Case Study 2: City Hall as a Site for Innovation

Solutions to municipal problems can be hybrid models of expertise: while residents are able to point out problems and difficulties in specific neighborhoods because that is where they live and those are challenges they must deal with daily, city employees know the legal and bureaucratic process and often have a big picture view of city dynamics.

The City of Philadelphia is a pioneer of sorts when it comes to government departments using open data to help bridge the gap between policy design and its intended outcomes. In city hall, human-centered design is one tool in a broader innovation toolkit which includes behavioral insights, civic engagement, open data, and evidence-based decision-making. This is all part of a strategy to enhance how city government operates and how it interacts with residents to create better policy.

Since 2011 with the launch of OpenDataPhilly,¹ which has been dubbed the “country’s first community open data catalog,” Philadelphia has been part of an early wave of urban innovation, along with city governments in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and London in their efforts to make open data collection and sharing an essential part of public knowledge and open government.²

In 2012, Philadelphia was one of the first cities, after Boston, to launch a Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, an innovation hub to test models of technology and civic engagement.³ Philadelphia was one of the winners of the 2012–2013 Mayors Challenge and received a $1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to implement FastFWD to help entrepreneurs solve big public challenges while also reforming the procurement system. That same year, then-Mayor Michael Nutter signed an executive order making open data the government default.

Open data and digital technology helped spur innovation within city hall. External funding from philanthropy in particular has helped catalyze support for how data and digital technologies can benefit public policy. For example, the William Penn Foundation is one of the early supporters of open data, and the Knight Foundation has supported the redevelopment of the open data catalog in Philadelphia.⁴

The mayor’s policy office, in collaboration with local academics, developed the Philadelphia Behavioral Science Initiative to create low-cost interventions that effectively nudge behaviors that have a positive impact on both residents and government. Key questions include identifying how to increase recycling efforts and reduce litter; increase voter turnout; and nudge city employees to participate in a wellness program, among others.

In February 2017, Mayor Kenney’s administration formally launched GovLabPHL, a multi-agency team led by his policy office focused on further embedding evidence-based and data-driven practices into city programs and services through cross-sector collaboration. The GovLabPHL team partners with city agencies to identify how evidence-based methods can intersect to address common municipal challenges to enhance policymaking, programs, and services. GovLabPHL is focused on the application of behavioral economics, human-centered design, and a trauma-informed approach.

The mayor’s policy office, through GovLabPHL, partnered with the Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation (ODDT) to host a 10-month speaker series in 2017 (funded by former grant dollars from the nonprofit Living Cities and support from the University of the Arts Design for Social Impact Program⁵) on the role human-centered design can play in improving city service delivery, and again partnered in 2018 to host a city form redesign event.

To date, GovLabPHL is managing 12 pilot projects in partnership with city agencies and academics. ODDT collaborates with city departments to publish open data.⁶ To make those data available, ODDT is taking what Data Services Manager Kistine Carolan calls a “maximally useful” approach: recognizing that research can both identify resident needs and inform how to shape data in the most useful way.

According to ODDT, the series convened diverse stakeholders with the goal of cultivating a cross-sector conversation on how design strategy methods were used to “improve affordable housing application processes, to explore connections between opiate use and jail overcrowding, to increase access to services for veterans and their advocates, to reorient government around the needs of its constituents, to craft more accessible government information systems, and to challenge the cycle of poverty by designing holistic, empowering cross-sector financial services.”⁷

The case studies that were presented at the speaker series exemplified not only the successful adoption and continued use of strategic design, but also its sustainability across levels of government. From there, a community of practice—comprised of policymakers, design professionals, academics, community members, public servants, and advocates—was built. Awareness of the use of service design has increased for both city employees and public sector leadership.

This human-centered design approach seeks to find the balance between resident experience and technocratic expertise. Through building in partnership with users, policymakers aim to understand what public sector strategic design looks like in practice, and what role it can play in transforming government services for the better. It looks for learning opportunities between the public and private sectors, and how the former can learn inventiveness from the latter. But, most importantly, in designing around the needs and experiences of users, policymakers must grapple with how complex government agencies can avoid adding additional burden to its employees, and still be able to deliver more dignified, accessible, and equitable services.

Through building in partnership with users, policymakers aim to understand what public sector strategic design looks like… and what role it can play in transforming government services.

