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Blake Wisz, via Unsplash
Small Business First Design Implementation and Evaluation
Small Business First Design Implementation and Evaluation
Two people at computers at a desk
Blake Wisz, via Unsplash

Project Summary

Client

NYC Department of Small Business Services

Services

Sectors

The NYC Department of Small Business Services needed help launching and implementing Small Business First, a complex, 15-agency effort to streamline the way the City government interacts with small businesses.

This effort grew out of a desire to help small businesses in New York City thrive by saving businesses time and money, reducing the amount of regulatory steps businesses have to go through, and increasing compliance with City regulations. Public Works was brought on to put our project and stakeholder management expertise to work to bring this effort to fruition.

The NYC Department of Small Business Services needed help launching and implementing Small Business First, a complex, 15-agency effort to streamline the way the City government interacts with small businesses.

This effort grew out of a desire to help small businesses in New York City thrive by saving businesses time and money, reducing the amount of regulatory steps businesses have to go through, and increasing compliance with City regulations. Public Works was brought on to put our project and stakeholder management expertise to work to bring this effort to fruition.

Our Strategy

We conducted an extensive operational review and mapping of regulatory processes, current practices, and goals to document the current state of the small business ecosystem and identify pathways to improvement.

Public Works project managed 30 cross-agency transformation initiatives and collaborated closely with SBS to understand the needs of small businesses and the regulations governing them. Our team established close coordination with all partner agencies, combining fact-finding on existing practices and processes with recurring status updates as new programmatic components and policy-decisions were developed. We worked in depth with DOB and FDNY to create detailed recommendations on how they could better coordinate overlapping jurisdictions to reduce the onus on businesses interacting with the agencies. 

Christiann Koepke, via Unsplash

Impact
and Outcome

We helped launch 15 initiatives and designed and launched a Business Support Center that provides a one-stop resource for a small business owner to get information and advice, and to transact business with the City.

Public Works designed metrics to track the impact of these initiatives on small business owners’ bottom lines and built the data collection systems to track these metrics, including ways to help adjust service delivery based on what the metrics show. We also developed easy-to-use project management tools to ensure SBS staff could manage the project when our engagement ended.

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