Two years in, Philly gov leaders reflect on the $10M Operations Transformation Fund

Since launching the Operations Transformation Fund (OTF) in 2021, the nearly $10 million fund has invested in 29 projects across city departments, including 11 in the first cohort and 18 in the second. The fund selected projects through a competitive process aiming to improve services for Philadelphians and make government processes more efficient.

As of October, $8.64 million from the fund has been allocated for projects with goals such as increasing awareness for workers rights and supporting environmental justice in Southwest Philly. In 2022, the City released a dashboard to track the progress of the projects; collectively, they’re 83% completed.

Projects which “to the general public might not seem very transformational are extraordinarily transformational to the departments and their ability to provide services to residents and businesses and whomever else is their constituent,” Philadelphia Chief Administrative Officer Stephanie Tipton told Technical.ly.

The City released a report and video last month reviewing the last two years of OTF. Two key takeaways from the project, per Tipton, have been the importance of focusing on projects driven by employees, and offering support to projects by having a central place for “project delivery assistance.”

Aviva Tevah, chief of staff for CAO, said the office released this report and video to provide transparency around how the money was allocated and the progress and outcomes of those initiatives.

Candace Chewning is the project lead for the Office of Worker Protections’ Community Education and Outreach Fund, a project from OTF’s second cohort. Her department used the funding to partner with 14 organizations across the city to do community outreach and provide education about Philly’s worker protection laws. The Office of Worker Protections offered $16,000 in grants to these community partner orgs.

The OTF funding helped the department develop their idea into a full program — and showed community organizations that the City was invested in working with them, Chewning said.

“We engaged our partners and asked for their opinions before this program had started,” she said. “We designed this program based off of what they told us would be beneficial in order for them to be partners with our office in a meaningful way. I think that the OTF programming was a big part of that.”

“There are these ideas out there that are transformational, and that they might just need different supports to get to the point of being ready to implement.”Aviva Tevah City of Philadelphia Office of the Chief Administrative Officer

The Office of Sustainability’s Place Based Framework for Environmental Justice project was part of OTF’s first cohort, said Taylor Quinland, program strategist for place-based initiatives for the agency.

This project helped fund resources, including Quinland’s position, for increased collaboration and communication with the Eastwick neighborhood in Southwest Philadelphia regarding environmental issues and recovery from natural disasters.

“We’re working to evaluate a suite of options that could help Eastwick and that involves planning through the next 10 or so years,” Quinland said. “So we’re definitely still continuing and sort of at a point where we can begin to show residents … certain plans and ideas.”

While most of these projects are implemented, they’re still young, so CAO plans to continue using its dashboard to report progress and outcomes of each project, Tipton said. They also plan to continue putting money toward a fund that departments can apply for to compensate residents who are assisting with projects, as CAO encourages community engagement with these projects.

As of now, there isn’t funding to support future OTF cohorts, but the office plans to work with Mayor-Elect Cherelle Parker’s administration to put in a budget request to keep the fund going, per Tipton.

If CAO is able to continue the OTF, Tevah said, the team hopes to have more time to workshop project ideas and accept projects that are at earlier stages; this time around, they had a short timeline and were restricted to choosing projects that were more fleshed out.

“There are these ideas out there that are transformational, and that they might just need different supports to get to the point of being ready to implement,” Tevah said. “It would be really, really exciting to be able to get an idea from an even earlier phase into a project plan.”