City Performance Innovator Oliver Wise Joins Socrata to Grow Team of Digital Government Thought Leaders

SEATTLE, Dec. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Socrata, the leading data-as-a-service platform for government organizations, welcomes former Director of Performance and Accountability at the City of New Orleans, Oliver Wise, as Digital Government Principal.

This addition follows other recent hires of celebrated, innovative public sector practitioners at Socrata, including Justin Bruce, former Director of Innovation and Performance for Jackson, Mississippi; Alex Krughoff, former Deputy Director of Prince George's County's CountyStat program; and Matt Miszewski, former Chief Information Officer of the state of Wisconsin.

"We have followed Oliver's contribution to the civic innovation community for a number of years and have been extremely impressed by his team's approach to solving problems with data. The methodology he pioneered in New Orleans to deal with seemingly intractable problems like blight, is repeatable across the full array of government programs that need to shift to evidence-based and analytical approaches. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to give government innovators like Oliver, Justin, and Alex the space to scale what works into the mainstream," said Kevin Merritt, Socrata's Founder and CEO.

Wise began his career at the City of New Orleans in 2010, when the City faced a $100 million budget deficit while managing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At the time, blight affected roughly 1 in 4 properties in New Orleans.

To help address the issue, Wise created the BlightSTAT program, designed to support the Mayor's goal of reducing the number of blighted properties by 10,000, or roughly 20 percent, within 3 years. Relying heavily on data and data analysis to determine efficient and effective strategies, Wise and team brought together stakeholders from across the City to tackle the problem. The City was not only able to meet their target, but do so ahead of schedule.

Wise will bring his considerable experience using data as a strategic asset to improve government program outcomes to hundreds of peers who are either starting, or trying to scale, similar data-enabled solutions in state and local government. That experience will accelerate the expansion of Socrata Blueprinttm - a methodology for developing connected, smart governments - to tackle problems like blight, housing, fighting the opioid epidemic, and, more broadly, community development. In addition, Wise will play a pivotal role in shaping the direction of Socrata's performance management products to create repeatable models for mapping performance KPIs to strategic goals, tracking progress, and acting on insights to optimize the delivery of any given government program.

Wise is also contributing to the Socrata Data Academy, a newly launched nationwide initiative to teach government decision-makers and analysts how to apply data analysis to solving problems. He has contributed as a subject matter expert on the currently available online curriculum and will personally lead executive-level courses, to be announced in the future. (Subscribe to the newsletter).

"Data intelligence in government is a moral cause. With data, our most abundant and underleveraged resource, our public institutions can work smarter to provide a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous world for us and our children," said Wise. "I am joining Socrata because I believe it has the strategy, leadership, and talent necessary to provide governments the tools they need to best lead with data."

Hear more from Wise, in this short question and answer video, about his career, his thoughts on data's role in government, and joining Socrata.

About Socrata

Socrata is the market leader in making existing government data discoverable, usable, and actionable for government workers and the people they serve. Socrata provides a data-as-a-service platform and cloud applications exclusively for city, county, state, and federal government organizations. Socrata delivers unprecedented, data-driven innovation and cost-savings by bringing together disparate systems and leveraging the cloud to dramatically enhance the effectiveness of government programs, to improve quality of life for residents, positively impact local economies, and achieve excellence in government operations. Socrata solutions are designed and developed to meet strict government standards and is the first company of its size to achieve Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Authority to Operate. The technology is optimized on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector cloud and delivered using the exclusive Socrata Blueprint Methodology.

Media Contact:
Elise Oras
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SOURCE Socrata