New York City Department of Education – Chandar Prabha Sharma – 2015

Goals

The New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) welcomed Chandar Prabha Sharma to help NYC DOE realize its sustainability vision and contribute towards the city’s OneNYC plan. The NYC DOE is the largest school district in the United States, serving 1.1 million students in over 1,800 schools, so the opportunities for sustainability solutions are great. Given the NYC DOE’s massive scale, the Division of School Facilities (DSF) was interested in using advanced technology to manage information and data. Sharma’s task was to launch an asset management and tracking initiative to research how best to manage data at the DSF internally and also in its coordination with other citywide agencies.

Solutions

After learning the data management requirements of the NYC DOE, Sharma conducted a market analysis of the different data management technologies that might be utilized. She also realized that other government agencies had faced and overcome similar challenges, so she conducted interviews with them. Through these interviews, she found that several other agencies had found success with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology. Sharma then investigated in more detail how employees and teams might use their data and the CRM technology and developed use cases.

To ensure policies and processes supported using the CRM tool, Sharma led consultations with different divisions OE and suggested ways for them to coordinate information. This coordination could enhance sustainability in operations and maintenance. For example, the CRM data could help DSF determine which buildings had the best solar potential. Then, DSF could share this information with the School Construction Authority and, once panels were installed, information could be communicated to the Office of Curriculum, Instruction and Profession Learning.

Potential Impact

At the end of her fellowship, Sharma developed suggestions for successful use of CRM. The CRM technology could help the NYC DOE as it tracks its assets and operations across divisions. This could facilitate sustainability improvements, which would ultimately help New York City in its ongoing work on the OneNYC plan.