NYC Digital

Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced that Michael Flowers, Director of Analytics the Mayor’s Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, will now serve as the city’s first Chief Analytics Officer. In an interview, Flowers tells TechPresident the role change comes from the growing importance of cross-agency collaboration in our digital city.

In his new role, Michael Flowers will be helping city agencies share data with one another and the public, turning internal metrics into tools that help the city predict trouble spots and prioritize its response to complaints.

Under Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership, New York City has emerged as a world leader in technological innovation. As mentioned in the article:

As with Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot and Chief Information and Innovation Officer Rahul Merchant, Flowers is the first person in city history to hold his title. Sterne’s first job was to get the city’s front-facing web presences and social media communications strategies in order, as well as open channels of communication between city officials and New York’s top tech talent. Merchant, as CIIO, has authority to direct IT strategy across agencies, consolidating and sharing services.

Personal Democracy Plus subscribers can read the full interview here.

Today, the White House recognized Michael Flowers, Director of Analytics at NYC’s Office of Policy and Strategic Planning as one of the 13 Local Innovation Champions of Change for his work and use of data-driven analytics to identify the best ways City government can address multi-faceted problems. 

The City’s Policy and Strategic Planning Analytics team analyzes data from City agencies to help quickly and efficiently allocate government resources to address crime, safety and other challenges.  

“Since day one, we’ve empowered everyone in our Administration to try new and bold approaches to tackling old problems and base solutions on hard data, not ideology or partisan philosophy,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Michael Flowers and his team have exemplified our approach and taken it to new levels of success… I want to congratulate Michael and his entire team.” - Mayor Bloomberg

Read more at http://on.nyc.gov/SjIkI6

Today Mayor Bloomberg kicked off the first day of the City’s summer youth employment and learning programs, which places approximately 31,700 young New Yorkers in internships and work opportunities throughout the City. One of the featured programs, Summer Youth Employment Program, together with NYC Digital, will work with the digital start-up community in New York City to provide summer work experiences for students with technology companies such as Buddy Media, HUGE, Shapeways, Facebook, and others.

The Mayor remarked,

With many young people now struggling to find employment, opportunities for summer jobs are very welcome. These programs help working families, keep kids in school, and help students do better on Regents exams and increases graduation rates. We are grateful to the more than 80 corporate and philanthropic sponsors for their support of our City’s young people this summer.

In order to increase efficiency, the City of New York utilizes predictive data analytics. According to Mayor Bloomberg, “my time in business and government has taught me that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”  As a result, the Mayor’s foresight has helped save both lives and taxpayers’ dollars.  To learn more about how the City analyzes data, read the full article and interview with Michael Flowers from the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning here.

The rise of the New York tech scene continues to make headlines. This article from The Next Web outlines a few of the many coworking spaces and tech startups that have been springing up across the city as well as initiatives by Mayor Bloomberg’s administration to grow the New York tech community.

“While we’re hesitant to endorse any politician, when it comes to NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s support of the tech scene, there isn’t much more he could be doing to champion the city. Just to name a few initiatives, there’s the BigApps NYC competition, NYC’s ambitious open data policy, the move to bring WiFi and cellular reception into our beloved, sticky subway stations, the city’s first green hackathon Reinvent Green, and the Made in NY Digital Map, which helps NY Tech Startups find talent all across the city.”

Photo By: GUCWA Manhattan