The Council’s recurring demands have grown 45-fold since 2014. I built a tracker so agencies, Council members, and the public can interact with the whole ledger.
Thank you so much! I think the first surprise to me was how many of the Council’s laws mandated new reports on a multiple-per-year basis. When you think of how many hundreds of reporting requirements have been added, and then realize many are due several times a year, that’s a ton of new work being added to agencies’ plates!
It seems your argument is against transparency. You don't delve into the reasons these reports are mandated. City government is increasingly opaque and you seem to say less transparency is better. It's not. 125,000 man-hours is nothing in a city government the size of NYC.
Where's your alternative? Perhaps, if the agencies responded to council members and the public, they wouldn't be mandated to produce these reports, but they don't.
I think your efforts hide the reality and gov cover to politicians who want to keep secrets.
Hi Janon, appreciate you pushing back on this. However, I would argue my recommendations would only serve to increase transparency. I am not asking for the Council to not exercise its oversight power, and none of my recs would reduce that power.
I'm just looking at the data: agencies are required to submit hundreds more reports than they were just several years ago, without significantly larger staffing levels. A large number of these reports are either never filed or filed extremely late. This all points to the reality that there are more requirements for agencies than current staff can manage.
So I would like the Council to actually increase transparency by including more information on how many hours a new report (or any obligation) will take an agency to complete. We could then better hold the agency accountable for not filing these required reports, or we could better understand why this is the case. It may also help the Council better understand why some mandates aren't being met, and identify areas where obligations could be consolidated or streamlined to make remaining obligations more effective.
But certainly the status quo does not seem to be working well. Hundreds of unfiled reports, thousands of recurring obligations, and staffing and funding levels that are not keeping up. If we demand transparency from our government, we need to create a system where it can function well enough to actually deliver on providing that transparency.
I would wager that many of those reports never get generated, so the man-hours are not actually wasted.
The trick is to get timely, accurate information from the government. I don't hear any solution for that. It's also disingenuous to say the lag in response to 311 complaints is because of mandatory reporting. I get that it's buzzy, but your evidence doesn't support that.
If we stop asking the parks department for information on tree pruning schedules, they will to fix the swing set in my neighborhood? I don't think so.
All mayors want to control information flow, this one is no different. You're giving him an excuse to further close access to information.
Amazing work! Great use of data. Was there anything in particular that really stood out for you?
Thank you so much! I think the first surprise to me was how many of the Council’s laws mandated new reports on a multiple-per-year basis. When you think of how many hundreds of reporting requirements have been added, and then realize many are due several times a year, that’s a ton of new work being added to agencies’ plates!
Yes! That was fascinating…report proliferation. Makes sense implementation gets delayed when duties have to be allocated elsewhere.
It seems your argument is against transparency. You don't delve into the reasons these reports are mandated. City government is increasingly opaque and you seem to say less transparency is better. It's not. 125,000 man-hours is nothing in a city government the size of NYC.
Where's your alternative? Perhaps, if the agencies responded to council members and the public, they wouldn't be mandated to produce these reports, but they don't.
I think your efforts hide the reality and gov cover to politicians who want to keep secrets.
Hi Janon, appreciate you pushing back on this. However, I would argue my recommendations would only serve to increase transparency. I am not asking for the Council to not exercise its oversight power, and none of my recs would reduce that power.
I'm just looking at the data: agencies are required to submit hundreds more reports than they were just several years ago, without significantly larger staffing levels. A large number of these reports are either never filed or filed extremely late. This all points to the reality that there are more requirements for agencies than current staff can manage.
So I would like the Council to actually increase transparency by including more information on how many hours a new report (or any obligation) will take an agency to complete. We could then better hold the agency accountable for not filing these required reports, or we could better understand why this is the case. It may also help the Council better understand why some mandates aren't being met, and identify areas where obligations could be consolidated or streamlined to make remaining obligations more effective.
But certainly the status quo does not seem to be working well. Hundreds of unfiled reports, thousands of recurring obligations, and staffing and funding levels that are not keeping up. If we demand transparency from our government, we need to create a system where it can function well enough to actually deliver on providing that transparency.
I would wager that many of those reports never get generated, so the man-hours are not actually wasted.
The trick is to get timely, accurate information from the government. I don't hear any solution for that. It's also disingenuous to say the lag in response to 311 complaints is because of mandatory reporting. I get that it's buzzy, but your evidence doesn't support that.
If we stop asking the parks department for information on tree pruning schedules, they will to fix the swing set in my neighborhood? I don't think so.
All mayors want to control information flow, this one is no different. You're giving him an excuse to further close access to information.