  Bloomberg Philanthropies launched What Works Cities (WWC) in 2015 to help
cities better leverage data and evidence to drive decision-making and improve
residents' lives. Over three years, WWC will work with 100 American cities with
populations between 100,000 and 1,000,000 to measure their state of practice
and provide targeted technical assistance. This paper uses the data obtained
through the WWC discovery process to understand how 67 cities are currently
using data to deliver city services. Our analysis confirms that while cities
possess a strong desire to use data and evidence, government leaders are
constrained in their ability to apply these practices. We find that a city's
stated commitment to using data is the strongest predictor of overall
performance and that strong practice in almost any one specific technical area
of using data to inform decisions is an indicator of strong practices in other
areas. The exception is open data; we find larger cities are more adept at
adopting open data policies and programs, independent of their performance
using data overall. This paper seeks to develop a deeper understanding of the
issues underlying these findings and to continue the conversation on how to
best support cities' efforts in this work.
