Using Data to Improve Outcomes

GIS Gives St. Petersburg, Florida, Police Deep Insights Into Crime Data

For years, Florida’s St. Petersburg Police Department practiced data-driven decision-making, providing officers, detectives and supervisors with various metrics to use in making patrol assignments or investigating incidents. The problem was that the data was stored in spreadsheets, which made it difficult to translate into meaningful information.

For example, a spreadsheet might show the addresses of houses burglarized in recent weeks, but where was each house in relation to the others? Were the burglaries happening randomly across the city or clustered in one area? An investigator staring at a spreadsheet would have had a hard time finding a pattern.

Today, that data is displayed on a digital map. The department now stores all its data on a central geospatial platform, Esri’s ArcGIS, that — beyond making the data easier to manage and access — provides tools for analysis and visualization. For example, the department can track key metrics in visual dashboards, while analysts can create interactive maps focused on specific datasets.

Think about investigating the destruction of parking meters downtown. Analysts mapped each incident to determine where vandals might strike next and sent patrols to that area. The result? Patrol officers caught the criminals. That’s how data-driven decision-making is supposed to work.

The ArcGIS platform supports the department’s use of the Compstat model of policing, which officials adopted in 2020. Compstat, short for computer statistics, entails regular meetings in which department executives and officers review crime data, identify key trends, decide on the best courses of action and track results.

Oklahoma Brings Data Focus to Medicaid Health Outcomes

SoonerCare, Oklahoma’s Medicaid program, covers slightly more than 1 million residents, or roughly 25% of the state population. The Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA) runs SoonerCare as a fee-for-service program, with services delivered through about 70,000 healthcare providers. The challenge, always, is to enhance service quality while improving cost effectiveness.

With that in mind, in April 2024 OHCA launched the SoonerSelect initiative, which includes a Quality Assessment and Performance Improvement program that provides metrics and processes for tracking healthcare providers’ performance. The program has teeth: OHCA withholds a portion of capitation payments (that is, the fixed, per-patient fee paid to providers), but providers can earn back the withheld funds by achieving certain metrics.

This article appeared in our guide, “Building Government’s Data Toolbox: Practical Uses for Data and Insights.” For more on how agencies are making real change using data, download it here:

Illustration by Kelly Boyer for GovLoop.