How do You Create a Culture of Accountability?

Originally published May/June 2004

In the last column we looked at the issue of accountability. How do we get individuals to be accountable, without creating fear and a “blame” mentality? Let’s take the question one step further: what’s needed to support a culture of accountability in a government organization? We’ll learn from a large city that is turning a huge, lackluster bureaucracy into one that is very accountable: Baltimore, Maryland.

Martin O’Malley became mayor of Baltimore in January, 2000. He took over a city of 650,000 that was plagued with problems. The city had enormous budget deficits, failing schools, a crime rate that hadn’t followed the downward trend of other large cities. It had 59,000 residents addicted to drugs. Tens of thousands of houses and over 40,000 buildings were vacant. The rates of AIDS and syphilis were overwhelming. Worse, the city bureaucracy of 16,000 employees was considered immune to change.

Mayor O’Malley came to office determined to shake that bureaucracy up and deal energetically with the city’s massive problems. One of the problems he tackled head on was what he called the city’s “culture of failure.” It riled him that there seemed to be no accountability, no awareness of the exact nature of the problems the city faced, nor an understanding of the resources at its command. “I mean, when I got into office, no one could even tell me how many cars the city owned. I remember during the transition, I asked the public works director in charge of fleet management, ŒSo how many vehicles do we actually have?’ And he said, ŒSix thousand?’ I told him, ŒIt’s not a question.’ He paused and said, ŒSixty five hundred?’ And I said, ŒNo, I really don’t know. I’m asking you! And he said, ŒWell, we never really got a handle on that one.’”

After three and a half years in office, those kinds of discussions rarely take place. Managers and supervisors know what they’re managing, they know the targets they’re shooting for, they understand that they’re being held accountable for results, and most of them are producing results. What’s changing the culture? It’s a combination of Mayor O’Malley’s relentless, hands on, intense persona and a system called CitiStat.

SYSTEM THAT DELIVERS

The CitiStat emphasis is on making short term performance visible, and holding supervisors and managers strictly accountable for results. According to Mayor O’Malley, “If we only looked at performance every year at budget time, I’d be old and gray before anything would changeŠ CitiStat brings the sense of urgency that we need around here.”

The CitiStat experiment began in June, 2000. Mayor O’Malley got the idea from the New York Police Department, that has used a similar system called Compstat to help reduce crime dramatically since the mid 1990s. New York’s murder rate fell by over 50% after three years of Compstat, three times the national reduction in murders. Since then, one third of the country’s larger police departments have adopted the system. Mayor O’Malley liked the Compstat results and its emphasis on accountability; he decided to apply it citywide.

The CitiStat system is tough but fair. Every two weeks department and agency heads report on results in key operations. For example, they report on the number of restaurant inspections, amount of employee overtime, number of hours it takes to fill potholes, and crime in a given neighborhood. A large computerized screen maps the results so that all can see them. The mayor and cabinet members pepper the agency head with questions. This provides the sense of urgency that Mayor O’Malley wants. “You can’t run and hide,” according to First Deputy Mayor Michael R. Enright, who is usually the lead questioner. On the other hand, he said, “it can’t be a torture chamber.” Indeed, Citistat allows effective managers to shine, and catch the attention of their peers and superiors. Mayor O’Malley sends personal notes or even Orioles tickets to employees who demonstrate exceptional work.

For instance, above, a CitiStat graphic from the Baltimore Public Works Department, showing the amount of overtime, lost workdays, and numbers of complaints in the refuse collection unit over a four month period (these had been major problems before the use of CitiStat).

Baltimore is the first city to use CitiStat for all city operations, and it seems to be helping. In 2001, Baltimore led the country in reduction of murders, and experienced a 30% reduction in overall crime. Further, home sales were up in 2001, after years of decline. It’s clear that CitiStat has the managers’ attention, largely because it makes performance visible in a quantifiable way. A few agency heads have left since the system was introduced; most are stepping up and learning to respond. And several have instituted their own versions of CitiStat within their agencies.

COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS

Citistat is also being used to get agencies to work together. The data, trend analysis and visual displays of those trends help managers see how some issues cross agency lines. Lead paint poisoning is a good example. Not a single case of lead poisoning had been abated in ten years prior to CitiStat. Worse, for over ten years the city hadn’t gone after a single landlord who owned buildings where children were being poisoned with lead paint; not a single one.

