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AUTHORIZATION TO ENTER INTO A MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE CITY OF GLENDALE AND HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE LAB AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY FOR THE STUDY OF RESULTS DRIVEN CONTRACTING STRATEGIES
Staff Contact: Jean Moreno, Executive Officer Strategic Initiatives and Special Projects
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Purpose and Recommended Action
Recommendation
This is a request for City Council to authorize the City Manager to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab at Harvard University (GPL) for the study of results driven contracting strategies associated with the city’s engagement in the Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities program specifically focused on contracts for after school recreation center operators and open contracting data.
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Background
What Works Cities is a Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative that provides free technical assistance in focused content areas aimed at helping cities leverage data and evidence in the decision-making process. The What Works Cities initiative is specifically seeking to partner with 100 cities from around the nation with populations between 100,000 up to 1,000,000 before 2018. The What Works Cities program provides access to a network of technical experts and communities that have experienced improvements in specific content areas with the goal of scaling and duplicating those improvements across the nation.
Glendale submitted an application expressing interest in participating in the program and subsequently the City Council and executive team were invited to participate in a site visit and workshop presented by What Works Cities. This workshop provided the What Works Cities evaluation team with an opportunity to learn about the issues facing the community and to talk in detail about the What Works Cities program and expectations. Glendale was subsequently selected to continue moving forward in two content areas - Open Data and Results-Driven Contracting.
Analysis
On January 13, 2017, the city convened an initial meeting made up of representatives from the City Manager’s Office, City Attorney’s Office, Finance, Public Works, Public Facilities, Recreation, & Special Events, and Technology & Innovation with the GPL team to begin the development of a potential scope of work for this project. This meeting resulted in one-on-one meetings with several departments to discuss, in detail, upcoming procurements and procurement challenges. Based on those discussions and analysis, the GPL team made a recommendation to move forward with two scopes of work for the results-driven contracting project because they have the potential to generate lessons that can be disseminated to other governments. This work will be conducted by a cross-departmental team of city staff in conjunction with GPL.
After-School Recreation Center Operators:
This area was selected as an opportunity because contracts for three out of five centers will be expiring in June 2018 requiring a new RFP for the provision of those services. The operation of the after-school programs by non-profits at these and other facilities began as a pilot program in 2012 after budget reductions; and ultimately led the city to seek on-going contracts with operators for the provision of these services. This approach has resulted in several strong partnerships with non-profits in the community, but there has also been turnover in operators as well.
The focus of this project will be to implement improvements in the RFP process for these contracts with an emphasis on gaining an understanding of the outcomes for youth and operators at these facilities; and, applying metrics to measure performance. The execution of this project will include site visits, best practice research, and stakeholder engagement to inform the development of a results/performance based RFP. The project also provides an opportunity to align the centers’ services with a national standard or program, the potential to examine the feasibility of a single operator for multiple centers, and the opportunity to determine if contract term encourages or inhibits additional community investment by non-profit operators. The contracts for the following centers will be included in this scope of work:
• Glendale Community Center - 5401 W. Ocotillo Road, Glendale, AZ 85301
• Rose Lane Recreation Center - 5003 W. Marlette Avenue, Glendale, AZ 85303
• O’Neil Recreation Center - 6448 W. Missouri Avenue, Glendale, AZ 85301
The contract for the Community Center North location at 14705 N. 59th Avenue, Glendale, AZ 85306 expires in October 2018. Staff will work with GPL and procurement staff to determine if the timing would allow for this center to be included in the RFP.
Open Contracting Data:
This area was selected as an opportunity to complement the work being done with the Sunlight Foundation on Open Data and is a continuation of that work specific to procurement which includes streamlining processes and implementing best practices that could increase the number and quality of responsive bidders. It will also focus on best practices to help inform the selection of procurement and contracting datasets for publication with the goal of assisting future bidders, increasing the transparency and utility of procurement and contracting data, and providing Council and the public with data relating to vendor performance.
The city’s participation in the What Works Cities program and the associated work around results-driven contracting, as well as, the use of a cross-departmental team to explore opportunities are aligned with the recently formulated mission, vision, and value statements developed by the City Council.
Previous Related Council Action
On May 2, 2017, the City Council provided consensus direction to move forward with the development of an Open Data program for the City of Glendale and to seek public feedback on a proposed resolution.
On February 28, 2017, the City Council gathered to announce Glendale as a What Works City.
On February 7, 2017, the City Council provided final input and consensus direction on the recently formulated mission, vision, and value statements for the organization setting out desired results and expectations for the city’s public body of work.
Community Benefit/Public Involvement
Glendale’s ongoing participation in the What Works Cities program is a validation of Council’s efforts to improve city hall and is aligned with the work that Council has begun related to the development of a comprehensive strategic plan focused on improving the lives of the people we serve through integrity, excellence, innovation, being community-driven, and learning. Participating in the program is providing the opportunity to leverage the experiences of technical experts and other communities to inform organizational learning and development in service to the community. The hopeful outcome of the results-driven contracting project is to create public benefit in the following ways:
• Identifying metrics to better understand outcomes for youth that attend and service providers that operate recreation centers;
• Incorporating these metrics into a procurement for new operator(s), and performance and contract management.
• Publishing selected procurement and contracting data about past contract awards, including performance; and
• Streamlining processes and implementing best practices that could increase the number and quality of responsive bidders.
Budget and Financial Impacts
There are no budget or financial impacts associated with this request.