A Gem: Chicago's Civic Consulting Alliance
The Civic
Consulting Alliance is a partnership between the City of
Here are
some examples of pro bono projects facilitated by CCA from their site:
- CCA helped the Department identify key goals that
indicate environmental progress, and developed an environmental scorecard for
the City based on these. The priorities outlined in the scorecard were used to
realign DOE projects and priorities, and then were used to align the
environmental efforts of all City Departments.
- Each year, about 3 million tons of waste are generated
in
- Five-hundred-thousand riders a day depend on the
Chicago L, yet years of deferred maintenance now require billions in repairs.
Faced with such a large, yet required, investment, CTA asked, "If you
could build any rapid transit system in the world, what would it be?"
Along with its partners, CCA identified the requirements, characteristics, and
costs of "the rail of the future." This research led to numerous
planning efforts to reflect the result in current projects.
- Working with line and management personnel, CCA and
McKinsey and Company is applying lean transformation techniques to help improve
the effectiveness and efficiency of bus maintenance across all of CTA.
You can
read about their projects with the City of
Zune and iPod: Most people compare the Zune to the Touch, but after seeing how slim and surprisingly small and light it is, I consider it to be a rather unique hybrid that combines qualities of both the Touch and the Nano. It's very colorful and lovely OLED screen is slightly smaller than the touch screen, but the player itself feels quite a bit smaller and lighter. It weighs about 2/3 as much, and is noticeably smaller in width and height, while being just a hair thicker.