CLI: Director, Center for Local Innovation, Chad Adams
Steiger: President and Founder of CityPeer
CLI: Tell us a little bit about CityPeer, how it started, what you’re trying to accomplish and what the name “CityPeer” stands for?
Steiger: We realized that with more than 87,000 governments in the United States, someone, somewhere, has faced the same issues that your community is facing. They have gone through all of the trials and tribulations, made mistakes and learned the wrong way and the best way to deal with that issue.
This can be very valuable information. It could save weeks, months and even years of wasted effort. It could also save a great deal of money. This money should be spent on improving the services that community offers and not on repeating the mistakes of others.
The whole concept started when I saw a group of K-9 officers from various communities getting together at a Max and Erma’s for a quarterly lunch. I was first struck with the idea, “Of course, they have to talk with each other.” Followed closely by, “This is it?” There must be some better way.
So I searched and searched for that better way. I found associations that deal with big issues; I found email list serves that blast every one on the list with every communication including replies to replies. And most of all, I found silos of information to deal with very specific, high level topics.
What I did not find was a way for one group to draw upon the experience and knowledge of people in another group. I also did not find a way to communicate about all of the day-to-day issues that our public servants face. Nor did I find a way to archive this information to eliminate the obvious duplication of efforts.
So I set out to build something that would do all of these things without overloading our users with information that they don’t need or want.
The challenge was to build a tool that is specific enough to find the necessary information, yet flexible enough to draw on any possible source for that information. We wanted to make sure that cities did not only communicate with other cities and counties with other counties.
For some situations the solution to a problem that a large metropolitan county has could come from a small rural village. For other issues we wanted to make it easy for someone to find a community which closely matches their profile.
Because we could never anticipate all of the possible issues that would be dealt with within CityPeer we needed to design the architecture which allows the user to go to the best source for their needs.
So we built CityPeer as an Interactive Network of Communities. These communities could be cities, townships, counties, special governments like a sewer district or school system or even a large hospital or amusement park, really any organization that functions like, and has the issues of, a city.
We have built an online portal which makes it very easy for the people who make our communities work to find other people with solutions to their day-to-day needs.
As our name suggests, we want to make it easy for people to find their peers. The idea was not to exclude counties or villages or any other organization by calling it CityPeer, but we needed a name.
And although we named it CityPeer, we want to make sure that people know that villages, counties and any other local government community is valuable to our network and welcomed.
CLI: In many instances, city/county officials (elected and staff) seem to very limited access to what other cities and counties are doing. More often than not, they tend to focus on what their neighbors are doing or what others have done, how would CityPeer be of worth to these folks?
Steiger: Our public officials are constantly being asked to do more with less. The demand on their time and resources limits much of what they do. These clusters of communities are a result of this burden.
CityPeer was designed to focus on the issue rather than any kind of “Buddy List” because it would be too easy for our users to simply fall back into their comfort zone of people that they already know and rely on if the focus was on the users.
Our members have access to every conversation that takes place through our discussion feature. Our members also keep a list of keywords in their profile. These keywords are words or phrases that are important to that user.
If the user opts in, they will get notified when a conversation takes place with one of those keywords. This keyword trigger will pull people into relevant conversations and out of their own small group.
By doing this, ideas and solutions will come from all over the country and from a wide variety of government types, and a wide selection of people in any number of possible positions. Our users don’t even really need to know that they have the problem which is the ultimate form of proactive behavior.
We simply want to be the vehicle that connects problems with solutions. We believe that the people that are entrusted with managing and maintaining our communities are best equipped to determine if the solution fits their individual need.
As long as we keep the focus on resolving the day-to-day issues, and leave red vs. blue in the world of policy and legislation we will all benefit from a more productive community.
CLI: In NC, in many counties over 80% of the budget is, in some way, encumbered by the state in the form of mandates. As such, what benefit would CityPeer be for counties in NC?
Steiger: When you think about all of the things that we ask our governments to do for us; from building bridges, to managing public swimming pools, to providing community theater programs, to collecting trash and protecting us from fire, flood, crime and pollution, and by the way, do it faster, better, cheaper, greener than you did it last year, you get a decent idea of how many issues may arise.
Every community employee will face a new set of obstacles and challenges every day of the week. And while an attempt at a solution may prove to be unworkable because of local or regional mandates, it will also most likely spark the imagination enough to modify the solution to fit the needs of that community.
Additionally, mandates from a higher authority may try to spell out what, where, when and how, but in reality they will only scratch the surface of the how portion. The people in the local communities will be left to figure out how and, how best, to meet these mandates.
And just as every new tax law creates new tax loopholes, well intended restrictions and mandates will require creative compliance. This creative compliance will allow the letter and spirit of each mandate to be met while addressing the just as important, productivity issue. CityPeer will deliver this creativity right to those who need it most. Because one thing that Americans are not short of is creativity.
CLI: Performance Management and Competitive Sourcing are only just starting to become acceptable concepts in cities and counties. Does your organization help leaders find ways to incorporate these innovative approaches into their organizations?
