Retired Marine tapped to lead
city's accountability initiative
By Chip Drago
Mobile Bay Times
A retired U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel will take charge of the city's CitiStat program, a software-based initiative designed to ensure accountability and improve efficiency in the delivery of municipal services.
Mayor Sam Jones this week tapped William J. "Bill" Harkins Jr., 42, a Mobile native who attended elementary school at St. Dominic’s and graduated from Davidson High School in 1981. He is a product of the University of South Alabama and earned a Masters degree in public administration from the University of Oklahoma.
Harkins said he had begun familiarizing himself with the CitiStat program which appears to fit well with his philosophy of management and bureaucracy.
"It looks to me like it is building on recent trends we’ve seen in government," said Harkins who earned his Masters in public administration from the Unviersity of Oklahoma. "I became addicted to this whole idea of reinventing government based on customer satisfaction.“
“To sum them up, they say that governments can do a better service for their customers than they have historically done based on customer satisfaction and working as a team," Harkins said. "This (CitiStat) is the next step in that evolution (of reinventing government) with Mobile having gone through ReAct and 311. I see CitiStat as the next step toward being a better government for Mobile, doing our jobs better and more efficiently. This is based on analysis, not gut instinct."
Harkins said he and department heads would meet regularly with the mayor and/or the chief of staff to assess what’s going right and what isn’t. If something is working well, perhaps it could be exported to another department needing improvement in that area, said Harkins. If something isn’t working, city leaders can find out why and make the changes needed to correct the shortcoming.
“I’m very excited about this because it gets the senior leaders with government at the table together,” said Harkins. “If one department head has an idea on how something has worked with her personnel, maybe that idea can apply across all departments. That can be shared at a table rather than memo’s going all around. This can create a real team focus; who can best accomplish a mission and how.”
“This program will allow the people in city government to look at the job they are doing and measure to see if they could be doing it better,” he said. “Maybe they need additional information from another section, another set of eyes or ears for them (to benefit from). That is cross fertilization and it is my job as CitiStat coordinator to help these department heads get that focus on working together, measuring their performance. I’m not going to say this is how you measure. I’m going to ask what is your job and how do you measure and I’ll help you do it more efficiently. They are the experts (in their departments). With this cross fertlilization, I can go to other departments and say this one did this and it worked."
Harkins is the son of Dr. William J. “Joe” Harkins Sr., a retired professor of political science at the University of South Alabama. The elder Harkins’ special expertise was in state and local government. Harkins’ sister is also a former professor at USA. Dr. Patricia Harkins-Pierre taught creative writing and English literature. She is now a professor at the University of The Virgin Islands.
While in the military, Harkins headed a provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan, collecting data from the Afghan government to assess the country’s terrain and land uses relating to enemy threats as well as its educational component to develop a strategy for re-establishing the country’s autonomy in the short and long runs.
He served as a provost marshal over a small military unit in Albany, GA. and over a much larger contingent at Camp Pendleton in California with 90,000 soldiers. In both places, his duties involved analyzing logistical data.
During his military service, Harkins was decorated with a bronze star, four meritorious service medals, an Afghanistan campaign medal and a humanitarian service medal.
Harkins and his wife, Maria, have an 11-year-old daughter, Savannah. Where the Harkins would reside after his retirement from the military was a decision he left entirely to his Boston-born wife, said Harkins. He said she chose Mobile in part because she loved "the old oak trees."
Harkins is a mayoral appointee. Yearly pay for the CitiStat coordinator is $65,000.
Jones was in Miami and not immediately available for comment on his appointee.
Former City Councilwoman, mayoral candidate and big CitiStat fan Bess Rich had sought to head the CitiStat program, which originated in New York as a crime fighting tool but was then adapted by the city of Baltimore for managing the delivery of all city services.
“I wish him the very best and look forward to CitiStat in Mobile being the fine tool I know it can be for delivering our city services in a cost effective and timely manner,” Rich said.