Anjali Chainani, director of policy in the mayor’s office, sums up the value of this work: “we’ve learned that the consequences of not approaching the city’s work through a behavioral economics lens is a risk to getting our best return on investment. If we can better connect policy improvements to on-the-ground service delivery processes and tools, then we can be more effective in holistically enhancing the public’s experiences with city services.”⁸

Bridging Experience and Expertise: The PHL Participatory Design Lab

Since it started its Cities Challenge in 2015, the Knight Foundation has looked directly to communities to ask them how to make their cities better.⁹ The 2017 Knight Cities Challenge asked, “what’s your best idea to make cities more successful?”¹⁰ Building off the momentum of leveraging data, technology, and innovation within city hall, the PHL Participatory Design Lab became a 2017 Knight Cities Challenge Winner from a national pool of 4,500 applicants.¹¹ Philadelphia, which received the most funding, was approved for five projects: Up Up & Away: Building a Programming Space for Comics & Beyond; A Dream Deferred: PHL Redlining—Past, Present, Future; Vendor Village in the Park: Vending to Vibrancy; Tabadul: (Re)Presenting and (Ex)Changing Our America; and the Design Lab, which is studied in this paper.

In Philadelphia, participatory design methods have led to cross-agency and cross-sector collaboration that, in turn, has improved government services. The Design Lab is the City of Philadelphia’s effort to improve its service delivery to residents using social science and service design methods. Human-centered design is a design and management process for engaging the users in product design. Instead of the top-down approach to developing and deploying products, human-centered design involves a multi-step process to assess users’ needs, incorporate feedback, and make changes accordingly. ¹²

The Design Lab deployed fellows for two current pilots with city hall to help community members and city departments work collaboratively.¹³ One pilot seeks to improve the intake experience of people interacting with the Office of Homeless Services. The other is a policy experiment with the Department of Revenue’s Owner-Occupied Payment Agreement, which assists homeowners behind on their real estate taxes. The Design Lab is led by Liana Dragoman, service design practice lead and deputy director of the ODDT, and Anjali Chainani, director of policy in the Mayor’s Office of Policy, Legislation, and Intergovernmental Affairs and is comprised of a multi-agency and -disciplinary team of service designers, social scientists, and policymakers.

The Design Lab is a team of six City of Philadelphia employees using research and data to improve how the city interacts with its residents. The team also hires fellows to deploy for specific projects. As its full name suggests, the work done by the Design Lab aims to be participatory. It has worked with city departments, organizations, and residents to improve services.

With the 2017 Knight Cities Challenge award, the team had 12 months to redesign aspects of city services. City agencies applied to do specific pilots with the Design Lab, which ensured that they were energized to apply the social science and service design tools of the Design Lab within their agencies.

The Design Lab has worked with OHS and the Department of Revenue to improve residents’ experiences with those city services, specifically as a way to address the housing crisis in Philadelphia, which is amongst one of the most challenging in the country.¹⁴ Other departments participate and share learning through initiatives like the speakers’ series.

In thinking about how to communicate this work, Dragoman described that they are focused on “trying to make it look collaborative, friendly, and welcoming and looking for ways to communicate in plain language, so partners and observers fully understand the work and don’t confuse it as being solely a technology or traditional visual design project.”

Design Lab Pilot with Office of Homeless Services

Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Service (OHS) offers emergency housing facilities, transitional housing programs, permanent supportive housing, and finance assistance to prevent homelessness.¹⁵ With OHS, the Lab’s goal has been to “employ service design methods to improve the experiences of the public when interacting with the OHS centralized intake system.”¹⁶ The Design Lab conducted interviews with personnel across different parts of the system, including intake staff, and with participants who are accessing or refusing to use intake services in order to identify opportunities for process improvement. OHS includes emergency housing facilities, transitional housing programs, permanent supportive housing, and finance assistance to prevent homelessness.¹⁷

OHS welcomed the opportunity to take a systematic look at how people are experiencing the intake process. Each year, OHS intake sees 20,000 people, diverting 40 percent from emergency housing.¹⁸ Part of the project’s goal is to collaborate with OHS staff, leadership, and participants to define what person-centered service delivery looks like in practice. Devika Menon, the Lab’s service design fellow, looks at experiences from beginning to end and learns from them in order to, she said, “design improvements with those who use, advocate for, and deliver services.”

To do this, the Design Lab team works with both internal and external stakeholders. This includes conducting interviews with people experiencing homelessness at the different intake sites and shadowing and interviewing front-line staff in an effort to better understand how, why, and whether people choose to access emergency housing services. The team also worked to identify pain points both for participants and city staff and to craft strategic and realistic recommendations with city staff and leaders.

