Cool Job Alert: Baltimore City is hiring for a deputy director of CitiStat

This is Cool Job Alert, a Technical.ly column where we feature interesting tech job openings from around the region. Got a posting you want to share? Email us at baltimore@technical.ly.

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When he took the chief data officer job in March, Baltimore City’s Justin Elszasz left an opening in the Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation (OPI).

Now, the deputy director of CitiStat role is open and taking applications.

looking 🔎 for an opportunity to use #data for good in #baltimore? can you do this: 💾 –> 📈📊 –> 💡? come take my old gig as a deputy director or be the PM for the data fellows program with the stellar @BaltOPI team! https://t.co/aOQm3SKR5P #DataScience #DataAnalytics pic.twitter.com/tBOoE8PDyT

— Baltimore Chief Data Officer (@baltdata) April 7, 2021

 

Through the CitiStat program, Baltimore uses data analysis to improve city procedures and departments. Along with the deputy director position are openings for program manger of City Data Fellows — and for City Data Fellows, too.

Deputy director and the program manager for Data Fellows would be responsible for programs like CleanStat, where a data fellow helped modernize the work order system of the sanitation department and created an online dashboard to track work orders in real time to increase transparency for citizens.

The positions fall into Baltimore’s 20-year goals of tech for transparency, accountability and efficiency in city government. Today, that manifests in the City’s willingness to use 100-day trackers, open checkbooks that track city spending and a recently updated open data portal. The aim is to use data and tech as a collaborative tool to improve the impact of local government agencies.

Elszasz’s Twitter thread with the job announcement led to a discussion on salary for the positions. As Allovue Chief Product Officer Jason Becker noted, “it helps a lot with BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] and women not getting underpaid, but also I think can reduce fear w/ some of these roles they’ll be way below market.” Elszasz notes that he made $125,000 as deputy director, and implied that he’d push for OPI to post salary ranges in the job description.

Elsewhere in city gov, Baltimore City Information Technology is also hiring for a newly made role as head of data architecture that encompasses the former duties of the chief data officer, as well as a few other positions.

Donte Kirby is a 2020-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.