The Detroit Bankruptcy Conversation Nobody Is Having + Ideas To Make City Government More Accountable

I had the privilege of seeing Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr give the keynote address of the Revitalization & Business Conference, which occurred last Friday at Michigan's Ross School of Business. Generally speaking, I was very impressed with Orr and his sharp intellect as well as his thorough understanding of the issues facing the city. What Mr. Orr didn't discuss, however, (nor is it something widely discussed in news coverage about the bankruptcy) is the need to keep local government accountable and responsive to citizens' needs. I intend to start that conversation in this post. Surely, part of the reason Detroit had to file for bankruptcy was an institutional failure. During the past few decades, nobody really raised a flag calling the actions of civic leaders into question...at least in a way which was strong enough to avert Detroit's financial disaster. Nobody was watching the evolution of City Council's policies closely enough to prevent malfeasance or corruption. Nobody fact-checked City Hall's promises or management practices to see if they were legitimate. And now, Detroit is in bankruptcy and nobody is having a conversation (it seems) about how we can better keep our institutions accountable and our local government responsive to citizen's needs. Let's start now.

The way I figure it, there are a few stakeholder groups which, when working together, can hold local government accountable and efficient: City Hall (the executive branch), City Council (the legislative branch), the public (the citizenry and NGOs), and the press (the fourth estate). The judicial branch also has a role to play, but I'm leaving them off because I know very little about the courts. Here are a few ideas for each stakeholder group on how they can help hold local government more accountable. By experimenting with and implementing such ideas, I believe we'll be less likely to have another meltdown in the City of Detroit. These ideas are brief concepts - teasers, if you will - to be used as a starting point.

Citizen Marketing Strategy (City Hall, City Council, Public)

Marketing strategies are very powerful things. In them, you analyze your customer, your own capabilities, and what other organizations are doing to serve that customer. Then, you segment the market (put customers into unique groups, basically), target a segment, then figure out how to provide a powerful benefit for that segment. The whole point of marketing strategy exercises are to understand a real need that a specific type of customer  has and then provide a real benefit to that customer, and do this all with a lot of discipline and rigor.

I think we could stand to see this sort of thinking utilized by local government. Imagine if all stakeholders - City Hall, City Council, the public, and the press - worked together to put together a marketing strategy for the city's citizens. First, they'd understand broad needs. Then, they'd try to cluster folks into different groups of unique needs (e.g., tech entrepreneurs, unmarried yuppies, young families, low-income elderly, etc.). From there, you could create detailed personas of what each of those customer segments needed.

The way this would help with accountability is that government could focus on the targeted customer segments they were designing a product or service for. We, as the public, could force government officials to talk about who they are trying to benefit with each policy they create, and thus hold them accountable for results. In my opinion, it's very hard to see if local government is actually effective if they can operate in platitudes of serving the "public interest" broadly. Having targeted segments would make them dig into real customer needs and provide government an invaluable to way to focus their efforts when deploying products and services.

Open Data (City Hall, City Council, Public)

Many states and municipalities are making some of their data publicly available. By doing this, citizens can analyze the data to look at the "proof in the pudding" as to whether their municipal government is actually running with integrity and efficiency. As is often said in journalism, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Moreover, governments can engage citizens in understanding and solving problems if they make data available for analysis. It's a win-win for everyone - we have more accountability and a way for many great minds to be helping the City improve services to its citizens

City Council Clubs (Public)

I think it's pretty important for citizens to participate in public meetings because it allows them to get information and because it puts citizens in a position to scrutinize (or collaborate with) public servants. The problem is, it's a lot of work to go to a city council meeting every time. So, I proposed this idea on this blog a few weeks ago which basically works like this: citizens get a group of their friends together and take turns attending public meetings and reporting back to the group. That lowers the transaction costs of doing so and gives citizens a constant presence at public meetings.