OHS staffers noted how thoughtful and sensitive the service design team was in conducting interviews with participants as well as in providing detailed updates. As one OHS staffer described working with the Design Lab, “it’s been a truly collaborative experience from the beginning. They have respect for the team and the people they interact with; they really respect and interact with the people we serve; they understand how vulnerable people feel at those points.”

One of the lab’s findings in its interviews with users of homeless services was the demoralizing effect of not being able to bring individuals’ own food into the intake centers. Because of health and sanitation concerns, the intake centers had families discard their food before entering. OHS is now working to make changes to this system.

Menon was drawn to this project because she felt there was a lot of enthusiasm and that OHS was really welcoming and “open to the design process.” She told us that her approach is that “we, as designers, aren’t coming in to ‘fix a problem.’ We recognize that people are experts in their own lived experience. I see our role as facilitators of the design process to make improvements that aim to make the participant experience better and staff's job easier."

The project with OHS demonstrates a few critical components of the Design Lab approach. First, because agencies volunteer to work directly with the Design Lab, they show a commitment to try new approaches. OHS recognized that it is working with a limited supply of resources and is open, willing, and excited to try a new approach. This is important to ensure that the recommendations from the Design Lab can become fully implemented into agency execution.

Second, the internal process between OHS staff and the Design Lab service design team puts a premium on transparency and, in turn, fosters collaboration and trust. This internal process includes weekly updates and being sensitive about the limited capacity of the agency. A co-creative process helps ensure that the ultimate recommendations that the Design Lab creates with OHS will be realistic and meet the goals and objectives of OHS.

Finally, by engaging with front-line staff and residents, the Design Lab demonstrates a commitment to including people in a service redesign process, showing that change can be driven from community members themselves.

Design Lab Pilot with Department of Revenue

The Department of Revenue’s experiments with behavioral science and human-centric design began in 2012, when it applied for a City Accelerator grant from the nonprofit Living Cities to work on poverty. The goal of the project was to have more people enroll in taxpayer assistance programs. According to former Director of Taxpayer Assistance and Credit Programs Graham O’Neill, this program works with some of the most vulnerable citizens in Philadelphia who are navigating high poverty, literacy challenges, and a large digital divide. With that grant, the department was able to do both formal behavioral science experiments around taxpayer outreach and help share those lessons with other city departments.

In working with the Department of Revenue, the Lab’s focus has been on using social science and service design methods to improve the public’s interactions and experiences with the Owner-Occupied Payment Agreement (OOPA). This program “assists homeowners behind on their Real Estate Taxes and provides protection from enforcement action.”

While the department already gets a lot of feedback—almost a billion calls, 150,000 in-person visits, and one-third of the city website’s traffic in one year, as well as a formal appeals process with the Tax Review Board—those responses do not always answer questions about what approaches are more effective. When they do, it is anecdotal.

By using behavioral science, under the leadership of social scientist fellow Nathaniel Olin, the Design Lab takes what we know about human nature and incorporates that into how policy is made in an attempt to make the user/resident experience more effective, meaningful, and inclusive.

And since the Department of Revenue is also well positioned to implement behavioral science experiments—outcomes are easily quantifiable based on the amount of taxes it collects and assistance it provides—working with the Design Lab was an obvious next step. For example, since the department is legally bound to send most communication through the mail, the Design Lab implemented a simple A/B testing model where different versions of the same message were sent out to randomly generated groups of addresses.

With their different designs, the department tested different tones, messaging, outreach methods, and graphic design to see what made the right impact. They found that a matter-of-fact tone worked best: people did not like a cheery tone, and while a scary tone worked, it made the resident-government relationship more difficult. Using the clearest language about the harshest possible penalties (loss aversion) was more effective than noting which park their tax dollars were benefiting (social norms messaging). Sending mailouts every 30 days saw better rates of payment than with the standard 60–90 days. To test outreach approaches, they tried a variety of different tactics: hand-addressed letters were extremely successful. Different sizes of envelopes, however, had no impact. As for graphic design, anything that looked too glossy or fancy did not go over well: people either thought it was spam or wasteful.

Based on this work, the Design Lab is also now providing behavioral science conferences for other city employees to help them produce better forms. In one event, the schedule includes a panel of speakers, including external experts, and the opportunity to workshop their own forms. The Design Lab has also organized what it calls “Formpalooza,” an event aimed at collecting public feedback about forms, albeit from a limited population sample. The second conference it held allowed participants to bring back results from experiments they tried to continue workshopping the process. Having a network of academics to pair up with city employees has also been crucial to ensure that information is randomized and data are tracked correctly.