Healing Pain Points in Government Service Delivery

Beck had come to Boise via the Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellowship. The program offers graduates of Harvard master’s or professional degree programs two-year leadership roles in local governments across the United States. During the fellowship, Beck and other fellows convened regularly to learn from each other’s experiences and get professional support from Harvard faculty and staff. Fellows not only tackled big priorities identified by the mayors they worked for but also helped to build lasting innovation capabilities in City Hall.

In Boise, Beck started on the childcare issue by building a deep understanding of the problem. She interviewed residents who’d launched in-home childcare centers, who told her how expensive and time consuming it was to get the required city permits. She also sat down with staff from the relevant city departments to map out the permitting process in all its complexity. “I tried looking up on the city’s website how to get a permit to open a childcare center and couldn’t find it,” Beck recalls. “That was pretty indicative of the challenges.”

Beck collaborated with city staff to identify key “pain points” in the permitting process, and which of those they could fix without changing state law or compromising quality of care.  By eliminating redundant steps and combining two permits into one, they were able to reduce the time it takes childcare operators to get a license from 90 days to 30, and slashed fees by more than one-third, from an average of $701 to $444. The project was so successful that city leaders adopted the same methodology Beck used to streamline licensing for special events.

The childcare project represented something of a twist for Beck. With a background in water resources engineering, she was drawn to Boise by Mayor McLean’s ambition to make her city more resilient to climate change. While she joined that effort, Beck was happy to apply her skills to other priorities — and gratified, she says, to work on “something that impacts women so profoundly.” She also made strides piloting new performance management tools for city agencies, including a data-driven way to track the city’s progress toward its affordable housing goals.

The experience demonstrated something special about working in City Hall. “To make an impact in city government, you don’t need subject matter expertise,” Beck says. “You just need to want to be there and be really excited. If you’re smart and willing to take on side quests that help you build relationships and credibility, there’s so much you can contribute all over.”

Beck’s climate resilience work was focused on a resource unique to Boise: a city-owned geothermal system that provides carbon-neutral heat for buildings downtown. She piloted new approaches to helping building owners make the switch to geothermal, as well as helping existing customers — including City Hall — use their heat more efficiently. She also helped pull together data to help city leaders better understand how to manage the geothermal system and the water it relies upon.

Reflecting on her time in Boise, Beck sees the fellowship as the best way she could have launched her career coming out of the Kennedy School. “My City Hall Fellowship allowed me access to top leaders in my city, as well as advice and guidance from leading practitioners at Harvard, both of which helped me better understand how to drive change in local government,” Beck says. “The most unique part of the fellowship is having a cohort of other fellows to learn from — and lean on.”

Beck’s next role after the fellowship is Deputy Chief of Staff for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. She was drawn to work in a place that she says “is leading the U.S. in how they’re thinking about issues related to climate.” And she’s excited to keep working at the local-government level, where Beck believes changemakers like her are most able to make a positive impact that people can feel in their daily lives.

“You’re closer to the people,” she says. “There’s more flexibility to try new things. And you have access to the budget and tools you need to implement change.”

Follow the Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellows and learn more about the fellowship program.