How Salt Lake City's Innovation Team is improving the city's financial systems and communication with residents
- The mayor of Salt Lake City created the Innovation Team to modernize the city's business processes.
- The team plans to completely overhaul the city's financial, human resources, and payroll systems.
- So far it has transitioned government software to Workday and started conducting resident surveys.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall created the Innovation Team in 2021 to foster a "culture of innovation" and modernize the city's business processes to improve transparency, streamline inefficiencies, and better use data to make decisions.
"The big thrust of the Innovation Team is to focus on internal services," Walkingshaw told Insider. He said the team is not public-facing, but its work will ultimately benefit the public by heightening transparency and helping Salt Lake City move toward data-driven decision-making and program-based budgeting, where funds for things like infrastructure and programs for vulnerable citizens will be distributed based on predicted outcomes.
"We can't achieve those goals without going through a pretty serious reconstruction of how we manage finances and human resources in the city," he said.
Walkingshaw, a Salt Lake City native who's worked for the city in different roles for 24 years, said he's excited about instilling a "change culture" among city departments and innovating its behind-the-scenes processes. "It's that investment in the future that's really important," he said.
Here's a look at how the Innovation Team is driving digital transformation and planning for the future.
Revamping Salt Lake City's financial systems to boost efficiency
Salt Lake City's financial system has been a "complicated mess" since the early 1990s, Walkingshaw said. The city has been using nearly 30 different types of software across 15 different departments.
The Innovation Team is working to integrate and streamline the system. To start, they partnered with the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) to restructure the city's chart of accounts, a list of accounts for recording financial transactions in the organization's general ledger that are the "architectural structure of the financial system," Walkingshaw said.
The city began using the software Workday in July as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool to manage its people, money, and assets. Workday replaces the multiple, outdated programs the city had been using and combines everything on one platform.
Walkingshaw's team began training city staff on the new software before it was implemented by explaining why the city was shifting to a new system and how to use it. They plan to conduct unit testing periodically and host follow-up training.
Transitioning to program-based budgeting
The new financial system will help Salt Lake City move toward project-based accounting and budgeting, which Walkingshaw said may take some time.
City leaders will gain better insight into how much is being spent on different programs, such as for the homeless or community services, and use data to be more deliberate about allocating funds.
"Then, over a couple of budget cycles, we'll transition away from the old line-item budget towards program-based, and ideally performance-based, budgeting," Walkingshaw said. This will provide more internal and external transparency in the budgeting process, which will help the city stay organized and better allocate its spending.
The team is also working on improving the process for capital projects, such as upgrading or building new infrastructure. They've also released a "Project Management Toolkit" to help city managers plan and implement new projects.
Surveying residents to understand their priorities
The Innovation Team is also responsible for Salt Lake City's resident surveys, which are conducted every other year to gauge residents' approval of city services, feelings about their neighborhoods, and how they prefer to communicate with the city. The next survey is in 2023.
Walkingshaw said they're working to restructure the survey to place more focus on city programs to see what the community values and what's most beneficial from a financial standpoint.
They've also done budget surveys to learn about residents' priorities for city spending. In the last budget survey in 2021, residents suggested the city focus spending on environment and sustainability, recreation, housing affordability, and supporting small businesses. The team plans to start holding budget panels this fall, where residents are invited to discuss specific budget issues, like construction, police and fire department issues, and housing.
Boosting digital equity
Digital equity is another focus for the Innovation Team. Salt Lake City adopted a digital equity policy in September 2020 to increase affordable access to broadband internet and reliable devices.
The city launched City Connect in 2020, which offers public Wi-Fi in community centers and parks. A partnership with Comcast Lift Zone offers broadband at community learning centers and facilities that support the city's Youth and Family Services programs.
The team is also working on a project to donate laptops that city departments no longer need to the community. Walkingshaw said the city currently sells about 500 laptops — which have been scrubbed of sensitive data — a year to an auctioneer. The computers are auctioned off to individuals who then resell them for a profit. Soon, the city will instead donate around 200 of these computers to community partners that help vulnerable groups, like homeless and refugee communities.
Even though it's just getting started, the Innovation Team is already making progress. Walkingshaw said the team will continue shifting priorities to drive digital transformation and help Salt Lake City modernize its operations.
"I'm excited to see what that outcome will be over time," he said. "We're a team of people that are fine with shifting priorities. To me, that's exciting."