Our guest is James Wagner, the Chief of Performance Strategy and Innovation for the City of Tulsa. He leads a team in Mayor Bynum's office that aims to use data both effectively and intelligently in order to reach goals, remove barriers, find solutions, and foster community throughout Tulsa. Wagner joins us to discuss the results of a newly announced data-driven study that Tulsa has completed with the aid of the Gallup polling organization. As is noted of the so-called 2018 Gallup-Tulsa Citivoice Index at the City of Tulsa's website: "Good governance requires good data. Without understanding residents' basic needs, opinions, and ideas, city leaders cannot make quality policy decisions or address important issues within their city.... Recognizing the need to develop a new way to regularly assess how residents fare on key dimensions, the City of Tulsa partnered with Gallup in 2018 to develop and conduct a first-of-its-kind citywide survey of its residents. This representative study, which uses address-based sampling, will be conducted on a yearly basis to track the city's progress in improving quality of life and civic engagement among its residents." And so, as Wagner tells us, the survey contacted nearly 4,500 Tulsans from all walks of life to collect their views on three key questions: 1) Do residents view Tulsa as a destination to live and work? 2) Do Tulsans have access to basic needs and services required to lead healthy, productive and fulfilling lives? And 3) How do local institutions, organizations, and Tulsans themselves contribute to improving their local community?
The City of Tulsa's James Wagner Explains the Newly Posted 2018 Gallup-Tulsa Citivoice Index
