Country of Residence
United States
Age
18
Project title
CityValue
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
CityValue is a platform for city governments that allows officials to assess the outcomes and cost-effectiveness of civic programs to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
https://cityvalue.us/
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Growth (We’ve moved past the very first activities and are beginning to have consistent weekly or monthly impact)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
One day, while working on a school assignment, I read an article about San Francisco’s recurring budget deficit. Year after year, the city operated in the red, and I started wondering why. That led me to a more fundamental question — how do you know if the expense of a government program is actually worth it? We measure performance constantly. We track our runs on our wrists, our progress on school report cards, and fuel efficiency on our car dashboards. But when I started learning about how cities operate, I noticed that government spending is not always evaluated with the same kind of rigor. Cities know how much they spend, but they do not always have a clear or consistent way to determine whether that spending is producing meaningful results. That was the spark for CityValue. I began building a system that could analyze municipal programs by connecting cost with outcomes and community impact. The goal was not to replace the judgment of public officials, but to give them a clearer, more transparent way to see which programs are working, which are less effective, and where limited taxpayer dollars can have the greatest impact. What began as a school assignment became a much larger project and changed the way I think about public policy. Good intentions matter, but outcomes matter too.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
City governments spend enormous sums on programs intended to improve people’s lives, but they do not always have a clear, consistent way to determine whether those programs are actually working. Budgets show what was spent. Department reports may show how many people were served. But those measures do not necessarily reveal whether a program produced meaningful outcomes or whether its results justified its cost. That matters because public resources are limited. Every dollar committed to an ineffective program is a dollar that cannot be used elsewhere. When cities face recurring deficits, rising service demands, and difficult tradeoffs, understanding what is actually working becomes even more important. CityValue addresses that problem by bringing cost, performance, and outcome data together so civic programs can be evaluated more clearly. It helps officials distinguish activity from impact and compare what a program consumes with what it accomplishes. This matters to me because I live in a city where public spending decisions affect everything from housing and transportation to public safety and social services. Better information can lead to better choices, greater accountability, and more effective use of taxpayer dollars.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
CityValue is a civic-performance platform that helps city governments evaluate whether public programs are producing results that justify their cost. The system brings together information that is often scattered across budgets, department reports, performance dashboards, and public datasets. CityValue uses a proprietary algorithm to analyze what a program costs, the outcomes it produces, and its broader community impact, then converts those factors into a consistent framework for comparing public programs. For example, instead of looking only at how much a city spends on a program or how many people it serves, CityValue asks broader questions. Did the program improve the outcome it was designed to address? How significant was that improvement? How much did the city spend to achieve it? How does that performance compare with other programs competing for the same limited resources? CityValue then translates those findings into an accessible dashboard so officials can identify which programs are delivering strong results, which may need improvement, and where spending may not be producing enough public value. The goal is not to automate policy decisions or replace human judgment. It is to give elected officials and government staff a more transparent evidence base for making difficult choices about budgets, priorities, and taxpayer dollars.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
CityValue is still at an early stage, so its impact so far has been measured less by the number of users than by whether government leaders see practical value in the idea. I began by building the platform independently and then sharing it with elected officials, government staff, and public policy professionals throughout the Bay Area. The most significant response came from San Francisco’s mayor, who had campaigned on balancing the city’s budget, liked the concept, and referred me to the city’s Chief Data Officer to explore whether CityValue could be incorporated into agency dashboards. That possibility represents the impact I hoped CityValue could have when I started building it. If adopted, the platform could help city officials evaluate programs using a consistent combination of cost, outcomes, and community impact rather than relying primarily on spending levels or activity measures. The long-term goal is for CityValue to help governments identify programs that are working, improve or reconsider those that are not, and direct limited public resources toward the places where they can produce the greatest benefit. Even a small improvement in how a large city allocates its budget could affect thousands of residents and millions of taxpayer dollars.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
What makes CityValue different is that most government performance systems measure activity, not value. Cities often track how much money a department spends, how many people a program serves, or whether certain operational targets were met. Those measures are useful, but they do not necessarily answer the harder question CityValue was built around — was the program worth what it cost? CityValue adds that missing layer. Its proprietary algorithm evaluates municipal programs using a combination of cost, outcomes, and community impact, then converts those factors into a consistent framework that makes different programs easier to compare. That is important because public programs are often evaluated in isolation. A housing initiative may use one set of metrics, a transportation program another, and a public-safety program something completely different. CityValue creates a common analytical structure across agencies so officials can look beyond raw spending and activity levels and better understand which programs are producing meaningful results. The innovation is not simply collecting more data. Cities already generate enormous amounts of data. The innovation is turning that fragmented information into a practical decision-making tool that connects dollars spent with outcomes achieved. CityValue is designed to complement, not replace, existing dashboards and the judgment of public officials. Its value is in giving cities a clearer way to identify what is working, what needs improvement, and where limited public resources may have the greatest impact.
How many people are on your team?
1
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
I am currently the only person building CityValue. I developed the concept, researched the problem, designed the platform, built the system and its algorithm, and have been introducing it to government officials and public policy professionals. As CityValue develops, I hope to build a team that includes people with expertise in public policy, municipal finance, data science, and technology so that different perspectives help shape both the platform and how it is used.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Over the next year, my priority is to move CityValue from a working platform into a tool that can be tested in an actual government setting. My first step is to continue the conversations already underway with San Francisco officials, including the city’s Chief Data Officer, and explore whether CityValue can be incorporated into agency dashboards or piloted with a specific department. A real-world pilot would allow me to test the algorithm against live municipal data, identify where the analysis needs improvement, and learn how officials actually use the information in decision-making. I also plan to strengthen the platform by expanding the range of data it can evaluate, improving the way outcomes and cost-effectiveness are displayed, and refining the algorithm as I receive feedback from government and public policy professionals. At the same time, I hope to begin building a small advisory team with expertise in municipal finance, public policy, data science, and technology. My goal is to make CityValue more rigorous, more useful, and easier for cities to adopt. Success over the next year would mean moving beyond demonstration and into a real pilot where CityValue is helping officials evaluate actual programs and spending decisions.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
have been encouraging others to engage with CityValue by showing them the platform, explaining the problem it addresses, and asking for direct feedback on how it could be useful in practice. So far, I have shared CityValue with elected officials, city staff, public policy professionals, and others working in government and civic affairs throughout the Bay Area. Those conversations have helped me test whether the problem I identified resonates beyond my own research and whether the platform could fit into existing government systems. The most important response came from San Francisco’s mayor, who referred me to the city’s Chief Data Officer to explore possible use on agency dashboards. Going forward, I plan to broaden that outreach by meeting with more city departments, policy experts, data professionals, and civic organizations. I also hope to use demonstrations of CityValue to start conversations about a larger issue — whether governments should evaluate programs not only by what they spend or how many people they serve, but by the outcomes they actually produce. My goal is to build a community around the idea that public spending should be both transparent and measurable.
