BCSTAT

BCSTAT is Baltimore County's performance management program, launched in March 2020 by former County Executive Johnny Olszewski. Developed to foster a data-driven culture, BCSTAT actively supports the County in using “data-driven management” by creating accountability, improving performance, ensuring data quality and increasing government transparency. BCSTAT’s mission is to incorporate data into decision making and apply data-driven analysis to everyday operations across county departments.

In officially announcing BCSTAT, Olszewski is delivering on a signature pledge to introduce a system to increase accountability and create a more data-driven culture in Baltimore County.

BCSTAT Announcement (March 4, 2020)  OLSZEWSKI ANNOUNCES BCSTAT, BALTIMORE COUNTY'S FIRST DATA-DRIVEN PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM 

Departmental and Priority tracking sessions are key components of the BCSTAT program and provide a continuous, in-depth, data-based view of high-priority issues. During these sessions, overall performance, notable trends, success stories and areas for improvement are discussed in an effort to develop strategies for enhanced outcomes.

Moving departments towards Outcome Based Budgeting is another BCSTAT initiative that promotes "data-driven governance and innovation" enterprise-wide. In addition, BCSTAT provides general data analysis and visualization support throughout county government, creating interactive GIS maps and developing data dashboards to inform both county departments and residents about topics ranging from opioid overdoses to code enforcement.

BCSTAT has also played an integral role in numerous efforts to address residents' needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, including eviction prevention, food distribution, and mobile vaccination clinic deployment.

Priority Tracking sessions are cross-departmental, collaborative, data-driven forums that highlight important issues affecting communities within the County, such as behavioral health, equity, sustainability, housing and homelessness, and transportation. They generally occur on a quarterly basis.

Housing & Homelessness These sessions focus on efforts that address housing insecurity and promote housing stablity and affordablity in Baltimore County. Topics covered in past meetings include: impact of tax sales, housing resources for homeless veterans, eviction prevention program (EPP) and STEP applications, and youth and family homelessness. Updates on Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), Voluntary Compliance Agreement (VCA), shelter utilization and homeless relief efforts are presented regularly to ensure transparency and accountability. Partners – County Executive’s (CE) Leadership Team, Department Housing and Community Development (DHCD), Law, Health and Human Services (HHS), Planning

Education Fostering lifelong learning requires partnerships across multiple County institutions. Education Stat makes this possible by bringing together key leaders from BCPS, BCPL, CCBC, and Baltimore County. ESOL services and English language learners, childcare resources, early childhood offerings, community college programming and apprenticeship/Career and technical education (CTE) opportunities represent areas where collaboration has supported educational opportunities for residents of all ages. Partners – CE Leadership Team, BCPS, BCPL, CCBC, Office of Community Engagement

ARPA Through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), Baltimore County received $160.7 million that will be used to address the negative impacts of COVID-19 on businesses, families, and communities. To support a transparent, efficient, and accountable process, the ARPA team will hold regular Stat meetings to ensure departments have the tools and resources to see their projects to completion. The first ARPA Stat session shared information on implementation, public input, expenditures, and eligibility criteria. Partners – CE Leadership Team, Office of Budget & Finance (OBF), Designated Departments

Equity Baltimore County recognizes the importance of considering equity throughout County operations. From allocating resources and services to providing opportunities, equitable decisions are necessary to build a future that enhances growth and prosperity for all. Equity Stat sessions achieve this by highlighting diversity, equity and inclusion topics that support improved outcomes for County residents, employees, contractors, grantees and other stakeholders. Past topics have included grant disbursement, salary equity, and vaccine equity. Minority and Women Business Enterprise (MBE/WBE) expenditures are also reviewed regularly. Partners – CE Leadership Team, Human Resources, Department of Economic and Workforce Development (DEWD), OBF, Police, Fire, Corrections, 911 

Neighborhoods Neighborhood Stat prioritizes issues that affect Baltimore County residents and communities with the goal of ensuring all residents have access to vibrant communities. Public safety, community engagement, code enforcement, and 311 municipal service calls are among consistent topics. Partners – CE Leadership Team, Code Enforcement, Permits, Approvals, and Inspections (PAI), Rec & Parks, DHCD, Department of Public Works and Transportation (DPWT), 911

