Back in AZ: the transition, working offsite, and watching the olympics

Well, I am home, back in Arizona working off-site in my internship for the center. I like telecommuting very much: I am more productive, I do not waste any time in transit, and I feel I have more energy. The downside is of course that I live where I work, and sometimes it is hard to separate the two worlds. One of the great upsides is having a flexible schedule and fun work environment; I have been watching the Olympics in HD while I do my work.

Team Advance

We had our "Team Advance" last week (we say "advance" instead of "retreat") which was fun. I got to know many members of the staff, for whom until now I had only heard over the phone. We played games to break the ice, but ultimately we had several round table discussions about the accomplishments and the goals/strategies that we would employ going forward in order to continue our success. We also barbecued at the Director's home, which was also very fun and relaxing.

Deadlines.....

The last couple of weeks have been very hectic; I have had deadlines almost every day this past week, and it has not been due to procrastination on my part, but rather just a lot of "time sensitive" assignments all at the same time.

My current task is rather tedious; I have been updating the surveys filled out by participants, which on its own would not be so bad, but since the server has gremlins in it, it is taking a considerably long time to make changes (3 minutes or more to refresh the page).

The art of correcting one's mistakes

Well, today I have been making corrections, both substantive and formatting related, on the graphs I created for my service areas. This is a very important part of the Data Report process; as peer reviewing allows a fresh set of eyes to catch mistakes that the primary author may not catch on their own. I am a great example of this, being mildly-dyslexic, I need every bit of help I can get when it comes to staring a excel worksheets.

Why I love Walmart

I know that some out there might read this blog title and think, "Here we go again, another liberal shooting off on how bad Walmart is." Well, let me first say that I have come to appreciate Walmart and all the glory that is Walmart. Why, you might be asking? Well in DC there are no Walmarts or other "big box" stores like Target (well there is one, it was just built and it is in Columbia Heights, which is a neighborhood that has a lot of "potential" if you know what I mean), there are only small convienence type stores and lots of yuppy shops like Trader Joes.

Take for example my last grocery store trip: to get food products I went to Whole Foods, for toilitries I went to CVS, for wine and liquor I went to A1, for soda I had to go back to CVS, I also needed cash so I had to go to BofA, and so on ad infinitum..... In Phoenix I could have gone to one Fry's grocery store and got everything I needed and more.

Ah, suburbia, how I miss thee.

Team work, good; not blogging enough, bad

Hi there readers, I have been a little MIA with regards to posting regularly; though, I promise that I have not left out any exciting developments at work or in my personal life. Lately I have been helping one of the other analysts finish her graphs and data for a couple of her service areas that she has fallen behind with. So, that has been nice as I like helping others out, but it has taken up much of my free time, as I have my own duties to attend to as well.

Worky-work, busy-bee

I have been racing to meet deadlines regarding the Annual Data Report and the new Dashboard publication that we will be rolling out in a couple of months. Basically I have been creating graphs and tables like a mad man. I also helped develop a city's performance management plan as a side project; this was tedious but very rewarding.

Unfortunately I must return to the magical world of excel.

The National Cathedral

I spent the most amazing afternoon at the National Cathedral a couple of weeks ago; my father is an Episcopal Priest and he preaches every 3rd Tuesday at noon at the Cathedral, and so my boss allowed me to work a half-day so that I could experience that. An old friend from high-school, who now lives and works in DC, joined me as well which was very nice. She and used to attend my Dad's church together back in Mesa, so it really was a blast from the past.

Even if you are not particularly religious, I recommend visiting the National Cathedral as it is the only 'stone by stone' constructed Cathedral in the United States and it took nearly a century to complete. The tower has a wonderful view of the city; I frequent the cathedral because it is only four or five blocks from my apartment and it is a great space to think and reflect.

Quadrant 2 day

The organization I work for has some very innovative ideas about organizational structure; we have "teams" instead of departments and there is no clear definitive hierarchy of power between individuals, but there is kind of hierarchy among the teams (i.e. the leadership team versus the management team). With this organizational management thinking comes the belief that all employees should spend at least one day out the year thinking/brainstorming on how the organization as a whole or the team you are a part can be improved. So, after being an intern for a year I was given the opportunity take a Quadrant 2 day (this is based on a time management model and Quadrant 2 is a high value/low time importance type activity).

I decided to spend my day outside and disconnected from the internet, the phone, and the television; and so I took a note pad and pen and went to a park by my apartment. There I began to think about how we (CPM) could provide a more comprehensive service to our clients; namely by helping them develop the performance management side that would enable communities to develop a strategic plan that have performance goals and targets embedded (as opposed to developing a strategic plan first and then searching for measures to fit the plan).

