Martin O’Malley
Former Governor
Martin O’Malley was the first of a new generation of smart city mayors — he literally wrote the book on Smart Government. In fact, “Smarter Government — how to govern for results in the Information Age,” was published in fall of 2019 by ESRI Press.
Just two years after his upset election as Mayor of Baltimore in 1999, Time Magazine named Martin O’Malley one of the top five big city mayors in America. His new data-driven system of performance management, “Citistat,” earned his City the Innovations in Government Award from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 2002 and has been copied by mayors across the country and around the world. When he ran for his Party’s nomination for President in 2016 — after two highly successful terms as Governor of Maryland — Washingtonian Magazine called him “probably the best manager in elected office today.”
As Mayor, O’Malley set Baltimore on course for the largest ten year reduction of crime of any major city in America. As Governor, O’Malley’s leadership made Maryland’s public schools #1 in America for an unprecedented five years in a row. And with a new performance management regimen called, “Baystat”, O’Malley turned around a 300 year decline in the health of the Chesapeake Bay — the largest estuary in North America.
O’Malley’s performance management system, Citistat — and it’s Maryland progeny, Statestat — also inspired key amendments to the Government Performance and Results Act; foundational requirements intended to drive data-driven management practices across federal agencies today.