Behavioral Health Previously known as Opioid Stat, this priority area has since transitioned into Behavioral Health Stat to encompass a broader focus and better address challenges and needs of all County residents. While discussions continue to explore the opioid crisis, topics have expanded to include suicide, crisis intervention, general substance use, and mental health overall. Partners – County Executive’s Leadership Team, HHS, Police, Fire, Corrections

Transportation Baltimore County’s Transit Development Plan and Strategic Highway Safety Plan aim to ensure and improve the safety of all residents, visitors and travelers on county roadways. Equitable transportation is also written into the Enterprise Strategic Plan through the key strategy of expanding the County’s transportation infrastructure. Transportation Stat supports these efforts by highlighting key trends, challenges, and progress. These sessions have featured topics such as accidents, county provided transportation, failing intersections, and sidewalk projects and complaints. Partners – County Executive’s Leadership Team, DPWT, Police, Fire

Sustainability Sustainability is an enterprise-wide focus, featured in both the core values and as a distinct Strategic Plan Goal. This stat supports the coordination of efforts across the government and County to advance sustainability and mitigate the impact of climate change. Topics considered in these sessions include renewable energy generation, electrifying county vehicles, solar power, septic tank conversion, and county building energy performance. Partners – County Executive’s Leadership Team, Sustainability Team, Department of Environmental Protection and Sustainability (EPS), DPWT, Property Management

Seniors Senior Stat helps the Department of Aging collaborate with other agencies around issues of safety and well-being affecting the County’s older adult population. Through regularly assessing services, programs, resources and operations affecting seniors and their families, this session supports informed decision-making and program improvement. Some topics previously covered include staffing, programming attendance, non-compliant assisted living units, nutrition, and fall reports.

Partners – County Executive’s Leadership Team, Aging, HHS, Fire 

Youth These sessions offer forums to discuss the needs of Baltimore County’s youngest residents. Covering birth to 24 years old, Youth Stat brings together various cross-departmental partners to review programs, services, and data that support young people’s overall development. Focus areas have ranged from lead exposure and substance use to childhood nutrition and youth employment. Partners – County Executive’s Leadership Team, HHS, BCPS, BCPL, Rec and Parks

Our departmental tracking sessions have a public safety focus and provide the Corrections, Fire, and Police departments space to discuss operational strengths and areas for improvement. These forums take place every two months and are collaborative efforts that bring together the County Executive, the County Administrative Officer and other members of the Executive Leadership Team, leadership from respective departments, and the Directors of Human Resources, Law, Information Technology and Budget and Finance.

BCSTAT hosted the first Departmental Tracking session featuring the Baltimore County Department of Corrections (DOC). 

This session provided an analysis of various DOC data sets including budget, overtime, staffing and vacancy information.

The first Departmental Tracking session of 2022 again featured the Department of Corrections. To encourage consistent tracking and accountability, each Corrections Stat has continued to review budget, overtime, staffing, vacancies, and supervised population data. The 2022 session also explored details by sentenced status, considering the charges, supervision types and demographics of pretrial inmates (those who have not been sentenced). By focusing on short-term vs. long-term pretrial inmates (less than vs. more than 12 months) as separate subgroups, along with bail information, this analysis helped highlight areas for improvements in sentencing and bail practice.

While pilot STAT sessions began as early as November 2019, the County Executive officially unveiled BCSTAT on March 4, 2020. Just one week later, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared COVID-19 a "pandemic", recognizing that this infectious disease outbreak posed a significant health risk worldwide. Two days later, on March 13th, the County Executive declared a local state of emergency for Baltimore County as COVID-19 was declared a national emergency. This overnight shift in priorities, as the County turned to an immediate response to an unprecedented public health crisis, put BCSTAT in the spotlight. Priority Stats were put on hold as BCSTAT pivoted to helping the County Executive, his senior team and the Emergency Operations Center ensure Baltimore County Government could continue to function effectively while ensuring employee and resident safety and community stability. In the early months of the pandemic, much of the team's efforts focused on providing departments and Executive leadership with the tools and resources to achieve these goals. To promote transparency and inform County residents, BCSTAT developed dashboards visualizing case counts, hospitalizations, positivity rates and vaccination statistics. Making COVID data more accessible to decision-makers and the general public was a critical part of the County's pandemic response. BCSTAT also supported efforts to alleviate food insecurity and housing instability, helping to address the socioeconomic impacts caused by the pandemic.

