Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley: Transcript

Narrator: CitiStat, accountability Baltimore style. Accountability at its best. Whether it’s trash troubles, water woes, or a situation of signal safety, we take it, we track it, we can tell how long it takes to get the job done, potholes, abandoned cars, dirty lots and alleys.

Mr. Logan: Thank you for calling the Baltimore City One Call Center, this is Mr. Logan speaking. How may I help you?

Mr. Logan: All right. I’ll schedule a bulk trash pick-up for next Friday. Your confirmation number is 857634. Is there anything else I can do for you today?

Mr. Logan: All right. Thank you for calling 311. And just so you know, we’re also available to you on the web at Baltimore City dot gov. Have a nice day.

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: Each call to 311 allows us to track whether or not that agency delivers the service that the citizen is demanding. And CitiStat is a major component on the back end of that process to make sure that we go beyond resolving just a single issue to, instead, improving the way we deliver services every single time -- without exception.

Narrator: How do you really know that happens every time? The answer lies inside City Hall. This is the CitiStat room.

Deputy Mayor Enright: We want to jump into the complaints to start off for the last period. And the last time around we had a huge jump in them that was due mainly to the inclement weather. But there was a pretty big jump this time around as well.

Mr. Kolodziejski: Most of the complaints that came in this time -- and I’m going to assume we’re talking about the trash complaints?

Mr. Kolodziejski: The majority of those complaints were from icy conditions.

Narrator: In this forum, Baltimore City agencies must prove accountability and answer questions on the spot.

Mr. Kolodziejski: You would think that I would be nervous up at the podium, but in reality, I’m not. We work as a team and I’ve got a tremendous amount of team members in front of me as part of the panel. And if I need any members of that team assistance to help me do a better job, they’re right there, and I use that to my advantage.

Ms. Kimberly Flowers: The CitiStat process has been so successful and works so well, that as the Director of Recreation and Parks, I’ve been able to incorporate the CitiStat process internally within my own agency. And that whole process is designed to mirror what happens here every other week.

Unidentified Male: I think it’s looking pretty good. It’s a constant battle, it’s the most heavily used facility.

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: The CitiStat program is moving our local government from a traditional spoils based system of patronage politics to a new results based system of performance politics. Delivering services better, more efficiently and more rapidly to where they are most needed.

Narrator: CitiStat’s four tenets include accurate and timely intelligence shared by all; rapid deployment of resources; effective tactics and strategies; and relentless follow-up and assessment.

At each meeting the agency head speaks from the podium, facing a panel of decision makers which include --

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: I really think we need to get our Congressional people up to snuff on this.

Deputy Mayor Enright: How soon can you start to chart whether this thing is working or not?

Narrator: There are also representatives from information technology, law, labor, finance and human resources. On any given day, agencies such as public works, housing, transportation, police, fire, recreation and parks, and more are put in the hot seat.

Mr. Gallagher: The number of errors that we’re still getting about picking up the trash and picking up the recycling, there’s always a couple of dozen which come back to be crew error or supervisor error, it seems like, week in and week out. Is that just always going to be the case or are we going to -- we going to start -- are there going to be consequences basically for this?

Mr. Kolodziejski: We do not shy from disciplining anybody when we feel it’s totally justified.

Mr. Schlanger: There’s no room for excuses in CitiStat. Let me explain. I’m in charge of Information Technology in the City of Baltimore and computers used to be the excuse for everything. The old excuse, Amy computer didn’t work that’s why I couldn’t do the assignment.

Well, now that we’re all sitting around the table here -- we have human resources, law, labor, technology, finance -- if an issue comes up supporting an agency, the supporting agency has to have the answer. They’re at the table. And if they don’t have the answer, then they’re excused to leave to make a phone call, get the answer and come back. And generally this process has reduced getting information from supporting agencies from weeks to hours.

