Learning from City-Level Chief Data Officers

Insights for National Statistics Offices on Advancing Data Stewardship

By Alyson Marks

Source: Photo by ConciseSoftware

Cities have been leading on innovation to improve civic outcomes for decades – with the origins of the “smart cities” revolution first taking shape in 1970s Los Angeles. Since then, the “smart city agenda” has solidified its place among key global priorities and further formalized its practices with the establishment of several multi-stakeholder collaboratives, including the G20 Global Smart City Alliance and the C40 Cities Alliance to develop common standards and facilitate shared learning experiences to address common challenges. Yet, the growth of “smart cities” along with the surge in new technologies and a global pandemic, have contributed to the unprecedented data collection, production, and analysis demands facing national and local governments today. In response, a number of cities around the world have recently instituted a Chief Data Officer (CDO) position to improve their data stewardship for better service delivery and policymaking. These individuals have proven instrumental in expanding and improving the use and stewardship of data in government, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To better understand how the experiences of CDOs at the city and sub-national levels can help to inform their national counterparts, SDSN TReNDS conducted initial research on this issue as part of the United Nations Statistics Commission’s (UNSC) Working Group on Data Stewardship. The research included a literature review, a case study on León, Mexico written by TReNDS’ expert member, Eduardo Sojo, as well as several interviews with city-level CDOs. Emerging findings reveal a number of key insights for National Statistics Offices (NSOs), including:

·      There is no one ‘mold’ to data stewardship, but an enabling environment is critical.

While all CDOs we interviewed held different titles, were situated within different parts of city government, had diverse mandates, priorities, and reporting structures, each underscored the importance of having an enabling environment, including state and national laws regarding data privacy and access to information. Examples from the literature include Mayor Garcetti of the City of Los Angeles helping to champion innovative data sources to drive decision-making across government, as well Reykjavík, Iceland’s CDO highlighting the importance of buy-in from the city council for empowering their duties.

·      NSOs need to be able to influence across organizational boundaries, and they can break down data silos by demonstrating value to policymakers.

Successful CDOs not only require specific technical capabilities (ranging from knowledge of cloud computing, data science analytics, and data management, to familiarity with data collection and production processes), but communications and interpersonal skills have also proven equally important. For instance, our research detailed how many of the CDOs faced resistance to improved data interoperability across government, and being able to influence across organizational boundaries was key for success. CDOs interviewed reported making connections both within and outside of government to realize new opportunities, including leading collaborations with actors from the private sector, industry, and academia, as well as international organizations, such as the UN, and local civil society.

Furthermore, the ability to demonstrate value to policymakers has also helped to break down these silos. To do so, one CDO interviewed held a series of meetings with government colleagues to help them appreciate the wider benefits of data sharing and open datasets. Similarly, in Reykjavík, the CDO demonstrates value by establishing an open dialogue with city policymakers, informing them of data issues, while also developing a better understanding of their perspectives. Additionally, another CDO interviewed encourages data sharing by demonstrating “clear value” that comes from pulling together data from different sources, providing analysis, and ideas on data visualizations and dissemination.

·      NSOs should avoid prioritizing data compliance when acting as data stewards and adopt a whole-of-government approach to data stewardship.

Our findings suggest that too much emphasis on the NSO as a purveyor of data quality and their data compliance function is much less likely to increase their standing from senior officials in whole-of-government efforts to leverage data. Rather, NSOs should focus first on developing data-based solutions to attack problems in new ways, then work to foster better cross-governmental data sharing to support a wider range of evidence-based decisions and improved service delivery. Many of the CDOs we interviewed indicated that the array of data available at the city-level (especially from citizen groups and sensors) is often much greater than what many NSOs have yet to incorporate into their products. As national level governments develop similar data holdings, at first it will likely be a challenge for NSOs to provide stewardship services. However, over time, NSOs will find ways to apply their curation and production knowledge to these forms of data. Gaining familiarity of these new forms of data also provide NSOs the knock-on benefit of incorporating them into their own products and services.

·      There is a clear need for an entity to actively pull together the NSO and city CDO communities to enhance capacity development and knowledge-sharing.

While our findings indicate that there is great potential for data stewardship activities at the city and national government levels to be mutually reinforcing, integrating data stewardship efforts across levels of government continue to remain the exception. The case of León, Mexico highlights this point. For instance, in Mexico’s robust National Statistical System, there are many opportunities to reinforce support and capacity-building to local governments. However, there is a lack of concrete guidance on how the National System of Statistical and Geographical Information (SNIEG) should interact with local statistical systems, as well as on knowledge-sharing modalities between the Mexican National Statistical Office (INEGI) and CDOs at state or municipal levels. Moreover, establishing a process of sustained knowledge sharing between CDOs in states and municipalities and INEGI could help to foster a greater understanding of the use of data to inform better decision-making at the local-level and improve the production and data dissemination processes so that it is ‘fit for use.’

Unfortunately, the interviews and literature review did not find any concrete examples of knowledge exchange between the city CDO and NSO communities around the world, and many of the interviewees felt they would benefit from such an exchange.

Where This Leads Us…

As NSOs and city-level CDOs responded to help their governments address the pandemic, it enabled them to demonstrate clear value of data across sectors. At the same time, the increased demand for data has proved challenging. Responding to the pandemic has left national and city budgets strained, and both NSOs and city-level CDOs have indicated that they will need to do more with less in the coming years.

The similarities of the pandemic’s impact on data providers at city and national government levels provides an important touch point for knowledge sharing between the NSO and CDO communities. Furthermore, mutual learning on post-pandemic data stewardship offers great potential for both city-level CDOs and NSOs to advance their data stewardship efforts.

We are hopeful that this research will be discussed further among the statistical community and endorsed by the UNSC in the coming weeks. To read the UNSC background document on data stewardship, click here. To read the case study on León, Mexico, click here.