteered more than eight billion hours — services valued at more than $170 billion.

Our research at CNCS also showed that the benefits of volunteering extend not only to those being served but also to the volunteers themselves. Youth from disadvantaged circumstances who volunteer their own services, for example, demonstrate more positive civic behaviors than those who do not. Volunteer work appears to increase both their prospects for future employment and the number who go on to earn at least an associate’s degree.

Inside government, volunteers are sometimes thought to be a nice but not essential asset that can require more in organization and monitoring than an official with other responsibilities can handle. But as effective leaders who govern by network know, good deeds and community spirit can provide a surge of helping hands and human capital, with minimal added expense and red tape. It can take a lot of work to deploy that resource most effectively, but it’s worth the effort. Whether in a time of crisis or part of the day-to-day activities of a city, citizen engagement definitely produces better and cheaper results.