| Notes |
Milwaukee Making government more innovative, nimble and data-driven.
Through the City Accelerator, Milwaukee will seek to drive inclusive economic opportunity through procurement.
With a population of just over 600,000, the City of Milwaukee spends more than $200 million on contracted services annually, ranging from construction to copier maintenance. Local business participation and local hiring are encouraged by the city’s Resident Preference Program, along with a Revolving Loan Program and Local Business Enterprise program. However, despite the fact that Milwaukee is a “minority-majority” city, only 30 percent of the city’s businesses are owned by people of color. The City’s Ordinance 370, adopted in 2012, restricts the City from directing efforts toward increasing the number of minority or women-owned small business owners. Like many cities with race-neutral programs, Milwaukee continues to seek ways that fall within their policy to increase small business participation. Through the City Accelerator, Mayor Barrett and the Common Council want to build partnerships with entrepreneurs, small business owners, lenders, and business development organizations and to use data to identify promising sectors for contracting and business expansion support.
Milwaukee’s efforts to make government more innovative and responsive to residents are bolstered by its participation in the Project on Municipal Innovation. This initiative brings together more than 40 chiefs of staff from the nation’s largest cities at regular intervals with the goal of supporting adoption of best practices in more places and sparking innovative ideas.
WORK IN MILWAUKEE
The Project on Municipal Innovation
We work with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center to convene and support a network of mayoral chiefs of staff and policy leaders who advance transformative change through innovation in city government to improve the lives of residents. |