NYCHA STAT Monthly Meetings Return

Throughout 2021, the Authority’s executive team held monthly virtual meetings to conduct a transparent review of performance at the NYCHA-wide, borough, neighborhood, and development levels. 

During these NYCHA Statistics, Trends, and Tracking (STAT) meetings, over a hundred employees from various departments, including property management, gather to review and explain trends on key performance metrics such as rent collection, rent delinquency, annual recertifications, maintenance, vendor work orders, and more. 

“The purpose of NYCHA STAT is to bring together the senior staff, the executives, and the staff from the developments and central office departments to review the data, look at the trends, and figure out what is happening, how can we fix things, who’s doing well, and who needs assistance,” explained Anne-Marie Flatley, NYCHA’s Senior Vice President for Performance Management & Analytics.

NYCHA originally implemented the Authority Productivity Tracking System in 2001 as a tool to hold managers accountable and provide NYCHA executives with the ability to analyze data and achieve more effective service delivery. The process went through various versions, leading to the current NYCHA STAT meetings. 

Eva Trimble, NYCHA’s Executive Vice President for Strategy & Innovation, said the true value in NYCHA STAT is providing a system for accountability. 

“It helps to identify the problems and come up with the solutions,” explained Ms. Trimble. “Let’s say the Office of Mold Assessment and Remediation indicates we have a problem with bathtub enclosures. We can immediately turn to Procurement and ask what’s the challenge with bathtub enclosures and how can we help.” 

Ms. Flatley said the idea of putting together all available data and analyzing trends to improve performance has been employed for about two decades at NYCHA. However, NYCHA is now doing this work more comprehensively. 

“Back then, it was a manual process to download the data tables each month and load them into an Access database to produce reports,” Ms. Flatley explained. “All of the data systems were on different IT platforms and none of the platforms were connected. Now, in 2021 it’s amazing – we have these incredibly data-rich dashboards, and you can see open, newly created, or closed work order trends, as well as the time to complete them NYCHA-wide or by borough, neighborhood, and development.”

The monthly meetings fit into the work of NYCHA’s Transformation Plan efforts to prioritize regular and consistent performance management at all levels of the Authority – NYCHA STAT emphasizes areas where staff may need assistance or more training. All items that require follow-up or corrective action are tracked, escalated if necessary, and addressed. The meetings also highlight the metrics related to the HUD Agreement pillar areas (mold, lead, pests, elevators, and heat) to give a holistic, integrated view of NYCHA’s performance.

Ms. Trimble said that even though NYCHA STAT meetings are about accountability, they’re not intended to be disciplinary: “NYCHA STAT is not meant to be punitive in any way. It’s about a chance for us to collectively look at our data and see how we can do better. We can’t fix something unless we understand why it is broken. It’s about the best practices that teams that are performing better share with other teams.”

Photo Caption: NYCHA’s Elevator Performance Chart