Steiger: Yes we sure do. While we leave all of the “content” of our network up to our members, we take our job of finding creative solutions to plug into the network very seriously. We know that not every concept, vendor or innovation is going to be of value to every one of our members.
We also know that it is not our job to determine what is best for any one community. What we strive to do is find innovative, creative and even mundane organizations who have something to offer. If the potential exists for them to bring value to our members we bring them into the network and make sure that they are easily found by our other members.
We are currently partnering with a non-profit organization in northeast Ohio who is set up to do sourcing for as many as 745 local governments. This leverage is already saving hundreds of thousand of dollars per year for each of their communities.
Using a tool such as CityPeer they will be able to repeat this all over the country. They will also be able to increase this power by partnering with other CityPeer members who offer synergistic services.
From the advent of the printing press to building a Boeing 777, to a successful marriage, effective communication is the key to all of it. Getting the ideas and concepts to the people who can benefit and implement is what CityPeer does. It would be nice to claim credit for the great ideas too, but…
CLI: In many states (including NC), the cost of local government is increasing faster than inflation and population growth. What innovative approaches are you seeing take place through your network?
Steiger: We are seeing all kinds of interesting situations take place, from the regional sourcing, which is saving huge dollars, to a community finding a solution to their problem with unwanted geese.
And the surface has just been scratched. There is so much more possible. Imagine ad hoc purchasing all over the country. Small purchasing groups have one major problem. They can really only go after certain items and services because not every community needs the same thing at the same time.
But right now out of the 87,000 plus governments in the US there are probably 500 that need new street lights or score boards or long distance service. The potential purchasing power is mind blowing.
Another example of what we can offer came from our work with the National League of Cities. A new city manager wants to explore school vouchers for their school system. They ask other members what experience people may have both pro and con. The conversation leads to a difficulty administering the vouchers.
Someone else recommends a specific software package to do the job. IT professionals are now simply involved in the conversation. The software needs a certain operating system and a specific infrastructure. It is learned that this certain infrastructure and OS is available as a very small upgrade because an IT vendor is involved in the conversation.
The actual administration needs to be done by someone with very specific credentials so the HR group gets involved in order to determine what individuals have these credentials. And finally the finance people are involved to discuss what funding mechanisms are available to pay for this new innovation.
In the current model this series of steps would take months or even years, but because everyone involved is using one common tool this example takes less than one week.
People have always said that information is power. If that were true, librarians would hold all of the power. The application of knowledge is the real power.
CLI: What are some examples of success stories that you could relate to our readers?
Steiger: One of my favorites was mentioned in the last answer. There is a community here in northeast Ohio that has been having a terrible problem with unwanted geese. The birds themselves weren’t as much of a problem as all of the goose poop that they left behind.
For several years the city has been trying everything under the sun to get rid of them without harming them or upsetting the residents. Because of our network, a mayor from another city learned about the problem and instantly thought of a similar problem within a college in her town. She supplied the appropriate contact information of the service director at the college and then because of CityPeer the problem was introduced to a solution.
Over the years this goose problem may have taken up thousands of man hours for this small city. It was addressed several times during city council meetings, and it had residents and business owners fairly upset.
The city could not put any dollar figure on what they spent over the years on unsuccessful remedies or wages in attempt to solve this problem, but one thing is for sure, the money and time could have been spent more productively.
This goose problem is a great example of the type of problems that communities face on a daily basis. CityPeer exists to enable the type of communication and collaboration that is necessary to improve the productivity in our nation’s communities.
From policy to goose poop CityPeer is simply a tool to put problems in touch with solutions.
CLI: How can people find out more about CityPeer?
Steiger: We can be reached at 888-229-3782 or www.citypeer.net or emailed at [email protected]
CLI: Across NC, we have cities like Charlotte and Raleigh as well as much smaller, rural areas. How would CityPeer be of use to small cities or counties?
Steiger: Our value to smaller communities may be more pronounced than in larger communities because they typically have far fewer resources. Small communities also don’t have the purchasing power that a larger community would have.
In reverse, small communities have been forced into creative solutions because of budget and resources constraints. This means that their input could be very valuable to other larger communities.
Our nation’s communities face similar situations. They may have varied scale and scope, they may have differing laws and regulations, but they are not alone. There are 87,900 governments in the United States. One of the governments is our federal government and 50 more are state governments.
Of the remaining 87,849 only so many can be Orange County California, or New York City. In Ohio we have more than 3,800 governments. Our larger cities, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton, Akron and Youngstown make up only seven of those 3,800.
The remaining governments need to rely on the creativity, experience and leveraged purchasing power of each other to truly effectively serve their citizens.
Jim Steiger’s Bio:
Jim has 18 years experience in technology sales. He Started CityPeer in December 2004, which is his second technology venture; Pathfinder Bandwidth, Inc. was the first.
Jim serves as co-chairman of the technology committee for the Brecksville/Broadview Heights CERT (Community Emergency Response Team)
He also serves as Citizen Member of the Telecommunications Commission for the city of Brecksville, Ohio.
Jim is married and has two children.