A “LeadStat” team was pulled together, made up of officials from housing, health and environmental agencies. Some of them work for state agencies, but they all started attending LeadStat meetings in city hall. The team identified cases of lead poisoning in kids and posted them on the map with red dots. They also started meeting regularly to find solutions and turn the red dots to green ones (indicating the lead was removed). They identified many of the barriers that had prevented them from working together in the past. Health and housing inspectors were cross trained, ending the overlap in their enforcement duties.

In LeadStat’s first year (2000), the team filed 121 cases against landlords of buildings where lead poisoning was occurring. They filed an additional 148 cases in 2001. They also prevented 482 properties from being rerented until the landlords eliminated the lead paint. And the Baltimore City Council passed legislation requiring universal lead testing for one and two year old children. The results were that in the first year, the number of children tested for lead poisoning went up by 51%. By December, 2000, 124 red dots (contaminated properties) turned green. The statistics for 2001 were even better:

Sometimes the identified problems are complex and can’t be resolved in the tight time lines of the CitiStat meeting. In those cases, one of two things happens. If it is an ongoing issue, a new multiagency “stat” will be formed to track progress and deal with problems. In addition to the “Leadstat” group, there are Kidstat, DrugStat, and “stat” groups for certain geographic parts of the city. “These often include agencies outside of city government,” says Matt Gallagher, CitiStat Director of Operations. “When that’s the case, you’re no longer in a Œcommand and control’ mode. It’s more like, coax and cajole. But the CitiStat structure, plus the natural peer pressure of seeing your colleagues come with their follow up reports and progress, has a positive impact on the outside agency leaders. And when they’re not responding, a call from the mayor usually helps.”

If the issue is complex but can be resolved in a given period of time, Mayor O’Malley or Deputy Mayor Enright often appoint taskforces to study the issue and report back. Matt Gallagher said, “We give these taskforces four to six weeks to bring back their recommendations. And these groups involve people from different departments, sometimes from agencies outside of city hall.”

BENEFITS

In its first two years the system saved the city over $13 million, mostly in overtime costs. The city now collects 65% more garbage than it did before CitiStat. And the number of murders went down 14% during the first year of CitiStat operations. Equally important, CitiStat and Mayor O’Malley’s unending demand for results has department and agency heads talking and working together. There are no longer endless series of memos and emails circulating among various departments when an issue is a hot one and nobody wants to take control. “There is a great creative dynamic because all of the principals are in the room,” according to Deputy Mayor Enright. “We don’t need 22 memos to get an issue resolved.” Matt Gallagher, says the system shortens decision making. “Having everybody in the room, looking at the same data, with the built in follow up component [of biweekly meetings] really creates a sense of urgency.”

Mayor O’Malley has said that he takes pride in the successful efforts to remove the walls between city departments and agencies. In 2001, he said, “We’re sharing information openly with everyone, not only employees but the city’s citizens [who can track city performance hrough CitiStat postings on the Baltimore Website]. We’re holding people accountable. And we’re breaking down the silos, by pulling all relevant managers to the table on shared issues. That, plus the relentless focus on follow up, is getting people to work together.”

MANAGING BY FACT BECOMES GOOD “DEFENSE”

Strong, vocal leaders like Martin O’Malley can be very threatening to employees, even if they like the leaders’ goals and values. I once worked for such a boss. The best advice came from a colleague who suggested that I find projects that weren’t on the boss’s radar screen; “don’t get caught in the crossfire,” as he put it. Mayor O’Malley doesn’t give Baltimore’s city employees that option. His use of CitiStat and its relentless follow up provides a structure for his passion. Interestingly, it also gives the city’s managers an excellent method for dealing with their strong boss. Mayor O’Malley has said,“The map [used in a Citistat session] doesn’t reflect if residents are black or white, rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, have a state senator or city council member living in their neighborhood. The map is a defense for doing the right thing.” He’s referring to policies and decisions made on the basis of information and trends revealed at CitiStat meetings. His point is equally true concerning his insistence that city employees work together and be accountable for results. Their best defense is to produce positive outcomes that are tracked at the biweekly CitiStat meetings, and to continually look for ways to improve performance when the results aren’t favorable. When they do that, and increasing numbers of them are, they needn’t worry about Martin O’Malley’s intensity. He’s looking for results, not blame or finger pointing. Baltimore’s residents have had too much of that over the years. Now they’re betting on a culture of high expectations and accountabilityŠ and hoping that Mayor O’Malley stays long enough to institutionalize the changes.