Summary of BCSTAT's Numerous COVID-19 Response Efforts

• COVID Intelligence Reporting
  • Daily COVID health and County operations reporting for County decision makers
  • Internal reporting database for County Agencies' PPE inventories
  • Data analysis to ensure an equity lens is applied to the pandemic response

• COVID-19 Outbreak Tracking
  • Provided geospatial analysis to support community outreach teams
  • Identified areas with low vaccination rates for mobile vaccine distribution

• Creation and Maintenance of COVID-19 related dashboards
  • Hotline Dashboard
  • Vaccine Dashboard
  • COVID Statistics Dashboard

• Partnership with Department of Health (DOH) and other agencies
  • Collaboration allowing BCSTAT to provide COVID data analysis for DOH leadership
  • Weekly Presentations updating DOH leadership about COVID data trends
  • Fulfilled special data requests to support pandemic-related tasks
  • Coordinated data sharing with MD State public health authorities including: -County/Hospital Alert Tracking System (CHATS) -CRISP Facility Resource Emergency Database (FRED)  

• Assistance with Eviction Prevention Program
  • Assisted with data transfer to new application portal
  • Prepared State and Federal Treasury reporting
  • Analyzed demographic data to assure equity in assistance
  • Prevented imminent evictions by identifying applicants issued warrants of restitution or reserve judgements
  • Worked with DHCD to identify areas of prioritization for rental assistance

• Food Insecurity Response Tracking
  • Mapped food distribution sites
  • Tracked number of meals served to different populations

Here are some examples of COVID-related dashboards:

To date, BCSTAT has developed and published eight dashboards displaying data trends in a variety of topic areas from opioid overdoses and public safety to code enforcement (see below to view all live dashboards). These public-facing resources promote transparency and encourage accountability on factors affecting the residents, businesses, and communities of Baltimore County. To ensure true accessibility, content will be translated as widely as possible. For example, the Opioid Overdose dashboard is currently available to view in Spanish.

"When our communities are in need, we have an obligation to come together to provide coordinated planning and the dedicated resources necessary to help empower residents, address disparities, and improve the overall quality of life," Olszewski said. "The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many long-standing challenges we face, and that has been especially true in Essex, which is why we are embarking upon this innovative, data-driven effort to provide transformative change

Source: Essex Recovery Initiative (June 10, 2021)  OLSZEWSKI ANNOUNCES PLANS TO DEVELOP FOCUSED RECOVERY INITIATIVE IN ESSEX 

In June 2021, the County Executive announced a focused, enterprise-wide effort to address the multi-faceted challenges facing the Essex community. Described as a “[comprehensive] multi-departmental place-based recovery initiative,” this  pilot program  continues the County’s focus on accountable and data-driven governance.   BCSTAT helped frame the discourse and subsequent planning meetings that would inform this program with the inaugural Essex Stat on July 22 ^nd . This Stat session identified key metrics for addressing the challenges and needs facing Essex and allowed for multi-departmental problem-solving. Data from the Census, code enforcement, 911, and housing were among the information analyzed to determine priorities and inform next steps.

• BCSTAT developed the financial and operational analysis which directly led to a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to support the Towson Circulator (November 2019)
• The Towson Loop now provides free-to-all transportation service around the Towson area, which reduces traffic congestion, improves equitable access to government and health services, and reduces carbon emissions.
• The County's five year Transit Development Plan envisions circulators in other communities across the county.

• BCSTAT improved government transparency related to MBE/WBE spending by combining and analyzing County accounting systems and MD State business registration databases in novel ways. (March 2021)

BCSTAT has suppported other data related projects, including:

• EQUITY INDEX
  • Generated an evaluation rubric that identifies most vulnerable Census Tracts and neighborhoods in the County to help guide County Projects
• ENERGY PERFORMANCE/PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
  • Created low-cost tools for more efficient data management by Energy Star
• LANGUAGE ACCESSIBILITY
  • Provided translation assistance to make dashboards and other County information more accessible
• OPIOID TREATMENT
  • Supported a county grant application to obtain resources necessary to implement Opioid Treatment related projects
  • Promoted collaboration and discussion between departments to solve inter-departmental bottle necks

Here are some examples of visualizations created by BCSTAT: