The role of 'public entrepreneurs' in city government (and a shoutout to Jeremy Lack)

With a focus on New York City's mayoral election  next week,  this Bloomberg.com column considers things that mayors can do, including  school choice reform during the time Michael Bloomberg was mayor of NYC.  It points out the critical role played by Jeremy Lack when he was Director of Strategic Planning for the New York City Department of Education.

How Mayors Can Reclaim Government Efficiency
Amid budget cuts, city leaders are confronting how to get by with less.  By Cara Eckholm 

"Working with university researchers can offer exceptional value for money for cities. Researchers can deliver impartial analysis and technical skills that agencies struggle to hire — and are often willing to work at no cost to the city, in return for access to data and the ability to publish their findings.

"A strong illustration of the potential for impact comes from New York City. In 2003, Jeremy Lack, then the director of strategic planning at the Department of Education, reached out to economist Alvin Roth after reading about his work designing the medical residency match. The DOE had a problem: Its high school admissions process was leaving a third of students unmatched to any school they had ranked. Roth and his coauthors developed a new algorithm that solved the DOE’s matchmaking problem. The algorithm was so successful it was later copied in Boston, and contributed to Roth’s 2012 Nobel Prize.

"But the initial collaboration only happened thanks to the initiative of a public entrepreneur in an agency. Through setting up structured research exchanges, cities can make academic partnerships the norm, rather than the exception."