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Welcome back to our Public Sector Performance Outcomes series!
This public sector outcomes series is about highlighting the exceptional strategic accomplishments of our customers. It’s about illuminating their successes in executing actions, and showcasing achievements in performance-based management and measurement of outcomes—from infrastructure to community development outcomes, and everything in between.
Celebrating these triumphs is a chance to take a deeper look at the tangible results that can be achieved from careful planning and strategic resource allocation within the public sector.
For this spring edition, we’ll be looking at four completed outcomes from our customer base. We’ve got a newly published dashboard with SMART first steps, a champion of open data, a supportive housing initiative, and thoughtful policy changes to increase the presence of public art.
Richland County, South Carolina — Being SMART (And Proving It!)
Richland County is a great example of a team that is on top of SMART planning.
Over the last year, Richland County has crafted a list of goals aligned with their strategic plan. They have assigned tasks to relevant departments and ensured that those tasks are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resourced, and Time-Bound.
By breaking down each of their 6 strategic goals into specific initiatives, the County Council has taken a proactive approach to ensure clarity, accountability, and effective implementation of the County’s strategic plan. The County Council approved these initiatives on February 13, 2024, and on April 18th, they published their Strategic Plan Performance Measures community dashboard! What an achievement!
Approval on these initial SMART steps indicates clear, unified direction. Richland has shown a systematic approach that not only facilitates better coordination and collaboration among departments, but also enhances transparency and accountability in the county’s governance processes. Their new dashboard publication signifies yet another milestone on their path to achieving the County’s effective, inclusive vision for the future: transparency that keeps community members informed and internal employees on the same page.
As County Council Chairwomen Jesica Mackey describes it, residents get “access to an interactive dashboard which outlines the County’s strategic priorities, actions being taken to achieve them and performance to date.”
Richland County has achieved lift off, with a solid foundation for achieving their strategic objectives.
Broward County, Florida — Open Data Heroes!
There is a lot to love about Broward County—we’ve written about their road to strategic success at length in a dedicated case study! But we wanted to shout out this recent accomplishment in particular.
Earlier in April, Broward County marked their Citizen Data Portal as “Complete” on their Envisio dashboard. This is a truly pioneering public sector outcome around transparency and engagement.
The Broward County Citizen Data Portal serves as a centralized data hub, offering an array of data visualization tools for residents keen on delving deeper into their community affairs and government decisions. From public services to climate statistics, financial insights, health trends, and educational data, this platform, crafted by the County’s Innovation Unit within the Resilient Environment Department, consolidates all of this information to help foster transparency, accountability, and civic involvement.
By publishing this action item on their dashboard and openly showing how it relates to their goals of excellent and transparent governance, Broward is empowering their community to actively participate in shaping their surroundings.
Richfield, Minnesota — Community Development Outcomes Through Supportive Housing
Richfield, Minnesota has achieved an important milestone in the city’s strategic plan. Under their “Community Development” pillar, the Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA) has taken decisive action regarding its property holdings.
In December 2023, the HRA greenlit the sale of a specific property—Aster Commons—signaling a transformative project aimed at providing supportive housing. This initiative is poised to address a critical need in the community by offering 38 studio apartments tailored for neurodiverse young adults.
Supportive housing (rental housing combined with support services such as harm reduction, personal support workers, or on-site counselors) stands as a tried-and-true approach to eradicating chronic homelessness and precarious housing realities.
It is easy to take housing for granted, and precarious housing is not a simple crisis with simple solutions. Cyclical and intergenerational poverty, under-supported mental illness, disability, and addiction issues are immensely complex issues on their own, and they often intertwine, creating massive barriers to securing the basic building blocks of a life of safety and dignity.
Supportive housing is all about personalized support delivered by dedicated on-site professionals, giving residents the foot-hold they need to thrive, and figure out their next steps with clarity and confidence.
We are impressed and thrilled to see this strategic update.
The agreement of the development of Aster Commons speaks to the values of compassion, equity, and forward-thinking that underpin Richfield’s strategic vision.
Marana, Arizona — Public Sector Outcomes Through Placemaking And Public Art
Marana, Arizona, is making significant strides in realizing its strategic plan goals by embracing public art and prioritizing heritage and cultural planning.
At the end of 2023, the town expanded their public art policy, aiming to capture their rich heritage and strengthen community identity. The establishment of the Marana Public Art Fund and the Marana Public Art Review Committee solidified the town’s commitment to selecting and showcasing high-quality public art. Nested under their “Cherished Heritage” pillars, in December 2023, Marana took another pivotal step forward by hiring a Cultural Heritage Specialist to spearhead efforts in highlighting the town’s history and heritage.
These strategic moves demonstrate Marana’s dedication to preserving its cultural legacy and ensuring that future generations can appreciate and connect with their roots. By embracing public art and cultural preservation, Marana is both enriching its (already beautiful) physical landscape, and nurturing a vibrant and cohesive community.
Some people might be quick to write off public art and cultural heritage costs as unimportant. But they would be mistaken to do so!
Public art serves as more than just aesthetically pleasing or interesting installations; public art is a form of placemaking that is linked to greater community equity, safety, and pride; it is linked to an improved quality of life, and an overall deeper community understanding of cultural diversity. It also is shown to stimulate economic growth, and can create vibrant and inclusive public spaces.
In a town like Marana, public art plays a crucial role in strengthening community identity, enhancing quality of life, and attracting visitors, ultimately contributing to the town’s overall vitality and resilience.
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That caps off our celebration of public sector outcome success stories for this edition! These outcomes show what has clicked for local governments and how they got there. We’ll be back again in July, to celebrate summer accomplishments.
Get the guide ↓
Plans work when they are implemented with measurable actions. If you would like some help on going from planning to action, and getting a performance measurement program in place, we invite you to read our Strategic Plan Implementation Guide.
Mary King
Mary King is a professional writer and researcher based in Toronto. She comes to Envisio with a Masters Degree, where she researched the relationship between the disappearance of urban public spaces, and high level decision-making processes in local governments.
For nearly a decade, Mary has worked as a community organizer, promoter, and supportive researcher in a variety of nonprofits and think-tanks, and her favorite area of focus was in connecting local artists with marginalized youth. Since 2017, her writings and research on policy, local governance, and its relationship to public art and public space has been presented at conferences internationally. She has also served as both a conference chair and lead facilitator on professional and academic conferences across Canada on how to better bridge academic research with local change-agents, policy makers, artists, and community members.
Envisio’s mission of excellence and trust in the public sector maps onto Mary's interest in local government and community mobilization. She loves working at Envisio because she cares about having well organized, strategic, and transparent public organizations and local governments. Mary is also a creative writer and musician and has been supported in her practice by the Canada Council for the Arts. Her stories can be found in literary journals across Canada.
