Literally hundreds of award programs feature exemplary local government programs. They can be found in specific disciplines like planning, public works, housing, libraries, and finance. Or they might feature organizations that have achieved greatest cost savings or produced the most important outcomes.

These award programs come in many forms operating with a local, regional, statewide, national, and even global, focus. The Alliance for Innovation recognizes innovation award winners at its own Transforming Local Government (TLG) conference each year. Communities are celebrated that have either invented something brand new or modified an idea tried elsewhere to improve services for a specific locale.

In 2016, for example, Tempe, Arizona, won the J. Robert Havlick Award for Innovation for its development of the Tempe Grease Cooperative (http://transformgov.org/tempegrease), which is reportedly the first such wastewater improvement activity in the world.

Olathe, Kansas, won the Thomas H. Muehlenbeck Award for Excellence for Innovation in Local Government for its mobile integrated health care network (http://transformgov.org/mobileinte%20gratedhealth), which demonstrated new enhancements to emergency fire and paramedic services.

Winning an award provides some obvious benefits. It achieves recognition for a community, it provides an opportunity for others to learn about new methods and practices, and it sometimes provides terrific prizes, too.

 

Long-Term Effectiveness

Beginning with the year 2015, the Alliance decided to dig a little deeper into the long-term outcomes that arise from award-winning programs. We wanted to learn—after the fanfare and the recognition—then what?

Had time made these programs better, worse, or did conditions change? We looked back over the past three years of the Alliance's winners to see what had happened to those programs that had recently been so lauded. Were they still operating and did anyone care?

During the Alliance staff members' review, we found a variety of themes emerging that will help answer this question. Four of the themes are:

 

Internal replication in other departments and, if well-funded, growth in the overall program itself. Submitted for award consideration in 2014, "The Great Reading Adventure" (http://transformgov.org/greatreadingadventure) by Maricopa County Library District, Arizona, has, as the county says, already "fundamentally changed the way arizona libraries conduct their summer reading programs."

As of summer 2015, it had 77,000 participants in the online program that won an award and is expecting an even larger number this year. But how was it able to scale so quickly?

These accomplishments are largely due to the fact that a growth goal was built into the program from the onset, and the online program is an open-source project. The library district planned for massive growth in its own program, and now is more than happy to give the software away to anyone who wants to use it, free of charge.

In 2013, San Jose, California, highlighted its work with Nextdoor, a private social network for individual neighborhoods, in "Community Building 2.0: Connect Neighbors; Strengthen Neighborhoods; Build Community" (http://transformgov.org/communitybuilding2.0).

Originally, the city manager's office was the only department to use the resident engagement platform to elicit feedback from the community. It was able to communicate with 33,000 residents at that time. Now, the program has been expanded to the San Jose Police Department with an expanded reach of 90,000 residents.

External replication in other organizations. A recognized mark of a successful innovation is when the new idea is replicated elsewhere. What does it look like when a program is expanded to other organizations not located in the jurisdiction of the award winner?

A program called the "ASAP Message Broker Service" (http://transformgov.org/asap) and highlighted in Richmond, Virginia's 2014 application, has been extremely successful for Richmond in reducing the volume of nonemergency telephone calls from alarm companies.

When this article was written, Richmond had documented that 12 other local governments have implemented their own ASAP interface. Not to be outdone, 15 private sector alarm monitoring companies have also adopted the innovative program.

Another example is the 2014 award-winning program from Peoria, Arizona, "United Community Action Network (U.C.A.N.) (http://transformgov.org/ucan) comprised of community members to strengthen neighborhood ties to the police department. It has expanded to a completely different region—the St. Louis County, Missouri, Police Department.

 

The next two themes are intertwined, though the outcomes are different.

 

Organization is more willing to change, and staff is inclined to try more things and is less risk-averse. It should go without saying that trying something new and innovative is not easy. There's always risk and the possibility of failure, although this shouldn't be a reason not to try.

The "police chief recruitment video" (http://transformgov.org/orpolicerecruit) from Hillsboro, Oregon, is a novel approach used to attract suitable job candidates for the high-profile position. Hillsboro wanted to display the organizational culture of its community and public safety staff, and words alone could not do it justice.

By producing a video, the city didn't just hire a new chief who leads consistent with the city's values, but reports confirm that staff members are now more comfortable with taking risks and trying new approaches, which is a spillover effect.

Much like Hillsboro, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, launched a "City of Edmonton Jobs" Facebook page (http://transformgov.org/facebookrecruit) in 2014 to enhance recruitment. It worked so well that the city is now pursuing a mobile app for the jobs site with full support from leadership within the city manager's office and public safety.

Consistently and constantly improving the program. If the goal is to achieve better outcomes, then a program or policy should always be looking for ways to have continuous improvement.

In "Enterprise Integrated Web Search" (http://transformgov.org/websearch), a robust streamlining of website search engines by Boulder, Colorado, aimed to more deeply integrate web search applications organization wide.

Since the initial application in 2014, the program has expanded to the neighboring community of Golden, though Boulder ended its tech partnership with Arvada, Colorado; however, Boulder's search continues. Beyond constantly evaluating how to make its content management system even better and working towards making the code open source, the Boulder team is devoted to adding more new partners.

By having an ethic of constant improvement, boundaries are always being pushed and reset, and a new standard can be set. Take for instance, the 2014 award-winning case study "Leveraging Value from Open Data" (http://transformgov.org/opendata) by Palo Alto, California.

Since the mayor issued an "Open Data by Default" proclamation in 2015, the city has aspired to publish all new data sets to the data portal. At the time, it was one of the first agencies of its size to take on this initiative.

Going beyond an open budget platform and open GIS portal, Palo Alto staff members hope to include more real-time data sets in the near future. The work done here has also allowed the city to pursue other innovations since the city manager and council have greater confidence they can get things done.

The Alliance's takeaway is that winning an award for your work is more than the plaque you take home or the press release that is published. Award-winning programs—at least the ones we researched—have staying power and growth potential, and they can change outcomes for an organization, community, and the lives of residents.

Beyond the findings listed above, we found continuous threads among these programs that included unusual, creative partnerships; innovative financing or new revenue sources; cost-cutting efforts that didn't diminish services; deeper connections to the public; and improved morale and teamwork among staff.

Information Available

Interested in winning an award for your community? Download the "Applying for Awards Toolkit" (http://ondemand.transformgov.org/store/seminar/seminar.php?seminar=9409) and consider applying for an Alliance for Innovation award and possible recognition at the TLG conference in Tulsa, April 18-21, 2017. Deadline to apply is December 15, 2016.

Learn more at http://transformgov.org/en/learning/transforming_local_%20government.