Let’s Talk Data: Meet Anne-Marie Flatley, Senior Vice President of Performance Management and Analytics  

When Anne-Marie Flatley answered a newspaper ad for a City Research Scientist in 1998, she had no idea that 25 years later she’d be leading a department responsible for analyzing millions of records and data that help NYCHA understand its residents, track programs and initiatives to determine if they are operating successfully, and improve how the Authority serves residents. 

Ms. Flatley was born and raised in the Bronx to parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland. After graduating from SUNY Buffalo, she earned a graduate degree in city planning with a focus on housing and community development from the University of Pennsylvania. She worked in Pennsylvania for a few years before deciding she wanted to be back home in New York City. 

Once she landed her initial role at NYCHA, Ms. Flatley created the first geographic information system (GIS) maps of NYCHA’s developments and Section 8 households and mapped census and NYCHA demographic data. Since then, she’s held numerous positions at the Authority — which she partially credits to her many NYCHA mentors throughout the years — before being named Senior Vice President of Performance Management and Analytics in 2020.  

We spoke with Ms. Flatley about the work her department does, her proudest career moment, and the future. 

What is the Performance Management and Analytics (PMA) department responsible for?  

There are two main divisions I oversee: the Performance Tracking and Analytics Department (PTAD), which has Sybille Louis as the Senior Director, and the newer division, Performance Management, with Ryan Shanley as its manager.  

PTAD is responsible for mandated reporting and publications including the Annual Plan, which is a big part of our work. The Annual Plan is an incredibly important document because it’s where we set out what our policies are, and we tied our goals over the five years for the Annual Plan to the HUD Agreement. So, it’s another way NYCHA is holding ourselves accountable and noting how well we’re doing in meeting those goals for pests, lead, mold, elevators, and heating. 

PTAD also does various reports for City agencies; produces the official NYCHA map, Development Data Book, and Resident Data Book; does GIS mapping and PACT maps; provides analytic support working with resident demographic data; conducts performance tracking; and responds to hundreds of data requests per year from NYCHA departments, resident leaders, and outside groups.  

A good example of our data analysis with resident data is ERAP. We joined demographic data with overdue rent data from Finance to understand the magnitude of an issue; for instance, how many families owed less than $500 and how many owed over $10,000? Our analysis helps us understand the problem, because there are different interventions that could be designed to help these families. A big part of our ERAP work was putting the data together by election district, which helped our Intergovernmental staff speak to elected officials and say, “These are the developments and people impacted.” 

Tell us about the new division, Performance Management. 

Performance Management was formed as part of the Transformation Plan to have a unit dedicated to NYCHA Statistics, Trends, and Tracking (STAT), which brings together executives and development and central office staff to review data and explain trends on key performance metrics. 

The team is working on a KPI (key performance indicator) Project to develop a streamlined set of KPIs that are direct and actionable. We work with Operations staff to develop data tools for integrating KPIs into NYCHA STAT processes and day-to-day property management. The Performance Management team has developed a new NYCHA STAT SharePoint site to host data tools, trends/analytics, and resources. This site is continuously being built out, refined, and supported by PMA/PTAD staff.  

Each month we have a different topic we go over for NYCHA STAT meetings. With the KPI project, we are looking to build out a new portal for staff to go in to get information about their development and we’re trying to find easier ways to display the trend data. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? This helps staff to be able to quickly see how they’re doing and easily download data. We’ve been building that out, working with Neighborhood Administrators. To date, we’ve had 21 sessions with about 240 staff, and what’s great is we get feedback asking us to report on various items staff need data on.  
 
What is your favorite aspect of your job?  

It’s never the same thing every day. The sheer variety of projects I get to work on with staff across the agency means it’s never the same. NYCHA is a huge and incredibly complex organization, and I enjoy working on a team with staff to get these projects done. It has been great to build up relationships with staff over the past several years. It’s challenging but you have to work in a team, and it’s about the mission of providing affordable housing in one of the world’s most expensive cities.   

I also like that I’m constantly learning, whether it’s a new regulation or law that will impact our residents or operations or collaborating with staff from other departments to build a new program or evaluate an initiative.  

What is one of your proudest moments in your NYCHA career?  

The seamless transition from onsite to remote work during COVID. We had double the work because of the reporting requirements for COVID in addition to our regular work, and the staff pulled together and were really great.  

What are you looking forward to?  

With our new leadership and new tools available to us, I feel like we can hit our stride with tracking our initiatives to help evaluate and figure out what else we need to do to move forward and operate better. I’m looking forward to supporting our colleagues in Operations and helping to drive efficiency as an agency.