How data and AI can help local governments solve complex problems

Government leaders are often elected on a platform of addressing issues that cut across functions and departments. However, information silos can block the cross-departmental collaboration necessary to move the needle on those issues.
With the right tools for data integration, advanced analytics, and AI, city and county leaders can implement better-informed strategies to combat homelessness, narcotics use, mental health crises, nuisance properties, and poor neighborhood health.
This paper explores more than a dozen detailed case studies — including metrics, methods, and outcomes — to answer the below questions:
- How do effective leaders accurately develop a common operating picture and plan of attack for a complex problem?
- How can leaders use that common operating picture to drive tactical action?
- What role do technology and data play in solving complex community problems, and where can analytics make the most impact in local government?

Cities and counties across the U.S. face a new era of governance, with leaders confronting complex issues — like homelessness, opioid use, public health crises, and economic immobility — while also dealing with staffing shortages, resource constraints, and antiquated information systems. Mayors and other local government leaders are under growing pressure to make fast, effective change in their communities while also keeping pace with the digital revolution, calling attention to the impacts of information silos, dirty data, and the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

Fortunately, the solutions to those challenges are not mutually exclusive. The right data strategy addresses multiple challenges at once: Integrating systems breaks down silos, cleans dirty data, and organizes information. A unified, high-quality data asset lays a strong foundation for AI tools, which automate routine tasks to ease the burden on stretched staff. Advanced analytical capabilities streamline reporting and improve officials’ ability to target interventions and measure impact.

Our white paper, “Leading With Vision: A Call to Action for City and County Governments,” offers a practical framework for local leaders navigating today’s complex challenges. Drawing from real case studies and expert insights, the paper demonstrates how integrated data and advanced analytics can drive smarter decisions across key issues.

Complexity without clarity

Many municipal government issues boil down to a common problem: fragmentation. Though the most pressing community issues are usually interconnected — like homelessness and narcotics use, for example, or blight properties and economic immobility — the departments tasked with addressing those issues often operate in isolation. Each department gathers its own data, follows its own protocols, and implements its own interventions to apply piece-meal solutions to broad, complex problems — all with limited visibility into what other departments are doing.

Despite a wealth of data at their fingertips, individual government agencies lack the tools, infrastructure, and collaboration necessary to transform their data into functional insights, and in turn, meaningful impact. Our paper explores the consequences of and potential solutions to fragmentation through several examples, including:

Former Rockford, Illinois, Mayor Larry Morrissey’s struggle to combat homelessness in his city
Former Lawrence, Massachusetts, Mayor Daniel Rivera’s initiative to address nuisance properties with a task force
Program manager for the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Innovation Amanda Ford’s experience navigating data fragmentation when providing homeless services
Former assistant deputy commissioner for affordable housing in New York City Carin Clary’s use of third-party consultants to supplement over-burdened staff

Addressing homelessness

Reliable data enables city leaders to both prevent and address homelessness through timely, intentional, targeted interventions — but what’s the roadmap? Our paper shows how timely, comprehensive, well-organized data empowers local governments to more effectively identify individuals at high risk for homelessness, coordinate outreach efforts, and evaluate the outcomes of their interventions. We track the use of high-quality data for prevention strategies, situational awareness, tailored interventions, and accurate assessments as they pertain to homelessness, using the following real-world examples:

Detroit, Michigan: Improving community engagement to better understand the root causes behind homelessness
Concord, California: Improving situational awareness with real-time call data
San Francisco, California: Tracking first responder encounters using an integrated data system
Chicago, Illinois: Streamlining applications for subsidized housing through improved data collection

Mental health crises and narcotics use

Through effective data integration, local governments are responding to crises — from trafficking networks to overdoses — with greater speed, precision, and impact. By unifying their data to build a common operating picture, leaders can more effectively target the root causes behind narcotics use and curtail the distribution of drugs in their cities. We follow several case studies that illustrate how modern local governments are leveraging advanced data integration and analytics to enhance crisis response efforts.

Albuquerque, New Mexico: Identifying traffickers faster by leveraging real-time data in investigations
Cherokee County, Georgia: Disrupting distribution by tracking overdose hotspots
Santa Rosa, California: Improving awareness of Narcan usage, encampments, and overdoses with real-time information
Concord, California: Implementing data-driven strategies for resource allocation and crisis response
Hamilton County, Ohio: Informing targeted interventions by collecting person-level data

Nuisance properties

Vacant and neglected properties exist within a cycle of crime and distrust of local government. City leaders must unite fragmented departments, devise data-driven strategies, and understand the root causes of community distrust to interrupt this cycle. We explore how an integrated data ecosystem can equip local governments to prevent and address nuisance properties in their cities, following several real-world stories:

Lawrence, Massachusetts: Navigating the relationship between interdepartmental coordination and nuisance property interventions
Buffalo, New York: Improving community engagement and blight reporting by unifying government stakeholders

Neighborhood health

To improve public health, cities need more than data — they need the right data in the right context. City leaders can then use their data to identify, evaluate, and track the environmental, housing, and social factors that contribute most to local public health outcomes. By understanding these factors on the neighborhood level, local governments can improve prevention, response, and assessment measures for health crises. Our paper follows examples from the below municipalities to demonstrate the role of data in evaluating and improving neighborhood health:

Chelsea, Massachusetts: Linking data from disparate sources to generate location-based intelligence during the Covid-19 pandemic
Tulsa, Oklahoma: Identifying fire department “super users” through advanced data analytics
Atlanta, Georgia: Assigning neighborhood health scores based on real-time, integrated data

AI for local governments

AI tools offer the ability to improve efficiency and productivity for local governments without requiring additional hires or budget overhauls. Given the high rate of burnout among public sector employees due to staffing shortages and increasing workloads, AI provides a glimmer of hope for public agencies — if those agencies are ready for it. Our white paper walks through the steps city leaders can take to prepare their governments for AI, from cleaning and integrating data to identifying the most high-value use cases. We also illustrate examples of how AI tools already streamline processes for some real-world public agencies.

How data and AI can help local governments solve complex problems | Peregrine

Explore the white paper: A call to action for city and county governments

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