With a workforce of over 30,000 people, and opportunities in more than 1,000 different job categories, the City of Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the United States and one of the largest employers in Southeastern Pennsylvania. As an employer, the City of Philadelphia operates through the guiding principles of service, integrity, respect, accountability, collaboration, diversity and inclusion. Through these principles, we strive to effectively deliver services, to resolve the challenges facing our city, and to make Philadelphia a place where all of our residents have the opportunity to reach their potential.

AGENCY DESCRIPTION

You’ll sit within the Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation, but will work in unison with the Mayor’s Office of Policy, Legislation, and Intergovernmental Affairs.

The Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation (ODDT) was created by the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to make City services more accessible, dignified, and effective. ODDT’s approach is two-fold: 1) help departments publish open data and 2) collaborate with departments, the public, and other stakeholders to create digital services that support the success and well-being of all Philadelphians.

The Mayor’s Office of Policy, Legislation, and Intergovernmental Affairs ensures the policy and legislative priorities of the Mayor are organized, well researched, and implemented through legislative or administrative action. The Office strives to integrate evaluation, including randomized field experiments, into government action so that testing, iterating, and improving becomes standard practice. In addition, the Office works with the Mayor and City Council to set legislative and policy priorities, and works to implement best practices in partnership with key program stakeholders, and with experts both internal and external to government.

POSITION SUMMARY

In July 2017, the City of Philadelphia was awarded a Knight Cities Challenge (KCC) award from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Knight Cities Challenge seeks ideas that help make cities more vibrant places to live and work, focusing on three drivers of city success: keeping and attracting talent, expanding opportunity, and creating a culture of civic engagement. The award to the City will fund a project titled the PHL Participatory Design Lab, spearheaded by the Office of Open Data and Digital Transformation (ODDT) and the Mayor’s Office of Policy, Legislation, and Intergovernmental Affairs. The project was selected from a pool of 4,500 applications and is the largest Knight Cities Challenge award given this year.

The award will allow the City to hire two fellows from the complementary fields of service design and behavioral economics. The team’s goal: to find ways that will improve the experiences of the public when interacting with a particular City department and their related services. The fellows, in collaboration with the broader project team and City partners, will work with residents and City staff involved with a chosen service to understand their successes and challenges in experiencing or delivering it. Through the design lab, the team will travel across the city, meet people where they are, and co-design solutions with City staff, the public, and other stakeholders.

We’re looking for a social scientist to be a member of our broader service redesign project team for approximately 13 months. You should have a deep understanding of at least one policy-relevant field of study as well as advanced technical abilities related to experimental design and analyses. Thinking creatively and strategically about how insights from research literature can be transformed into policy and program designs that achieve departmental goals is critical. We expect the social scientist will develop and execute projects to rigorously measure whether interventions work as predicted.

SALARY - Commensurate with experience

Full time employee with City benefits, freelance, or academic buyout

Please apply by August 21, 2017.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

In this role, you will: 

• Implement evaluation projects, including coordination of agency and key stakeholder partnerships that exist both internal and external to government.
• Use social science approaches to help the City achieve its goals through designing experiments and evaluating them.
• Perform literature reviews to creatively inform City policy and program design.
• Design, implement, and analyze policy and program evaluations, including randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental analyses, and other methodologies as appropriate.
• Present research results through oral, written, and visual methods.
• Proactively provide ideas and critical feedback—as well as being open to such constructive dialogue—as part of constantly improving the PHL Participatory Design Lab and its collective work output.
• Ensure that work product adheres to methodological and open science best practices.
• Write descriptions and summaries of the PHL Participatory Design Lab projects for diverse audiences, including scientific experts, government practitioners, and public stakeholders.
• Help to disseminate scientific lessons, tools, and best practices across City government.

COMPETENCIES, KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

• Excellent communicator: Ability to articulate jargon to general audiences (e.g., City departments and the public), explain the logic behind experimental decisions, craft compelling narratives about research design, write and speak clearly, and cultivate effective communication among team members.
• Relationship-builder: Ability to work with a variety of people and personalities, listen and ask questions to identify new research opportunities, and cultivate strong relationships to ensure seamless collaboration and continued project support.
• Curious: Ability to practice active listening, ask questions to get at the root of a problem, be open to receiving/giving constructive feedback, and have a sincere interest in learning new skills or growing old ones.
• Compassionate: Ability to turn research insights into actionable solutions that address people’s real needs ethically and with integrity.
• Rigorous: Driven by thoughtful, quality, and detail-oriented processes, project output, and client/team interactions.
• Organized: Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, estimate timelines, rework a project approach based on unforeseen challenges, work well under pressure, and set/meet reasonable deadlines.
• Action-oriented: Ability to see opportunities, navigate barriers, be self-directed, and problem solve solutions that enhance the City’s deliverables, processes, and practices.
• Broad spectrum: Knows enough about the basics of social sciences and research processes to effectively collaborate across disciplines. 
• Resilient: Ability to have a sense of humor, learn from mistakes, and/or return to work after experiencing a setback.
• Amplifier: Ability to amplify others’ strengths and successes and operate beyond ego and self-interest.
  

• Subject matter expertise in at least one social science field of relevance to local government, for example, topics from psychology, sociology, economics, public policy, urban design, criminal justice, etc.
• Expertise in experimental design, including issues of sampling, randomization, and statistical inference.
• Proficiency in qualitative research and quasi-experimental designs. 
• Experience with at least one statistical programming language, such as R, Python, Stata, SAS, or similar.
• Proficiency in open science framework, including topics such as the need for registration of pre-analysis plans.
• Education: At a minimum, a Master’s degree from an accredited college or university in psychology, sociology, political science, statistics, economics, mathematics, or other social science field.
• Experience: Three years of highly-relevant experience which includes performing independent work of considerable difficulty requiring professional, scientific, or technical training and experience.

The City of Philadelphia is interested in hiring the best possible candidate for the Social Scientist role. We recognize that experience, education, and qualifications can be attained in a variety of ways and that many skill-sets are transferable. If you feel you’re a good fit, please don’t hesitate to apply.

Apply here and include:

• A one-page cover letter explaining why you’re passionate about participating in the PHL Participatory Design Lab project with the City of Philadelphia
• Resume or curriculum vitae
• If you have a research portfolio, please include it.