Mayor Rosalynn Bliss announced that Grand Rapids has been selected as one of five new cities to participate in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ national What Work Cities initiative – one of the largest-ever philanthropic efforts to enhance the use of data and evidence in the public sector. Grand Rapids is the first city in Michigan to be chosen to participate in this initiative. Grand Rapids will receive technical assistance from world-class experts to build our capacity to address local issues using data and evidence.
“We are proud to be a What Works city, Mayor Bliss said. “This partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies will strengthen our commitment to ensuring fair and equitable distribution of City services, resources, and assets across the community. The goal of this work is to promote community engagement and increase quality of life through additional assessment and review with our external stakeholders.”
Grand Rapids will improve open data practices to make municipal data more accessible and engage residents around government priorities and services. The City will work with What Works Cities partners to focus on developing an equity-based dataset inventory, open data portal and develop standards to work with our community stakeholders to leverage available datasets.