Helping Cities

The last few days have been a departure from my normal routine of data cleaning and formatting in excel to make pretty graphs (yippee!), as I have been organizing all of the data from 2004 to 2007 that has been submitted by Vancouver WA (this data includes services like Code Enforcement, Police Service, Fire/EMS Service, etc.). I think that this is kind of neat since they plan on doing a time-series analysis of their reported data in order to set departmental goals and targets. This is very important, as Vancouver uses Performance Measurement in order to do Performance Management, this may seem like an obvious connection, but I have seen that more often than not cities will collect data and not ever use it to develop policy or management strategies.

Ah Georgetown, if only I was rich

My living situation is quite different than it was last summer in DC, when I had an apartment on the Red-line. This year I am rooming with a fellow intern named Bo, he and I found a nice apartment in Glover Park (north Georgetown). Unfortunately, the residents of Georgetown, in all of their wisdom, decided not to a have a metro stop (subway) within a 3 mile radius of the area in order to keep the "wrong" sort of people from visiting. As a result, the only way in and out of this area is by bus or taxi, yeah!

Though, despite my complaints about the transportation, the area could not be nicer, as I have a Whole Foods two blocks from my doorstep. And I mention a grocery store as an important place to be near, as in DC there are not big box stores on every corner like they are in Phoenix.

Data Cleaning..... Yay!

Well, all of last week and the first part of this week have been dedicated to "cleaning" and formatting the data submitted for my two survey areas: Police Services and Purchasing. The data cleaning process is made up of "logic checks" (i.e. if x equals y, then it can't be Z kind of stuff as well as detecting outliers that are more than 2 times the standard deviation) and after that I eyeball the data to look for outliers that the computer does not detect, which at times are quite egregious. Once the problem data points have been identified, I email the jurisdictions and ask for them to verify their data, sometimes they correct the error, sometimes they verify that it's correct, and sometimes they simply ignore me (those data points get removed).

After I receive the responses from the jurisdictions, I then have to "extract" the data from our online survey tool. It extracts in a very raw form that is simply unreadable in that state, so I am required to format it, and transform some data into percents and the like. Once the data is legible it is posted online for our participants (city managers, analysts, etc.) to use in their annual reports and other performance management tools.

Sounds pretty basic, but it can be cumbersome at times as getting 220+ cities, counties, and towns to submit comparable data can be like herding cats.

What Works 2008

One of my assignments this week was to interview a participant from the city of Scottsdale about featuring their Youth Services accomplishments in the publication, What Works 2008, specifically regarding their high performance with respect to the percentage of 100% completion of Community Services hours ordered.

The info I received was amazing, as the city of Scottsdale believes in a type of proactive engagement that encompasses far more than just merely assigning youth to pick up trash. They have professional counselors that meet with the parents/guardians and the youth to explore what underlying problems may have caused the incident. Also they have workshops designed to teach "life skills" and educate about drug abuse.

What was really surprising is that one of the community service sites is a fitness center, and many of the youth that are assigned there to clean up the machines often develop relationships with the weight trainers and other staff and become members of the gym after their service is up. So, juveniles that were otherwise bored and getting into trouble learn discipline and how to live a healthy lifestyle through weight training and sports like boxing and basketball.

After the interview I turned my notes into a section for the What Works book and sent it to the participant to review and edit (in order to make sure that I adequately represented their perspective) and then sent it off to our editor for final review.

All in a day's work as an ICMA intern.

Introduction

Hi!

My name is Tom Holland and I am currently a Masters of Public Administration student at ASU. I am also am an intern with the Center for Performance Measurement.

The purpose of this blog is to share my experiences (mostly professional) as an intern over this Summer starting June 2nd through August 1st, so that future ASU students will have an insight into what they can expect from a similar internship or from the Graduate Management Internship with the Center for Performance Measurement.

First, I must confess that this is not my first summer in this position as I accepted this internship last year and worked in DC during the summer full-time, and then worked off-site in Tempe, AZ, during the school part-time. So, things like orientation and getting to know the organization and its many facets are experiences that I will not be blogging about, as I am able to hit the ground running my first day on-site. What I will be blogging about is data analysis, communication with participants (i.e. City Managers, Executive Assistants, Department Heads, etc.), publication of the data report, and various other fun stuff. That being said, I hope that I can make this blog relevant and worthwhile to prospective interns.

Enjoy!