Citizens' Corps (City Council, Public)

One of the ways to increase accountability is to involve citizens more intimately in the political process. I also saw this in the private sector working as a consultant. The idea is that if you have more citizens dialogue with legislators about ideas, the ideas will be more responsive to their needs. But how could you do this? You'd create what I call "a Citizens' Corps". It's akin to a "change agent network", from corporate transformation nomenclature.

Each City Council member would get a group of community leaders with diverse perspectives together from their ward, kind of a kitchen cabinet. Then, the City Council members would have informal meetings with this Corps to discuss city issues. Sometimes this might be a way for citizens to make their Council member answer to them. Other times, maybe the Council member needs feedback, vis-a-vis each Citizens' Corp member getting feedback form his/her affinity group or neighborhood. Still other times maybe the Council member needs to communicate a message to citizens via the word of mouth generated by the Citizens' Corps members.

Basically, this vehicle is a way to create a network of committed citizens who have informal influence in their respective social groups. This network can be used to create two-way dialogue between Council members and everyday citizens.

Detroit Government News Hub (Public, Press)

Obviously, the press play a critical role in holding local government accountable. The difficulty is, search costs for articles are often high for finding local government news, and, mundane topics/meetings are never covered. I propose creating a curated blog network of city affairs. It would work like this. The press would create a website that consolidates all quality news articles about city government. Each article would be tagged with subject matter, committee names, council members, and any other relevant metadata. This metadata would allow the archive of articles to be easily searchable. Moreover, readers of the blog could submit articles they find useful to the curator, making it easier for the curator to do his/her job. Finally, say an amateur blogger or videographer attends a meeting of some sort in the city. This person could do a quick write up and submit it to the curator for inclusion on the news hub.

This sort of idea would help citizens follow issues as they transpire and be alerted to relevant articles about city government. By having easily accessible information, citizens can help each other stay informed about local government and hopefully make better political decisions / become more politically active. More political activity on the part of citizens would lead to more accountability.

Issue Prioritization & Goal Setting (City Hall, City Council, Public)

Governments often have long lists of (unpublished) priorities every year. In the Federal Government, for example, it's hard to keep track of all the initiatives the President and Congress want to push through. Say though, that the President had a list of his top 20 priorities for the year with a scorecard for success on each issue. First of all, If this were the case the public could weigh in on what the priorities should be, which is a valuable exercise to occur publicly. Second of all, the public would then have a somewhat objective way of judging whether the public servant is accomplishing his goals.

I think we could do this at the municipal level, too. Both the Mayor and City Council should make a list of their top 10 priorities for each year and provide a rubric for measuring success. That priority sheet could be refined with public feedback, provided online. Then, the public could track progress throughout the year or over the course of a term. Having the priority sheet would help the public help government keep track of its priorities and accomplishments.

External Feedback (City Hall, City Council, Public)

Independence is at the core of accountability in public accounting. Basically, you get someone to audit you every year to make sure your company is not misrepresenting finances. Why not get a similar perspective from outside Detroit to provide an independent critique of management and operations in the City? That could be a great way to infuse our thinking with some fresh perspective.

This idea wouldn't have to be limited to financials or operations, either. Non-profit organizations could bring in leading thinkers to weigh in on Detroit and how we do things here in an intellectual setting. As a community that's pretty insular - in my opinion, Detroiters actively avoid ideas that aren't homegrown, far too often - deliberately getting outsiders to challenge our thinking would probably make our ideas much better (this part of the idea isn't mine, solely, Detroit Harmonie is working on this.)

Conclusion

Perhaps these are wild ideas (but come on, they're not that wild). They certainly aren't perfect. The point is, however, that we need to proactively try to work together and keep our governmental institutions running effectively and responsively. You'll notice that all these ideas involve the public in some way. Why? I believe it's the public's responsibility - more than anyone else - to hold our government accountable. Indeed, we are our government.

This is the conversation about the Detroit bankruptcy (on improving accountability and responsiveness) that nobody is having. So, I invite your feedback, criticisms, questions, or full-throated support. By discussing these ideas we are more likely to improve them and implement the best of the lot. And implementing ideas which help government stay accountable and responsive would be a great step for our City.