One year after the launch of Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities, a "national initiative to help 100 mid-sized American cities enhance their use of data and evidence to improve services, inform local decision-making and engage residents",  the initiative is already making an impact, says James Anderson, who oversees Bloomberg Philanthropies' Government Innovation programs.

In his opening remarks at the Summit on Transforming Data Into Action,  the first annual What Works Cities Summit hosted in New York City, Anderson said that the initiative was helping to build up the capacity of cities by getting better at using data as evidence. 

"Building up the capacity of cities to solve complex problems." - @jmsndrsn #WWCSummit

-- Mark Headd (@mheadd) April 19, 2016

While the Open Data Initiative, which encourages government organizations to provide public access to data which previously was accessible only to government employees for the purposes of both transparency and innovation, has gained significant momentum on a global scale over the past five years, the push to harness that data for insight into the health of a community as well as the progress and outcomes of government initiatives is, to some, a daunting but obvious next step. 

Data allows #cities to get better at just about everything they want to do @jmsndrsn tells #WWCSummit #whatworks pic.twitter.com/Q9Nxe8Typo

-- Bloomberg Cities (@BloombergCities) April 19, 2016

The What Works Cities Initiative has already spread across 27 cities and serving a total of 11 million people with economies totaling $38 Billion, says Anderson. 

.@BloombergCities making an investment of $42M over three years to help cities use data #WWCSummit pic.twitter.com/MoYdXijaeM

-- Victoria Carreon (@ToriCarreon) April 19, 2016

.@WhatWorksCities cheers! In 1 year, the #data revolution has unleashed huge #impact across US Cities! #WWCSummit pic.twitter.com/iPi5YvjBvc

-- Results for America (@Results4America) April 19, 2016

In its 1st year, @WhatWorksCities has worked w/ 1,000 #localgov leaders and conducted 60 diagnostics. #WWCSummit

-- Route Fifty (@statelocal) April 19, 2016

To kick off the initiative's first summit, the former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, shared some thoughts with the audience mostly comprised of mayors, administrators, government technologists and initiative leadership members. 

50% of people in the world live in cities, the problems and the solutions come from cities @MikeBloomberg #WWCSummit pic.twitter.com/BGQ6wi6fvx

-- Data-Smart Cities (@DataSmartCities) April 19, 2016

.@MikeBloomberg: if you paint the roof of a building white, the energy consumption goes down 25%. (True of 95% of NY buildings?!) #WWCSummit

-- Alex Howard (@digiphile) April 19, 2016

"We want to help cities answer questions about how they can more effectively serve their citizens." -@MikeBloomberg #WWCSummit

-- Data-Smart Cities (@DataSmartCities) April 19, 2016

Bloomberg says "it's the most dangerous thing, to lead from the back." #WWCSummit

-- Alexander C. Kaufman (@AlexCKaufman) April 19, 2016

"cities have a lot more in common with each other than they have differences" @MikeBloomberg #WWCSummit pic.twitter.com/SP5plmDhqD

-- Katie Appel Duda (@kjappel) April 19, 2016

Data is dangerous but it gives us credibility and knowledge what we are doing is right @MikeBloomberg #WWCSummit pic.twitter.com/xCb30wfWKD

-- CtrForGovExcellence (@gov_ex) April 19, 2016

As part of the leadership team representing my own city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and as part of the APPCityLife civic technology team working to help cities not only solve problems through data and mobile but better understand the impact and gaps of those solutions, it is exciting to see this conversation taking place on a larger scale. We can do more with our data, and making sense of the impact of what we are doing in cities is an excellent start to creating sustainable, replicable solutions with cities across the globe.