Opportunity NYC
Opportunity NYC was an experimental Conditional Cash Transfer program (CCT) by the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Announced in April 2007, it was the first CCT program to be launched in the United States or any other developed nation. Its initial phases were funded by a number of private partners including The Rockefeller Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation, the Open Society Institute, Starr Foundation, AIG, and Mayor Bloomberg's own Bloomberg Family Foundation. The program is being evaluated by MDRC, a nonprofit research firm, using a random assignment research design. Opportunity NYC is administered by Seedco, a nonprofit community development organization. The program ended on August 31, 2010.
Stephen Goldsmith
On April 30, 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced he would appoint Goldsmith to become Deputy Mayor for Operations, a position he held until August 4, 2011. He had responsibility for the city's Police, Fire, Sanitation, and Buildings departments, among others, in his 14-month period of service. Goldsmith was tasked by Bloomberg with advancing an innovation agenda in the city and his work led to enhancements to the city's use of technology, improved restaurant licensing, and faster processing of building permits. Goldsmith oversaw the launch of the 311 Service Request Map, the NYC Simplicity Idea Market employee crowdsourcing platform and the Change By Us NYC community collaboration portal. Goldsmith supervised the repair of the troubled CityTime employee timekeeping system and initiated several public-private partnerships in the areas of energy, wastewater management, and parking. "The New York Times" suggested that his "short tenure was complicated by controversies, most notably after the city's slow response to a crippling snowstorm in December."