Unidentified Male: We did have some larger jobs that we were working on, one of them being the hill at JFX and Preston Street --

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: JFX? Oh, yeah, I saw you all up there, slip sliding away in the rain.

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: Are we going to be able to do anything to fence up top so people don’t pull up their pick-up trucks and dump?

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: What’s the fence -- because you all took the fence down, didn’t you?

Unidentified Male: The owner of the property, he wants to put up a gate there, so that nobody can easily come back in there.

Narrator: Behind the scenes are CitiStat analysts. They have to do serious homework before the meeting gets started. They compile stats about the agency and its performance. Once at the meeting, the analysts control the presentation with an interactive and multi-media approach projected on two big screens for all to see.

Deputy Mayor Enright: We’re going to check these numbers, Joe, to see if we got a mix-up here between what we’ve got up on the chart and what you guys were looking at.

Narrator: Issues are mapped, tracked and trends are reviewed. A discussion follows, strategies may be shifted and compromises made. Assignments are given for follow-up.

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: So you all need to package it up with a nice ten minute, not longer, power point.

Narrator: There are also times when panelists may agree with current practices.

Mr. Gallagher: It doesn’t seem like you guys have missed a beat, but -- I mean, you really almost doubled your productivity.

Ms. Flowers: The great thing about the CitiStat process is that all of the Mayor’s top brass -- his cabinet is right there. Anyone who is able to make any kind of executive decision are right there to kind of give you that kind of feedback, to give you advisement.

Deputy Mayor Hitchcock: I would really like to know against what you -- these should be measured.

Deputy Mayor Hitchcock: And the Office of Minority Business Development -- I think you should get with them. And I think you should, you know, talk through the nature of your contracts and establish a goal against which you can be measured.

Deputy Mayor Hitchcock: I’m criticizing you for being well below the Mayor’s goal, but I’m really on the real side complimenting you for the incredible steady progress that you’re making. And I want you to be measured appropriately.

Unidentified Male: Thanks.

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: Teamwork plays an invaluable role in the CitiStat process. Every CitiStat meeting is about cooperation, collaboration, and coordination. Department heads have an opportunity to talk to their counterparts at the top of City government to untangle those sorts of things that keep the department heads from delivering a better service consistently to the people of Baltimore.

Can you get his number to somebody at Office of Neighborhoods?

Unidentified Male: Sure.

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: And follow-up with that.

Narrator: With all of the decision makers involved sitting on one panel, bureaucratic decisions and suggestions that once took weeks now take one hour.

Ms. Watson: It’s all fair. The process really is fair to all of the participants, even though agencies many times don’t have the same issues that have to be addressed, at the end of the day everyone is treated the same, the expectation is the same, the accountability level is the same and at the end of the day, the bottom line is that CitiStat improves the bottom line.

Mr. Schlanger: In the first year of CitiStat operation alone we were able to bring back $13 million to the budget of the City. That was good. And we were just getting warmed up. As, in fact, meetings continued, issues came upon us, we resolved those issues, and after three years of operation, it is estimated that CitiStat has saved the City of Baltimore over $70 million. And let me tell you, as we continue to meet with agencies week after week, new issues come up, we discover new things and, again, there are opportunities for significant cost savings. I would expect that savings line to increase over time. This is a benefit to the City, of course, as well as to our taxpayers.

(Then) Mayor O’Malley: Baltimore’s CitiStat program has garnered positive press nationwide and has won multiple prestigious awards. City officials and mayors from across the country and around the world are coming now to Baltimore to see what we’re doing right.

Narrator: The CitiStat process, it’s not just about what happens inside City Hall. CitiStat benefits the people who live, work and play in Baltimore City.

Remember our caller and service request number.

Mr. Logan: Your confirmation number is 857634.

Narrator: What starts with a call into Baltimore City’s One Call Center, comes full circle and ends with accountability Baltimore style. Accountability at its best.

Transcripts Index

Media Transcripts - Office of the Governor

Origins of StateStat: CitiStat in 2004

TV25