Give Me One Step, Give Me One Step, Mayor

The first set of data has hit the new RichmondWorks website, and I am actually holding my breath in the hopes that posting genuine statistics about city services could spark a performance revolution. Because I'm a patently hopeful guy. As I've noted previously, RichmondWorks might drive better performance from our government and certainly adds a much-needed layer of transparency to the system:

After reading up on CitiStat and how it has been used in Baltimore (and elsewhere), all I can say is full steam ahead. While there has been a lot of housecleaning at City Hall in the two years since Wilder moved in, this is one of the first instances (outside of his bickering with the School Board) that I've seen an aggressive move toward shifting accountability deep within the city government -- and giving the public a transparent way to see what their tax dollars are doing.

RichmondWorks launched today with data on calls received by each city department (no surprise that public utilities tops the bill); the percentage of calls answered within two minutes (48% with a goal of 96%); total number of citizen requests; total number of pothole requests; a GIS map of open requests for pothole repairs; and average tons of trash collected. It's not the sexiest data out there, but it's a start.