Person:

Gardner, Elizabeth

The American social safety net exists to meet needs for: unemployment assistance, supplemental money for food, help with health care costs and medical expenses, and more. However, the process of signing up for these services is often time-consuming, confusing, repetitive, and frustrating.

To address these challenges, the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Benefits Data Trust (BDT) developed BenePhilly, in partnership with the City of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Departments of Aging and Human Services, to inform people of their eligibility for benefits and assist them in quickly and efficiently enrolling. This paper is a case study of the BenePhilly program and will serve as a guide to replicate its success. By using proven, data-driven methods, the program connects high-need, eligible individuals with up to 19 different benefits, all while reducing overall poverty, providing a better application experience, and increasing trust in local government.

BenePhilly is a network of government agencies, nonprofits, and community-based organizations connecting Philadelphians to benefits through targeted, data-driven outreach, referrals from a network of organizations, and in-person and telephone application assistance. The trained staff at both BDT and the nonprofit organizations embedded in the communities they serve help individuals easily find and enroll in benefits. According to BDT’s Chief Strategy Officer Pauline Abernathy, BenePhilly has helped more than 125,000 Philadelphia residents secure over $1.6 billion in benefits as of January 2021.

In this paper we will look at the values and goals cities affect with policies concerning connected mobility, and how to create a new framework that aligns with these objectives. First, we identify the transformative changes affecting cities and mobility. Second, we discuss in more detail the guiding values and goals that cities have around mobility with examples of these values in practice. Our next paper, Effectively Managing Connected Mobility Marketplaces, discusses the different regulatory approaches that cities can leverage to achieve these goals.

We recommend that cities identify various public values, such as Equity or Sustainability, and use these to shape their transit policy. Rather than segmenting the rapidly changing mobility space, cities should take advantage of the interconnectivity of issues like curb space management, air quality, and e-commerce delivery to guide public policy. Cities must establish a new system to meet the challenges and opportunities of this new landscape, one that is centered around common values, prioritizes resident needs, and is informed by community engagement.

In conclusion, cities must use specific public values lenses when planning and evaluating all the different facets of mobility. Transportation has entered a new phase, and we believe that cities should move forward with values- and community-driven policies that frame changing mobility as an opportunity to amend and improve previous transportation policies.

Trust can take a long time to build and short time to lose. In the past two decades trust in government has declined precipitously, including a drop in trust in local government which traditionally scored highly on trust metrics with residents.

This paper presents a form of trust-building based on responsiveness with a focus on harnessing digital tools and 21st century methods for engaging with and learning from residents. Additionally, cities are at an inflection point due to the influx of billions of dollars in federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This presents an opportunity for cities to meaningfully engage residents around spending, repair, and construction decisions and gain back trust through the “loop of responsiveness” we introduce in this paper.

Digital engagement tools form the backbone of this new loop. Current technology can be split into both active and passive methods, sorted by level of stakeholder work required. Passive sensors are low-effort and include sensors for monitoring air and water quality or catching early cracks in bridges too small for the eye to see. Active sensors require greater effort from stakeholders, including attending community meetings (virtually or in-person), writing to local officials, or submitting a request to 311. These methods can be mixed and matched together to cover a broad scope of engagement.

Local leaders across the United States have a unique opportunity to address crumbling infrastructure and increasing inequities thanks to trillions of dollars of new federal funding. The American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act represent the largest infrastructure appropriations in decades. Yet while the scale of this new government funding is historic, it must be used wisely to provide returns on investment for decades to come.

The authors advocate for investment in digital infrastructure that incorporates hardware(like Internet of Things (IoT) devices), data software, platforms for analysis and collaboration, advanced data capabilities (to both manage and protect data), and a smart governance structure to oversee these tools through policy and regulation. Digital infrastructure assists in managing public assets, scheduling maintenance and monitoring safety, improving sustainability and accessibility, and prioritizing equity in investment, health, and quality of life.

Digital infrastructure supports broadly beneficial, important goals. For example, improving roads in Black communities not only combats historic disinvestment but also increases safety by establishing safe bike lanes and pedestrian paths. This in turn causes positive impact on public health through increased physical activity, decreased automobile emissions, and fewer traffic fatalities. While governments can improve road conditions without digital infrastructure, the data collected from intelligent tools like air quality sensors and traffic cameras empowers local officials to measure progress more easily and detect – and implement – necessary changes. Digital tools can facilitate faster and more expansive public engagement,inviting the community to codesign new infrastructure and vote on improvements.

Digital infrastructure necessitates nuanced digital and data governance. As the physical environment changes, so too must city policy. We recommend that local leaders take these approaches to maximize the impact and potential of digital infrastructure: increase administrative capacity to manage both connected infrastructure and resulting data; center privacy and data security; plan for transparency and share open data, particularly with groups that have previously been targets of oversurveillance; increase community engagement at all stages of infrastructure planning; prioritize equity in timelines, funding decisions, and quality of life improvements; and engage legal support around vendor technology, data protection, and data sharing.

If cities can facilitate these changes in governance and create or retrofit digital, connected infrastructure, they will be well-positioned to use the new federal funding to address the harms of the past and build safer, healthier, and more equitable futures.

This paper was produced with the support of the Knight Foundation. The authors are grateful for the foundation’s investment in our work to assist cities in using digital infrastructure in novel ways and strengthen their communities.