Founded in 2011, the Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence (CIDI) is a research and policy center located in the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York; CIDI reports directly to the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. As part of the Office of the Mayor, CIDI conducts citywide interagency research to identify areas of service need in the City. To perform research, CIDI collaborates with all Health and Human Service agencies (e.g., Child Welfare and Homeless Services) as well as other City agencies (e.g., New York City Housing Authority and Education) to promote citywide policy change to improve the quality of services to all residents of the City of New York as well as to improve the effectiveness of NYC government. The vision of CIDI is to make data come alive to inspire change.
As an analytic office, the research agenda of CIDI is formulated by the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services as well as all Commissioners of City agencies providing data to CIDI. As opposed to traditional Memoranda of Understanding required to share data, CIDI developed a Transfer Protocol that allows city agencies to share agency data with CIDI in a timely manner upon approval of a project. To ensure the effectiveness of CIDI research results, all projects undertaken by CIDI have a working group with representatives from all data-sharing agencies to help with the design and analysis of the project. In this way, CIDI maintains the integrity of the shared data while providing actionable intelligence to the City of New York and other partners.