Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday appointed a new chief efficiency officer, a position charged with evaluating how city agencies are run and issuing recommendations to make them operate more smoothly.
Denise Clay was tapped for the role after her predecessor Melanie La Rocca resigned from the post in June.
Clay comes to the job after serving as First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright’s chief operating officer. Prior to that she spent eight years as chief of staff and senior advisor of strategic initiatives for the city Department of Finance.
“From leading strategic initiatives at the Department of Finance to driving change at Fortune 100 companies, Denise brings the experience and expertise to make sure that our government is working for every New Yorker every day,” Adams said in a statement.
“Inefficiencies lead to inequity, which is why one of our administration’s top priorities has always been to ensure that our agencies are run the right way,” he added. “As our city’s next chief efficiency officer, Denise will work to fulfill that mission and build a smarter, stronger city government for all of New York’s residents.”
Adams, who often speaks about the importance of streamlining government operations and service delivery, created the chief efficiency officer role last year via executive order to monitor the performance of city agencies and make recommendations as to how they can run more efficiently. The position is charged with coming up with metrics for tracking the work of city agencies, finding ways to refine services and boost customer satisfaction, cutting red tape and making sure taxpayer dollars are not being spent unnecessarily.
“It is an exciting time to work in city government, and I look forward to leveraging my more than 20 years of process reengineering experience, including eight years leading Lean Six Sigma initiatives at the New York City Department of Finance, to help city agencies better serve their constituents and customers,” Clay said in a statement.
La Rocca — who left city government to join the real estate industry — is one of several high-profile administration officials to have left City Hall over the past few months. Other recent top-level departures include the mayor’s Chief Counsel Brendan McGuire, Communications Director Maxwell Young, Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz and the abrupt exit of his first Police Commissioner — Keechant Sewell.
While Adams often speaks about making government more efficient, he has created roughly 10 new positions during the 20 months since taking office — including the chief efficiency officer post. Those include a chief public realm officer, a rat czar and an office of asylum seeker operations — to oversee the migrant crisis.
Veteran political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told amNewYork Metro that Adams is going to have to tangibly show how these new positions are helping his government run more efficiently when he seeks reelection in 2025.
“When he runs for reelection there will a challenge over the efficiency of the government, whether it functioned, how well it did or did not function and whether these officers had any success at all and what the cost was for them,” he said. “One could argue these are just more patronage positions. And then one could argue, well let’s see what they really do. So, he’s caught between two places. He’d better show that they accomplished something is the reality of it.”
