preserving the quality of life in Olney, Maryland

Baltimore Mayor O'Malley to Talk About Citistat Program at June Meeting of Montgomery County Civic Federation

Monday, June 14th at 7:45 pm
Third Floor Hearing Room of the County Office Building (COB)
100 Maryland Avenue in Rockville.
Parking is available in the parking garage behind the COB.

from the Montgomery County Civic Federation
For Immediate Release       May 24, 2004
Contact: Wayne Goldstein 301-942-8079

Kensington, MD - Baltimore Mayor Martin J. O'Malley is coming to Montgomery County to talk about his nationally-renowned Citistat program and the equally important 3-1-1 call system. While delegations from cities across North America are beating a path to Baltimore to learn about this increasingly popular way to make government more accountable and effective, Mayor O'Malley has graciously accepted the invitation of the Montgomery County Civic Federation to come to our [Montgomery County Civic Federation] June Delegates Meeting and Awards Ceremony.

This is a unique opportunity for state, county, and municipal public officials and employees, and the people they represent and work for, to hear about how all of us can become part of team working together to identify and solve problems large and small in Montgomery County and the Washington region.

Background Information

Here is some background on how Citistat works in Baltimore, its history, and what other governments and professionals are saying about it: Baltimore Citistat: "CitiStat is an accountability tool based on the CompStat program pioneered in the New York City Police Department by Jack Maple. CompStat, utilizing computer pin mapping and weekly accountability sessions, helped the NYPD dramatically reduce crime and is employed today by several police departments around the world."

Jack Maple - Crimefighter from Richmond Hill; Crime Fighter: How You Can Make Your Community Crime-Free; Jack Maple, With Chris Mitchell
"As a young officer, he constantly got in trouble for making too many arrests (too much paperwork, said the bosses), and as a transit detective he pioneered the fabled decoy squad that drove criminals out of the subways in the 1980s."

Government Technology, April 1999, Jack Maple: Betting on Intelligence. by Raymond Dussault Justice & Technology Editor "Former NYPD map master Jack Maple puts his money where his crime stats are."
"The caves are the New York subways -- once considered as dangerous a place as any in the world. In the 1980s, Maple was an aggressive transit cop who moved up to the rank of transit lieutenant. When he got tired of responding to crime instead of fighting it, he went home and put his unschooled but analytical mind to work. " 'I called them the Charts of the Future. On 55 feet of wall space, I mapped every train station in New York City and every train,' Maple recently explained. 'Then I used crayons to mark every violent crime, robbery and grand larceny that occurred. I mapped the solved vs. the unsolved.' Later, when William Bratton was hired by the Transit Police to cut crime, Maple showed him the charts, and between 1990 and 1992 they cut felonies in the caves by 27 percent and robberies by a third."

Ford Foundation Report, Winter 2001. Crime Control by the Numbers. Compstat yields new lessons for the police-and the replication of a good idea. by David C. Anderson
"…The most aggressive expansion of Compstat may already be in place in Baltimore, where Mayor Martin O'Malley, impressed with police use of the idea, decided to create CitiStat for the whole city. ... Mayor O'Malley is convinced that this same process can be used not only for crime but for every City agency from Public Works to Health," reads a description of CitiStat on Baltimore's Web site. "In short, CitiStat is how the Mayor runs the city."

Worcester, MA Report on NYC Compstat and Baltimore Citistat - 2/18/03: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom called it "Citistat + 311" in his winning campaign last year: "HOW CITISTAT WILL TRANSFORM SAN FRANCISCO. San Franciscans deserve a city government that is effective, cost-efficient, and responsive to their needs. A government that gets the job done right, on time, and within budget." Additional information is here.

Austin Officials came calling, looking for help in a hurry:  "City Officials Announce Trip to Baltimore As Part of Major Initiative to Reform City Services; Wednesday, October 8, 2003; With Austin government service the subject of recent critical reports by the City Auditor's Office and a national consulting firm, Austin City Council Member Brewster McCracken, City of Austin Acting Chief Information Officer Pete Collins and McCracken Policy Director Karen Gross will travel to Baltimore next week as part of a major initiative to reform and improve city services. McCracken, Collins and Gross will examine Baltimore's revolutionary technology-based CitiStat management system.

"Other cities are already following Baltimore's lead; McCracken, Collins and Gross will hardly be the first major American city delegation to travel to Baltimore for advice on improving government services. Over 50 North American cities-including Chicago, Columbus, Denver, Durham, Edmonton, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and St. Louis-have sent officials to Baltimore to meet with Baltimore CitiStat officials. A number of these cities have subsequently implemented CitiStat to improve city services and save tax dollars.

"According to The Boston Globe, CitiStat 'gives the people who run Baltimore astonishing knowledge of their city. There is an immediacy to the program that no monthly or quarterly review in other cities can match. This kind of information will allow elected officials to make budgetary decisions based on statistical evidence as opposed to anecdotal evidence,' San Francisco Mayor's spokesman John Shanley said."

To learn more about the 3-1-1 system, go to:

• http://www.pscommllc.com/wwd_311.html
• http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/story/0%2C10801%2C77389%2C00.html
• http://www.motorola.com/cgiss/csr/csr_overview.shtml

The Guardian, Wednesday, March 24, 2004 wrote this: "It's America, where you stand up to be accountable. How can public bodies improve their services? Perri 6 considers performance management US-style, which 'puts a face on the problem.'"
"When Martin O'Malley was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999, he was a man in a hurry. Frustrated by what he regarded as the poor quality of public services, and suspicious of the calibre and commitment of service managers, he introduced CitiStat - a system of decision-making for improved performance management and resource allocation."

Boston College:  "The Honorable Martin J. O'Malley, Mayor of Baltimore Maryland, visited Ireland and Northern Ireland at the invitation of the Center for Irish Programs in August, 2001. Mayor O'Malley's visit was in support of the Irish Instiute's followup programming and included presentations to local government officials in Galway, Derry, Belfast and Dublin of his innovative local government, public sector reform 'CITISTAT.' "

Bringing CitiStat to Massachusetts: A Workshop for Public Officials  "On September 16, 2003, the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the National Center for Digital Goverment convened a group of interested public officials from state and local departments to hear about the CitiStat data-driven management tool for government agencies. Modeled after CompStat, the program that New York City developed to attack crime with daily tracking of criminal behavior and neighborhood conditions, CitiStat enables Mayor Martin O'Malley and department heads to look at tangible data about government performance in Baltimore. Deputy Mayor of Baltimore, Michael Enright and Director of the CitiStat program, Matthew Gallagher presented the CitiStat program to 100 state and local officials."