On Thursday, November 20, Mayor Marty Walsh invited startup founders, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to City Hall for a lunchtime roundtable discussion about keeping the city’s economy stimulated and moving forward. But before he engaged with them in open dialogue, he gave us a glimpse into the piece of technology that’s the catalyst for what allows city government to innovate. For Boston, innovation starts at the very top of City Hall and trickles down.
“If we’re looking at how technology is changing in your business, in the business in the room we’re about to go into,” said Mayor Walsh. “it has to change in our business as well and really bring in different styles to it.”
The mayor was explaining the digital dashboard he keeps hung on the wall across from his desk, which he told us hasn’t been used since notorious Boston Mayor James Michael Curley sat behind it. At any given moment, he could simply up his gaze and instantly get a feel for the pulse of the city.
“Eventually this will go to different cabinet heads and chiefs, the same type of information,” he said. “Dan [Koh, chief of staff] has it in his office too.”
Though the dashboard isn’t particularly new, it’s gone through multiple iterations since he assumed office less than a year ago. Compared to the image above and to the right, you can see how long a way the technology has truly come by juxtaposing it against this image featured in the Boston Globe back in March.
The dashboard is separated into quadrants each of which is constantly updating and displaying various metrics. The top left is generally a television news channel, CNN on Thursday to keep up with any developments pertaining to President Obama’s immigration speech.
The top right show’s incoming calls to the Mayor’s 24 Hour Constituent Hotline in real-time. At lunch time the call volume usually hovers in the neighborhood of 500 but on this particular day, it was 335 at the time we saw it. It also lists the top 10 municipal requests made through the hotline.
The bottom left quadrant shows various human services data – trash pickups, school attendance, etc.
At this point the 24-hour hotline and social media, shown on the bottom right to give him a sense of what’s trending, are the only aspects that update in real-time, though “eventually it’s all going to be real-time numbers,” said the mayor. “We’re still building it out.”
Much of the dashboard the mayor and Koh are using is currently in beta. The human services quadrant, though, is shown in the alpha stage.
“We realized that all this data existed but there was no real central place to display it and rotate it,” said Koh. “We’re testing a beta version that includes the mayor’s vision statements for each of his nine priorities.”
By providing a sense of Mayor Walsh’s agenda, the City of Boston is able to continue his theme of governmental transparency and better engage with its residents.
What started out as one desktop monitor quickly became two. Eventually, it turned into the massive wall-mounted display currently suspended.
The message Mayor Walsh is trying to send Boston’s business leaders and startup community is very clear: Boston’s economy must have a strong technological component and it starts and ends in the mayor’s office.
“We’re working on a system for how we tell a story and improve service on this wall,” said Mayor Walsh.
