--- Mayor Renard Johnson’s participation in the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative offers an example of the power of data storytelling.

--- Today, Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence Executive Director Oliver Wise talks to Mayor Renard Johnson of El Paso, Texas, a participant in the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. The city finds itself at the center of two national conversations: immigration and AI infrastructure. The mayor is using data to broaden prevailing narratives about El Paso and elevate the social and economic opportunity the metropolitan region has to offer.

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--- With Conecta Recife and “zero-click” service delivery, the Brazilian tech hub is creating scalable solutions to address resident needs.

--- Our new “City Spotlights” highlights GovEx city partners doing great things with data and AI.

In this episode, we talk to two public servants from Recife, Brazil: Rafael Cunha, Secretary of Digital Transformation, Science and Technology, and Rafael Toscano, Executive Secretary for Science, Technology, and Business.

--- Recife, a city of 3.7 million people that was part of the third cohort of Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance cities, leveraged data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve service delivery. Today, the city continues to build its data infrastructure to make public service faster, fairer, more interconnected, and more human-centered.

--- Recife uses a “describe the problem” approach for requests for proposals, opening the door for creative, innovative solutions to meet residents’ needs. Their app, Conecta Recife, gives residents access to over 800 public services right from their smartphones, and a “zero-click” approach to service delivery automatically provides free parking permits to residents on their 60th birthday. The city views AI as an opportunity to continue the trend of robust digital service delivery by simplifying previously complex, cumbersome problems. For them, AI is not simply a tool, but a strategic pillar for building a more functional government for resident impact.

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--- Miami CDO Cheriene Floyd shares how Generative AI is shifting the way cities think about their data.

--- A Chief Data Officer’s role in cities is to turn data into a strategic asset, enabling insights that can be leveraged for resident impact. How is this responsibility changing in the age of generative AI?

--- We’re joined today by Cheriene Floyd to discuss the shift in how CDOs are making data work for their residents. Floyd discusses her path from serving as a strategic planning and performance manager in the City of Miami to becoming the city’s first Chief Data Officer. During her ten years of service as a CDO, she has come to view the role as upholding three key pillars: data governance, analytics, and capacity-building, helping departments connect the dots between disparate datasets to see the bigger picture.

--- As AI changes our relationship to data, it further highlights the adage, “garbage in, garbage out.” Floyd discusses how broad awareness of this truth has manifested in greater buy-in among city staff to leverage data to solve problems, while private sector AI adoption has shifted residents’ expectations when seeking public services. Consequently, the task of shepherding public data becomes even more important, and she offers recommendations from her own experiences to meet these challenges.

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