What Big City Mayors Need and Want

The current issue of Time has an excellent profile of Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles.  From the article:

"Garcetti wants L.A. to reclaim its reputation as the city of the future.  He has hired the city's first chief innovation technology officer and pledged to use data analytics to guide budget allocations."

I have also been watching the CNN Chicagoland series - - I would highly recommend it.  In one of the stories you see the Chicago Police Superintendent completely immersed in crime data and statistics.  You can see decision making based on numbers and analysis.  Big cities are increasingly becoming the laboratory for the era of data analytics - - data rich environments with plenty of skilled and young entrepreneurs to see complexity, problems, and opportunities. 

This like of data analytics, information based decision making, and decision support systems needs to come to the world of public works and infrastructure asset management.

Keep an eye on how Dallas, Houston, L.A., Chicago, and N.Y. invest resources in support of better data analytics and better decision making.