Former mayor Goldsmith joins new consulting practice at BKD

Former Indianapolis Mayor Steve Goldsmith has been hired by national accounting powerhouse BKD LLP to lead a new public sector consulting practice, the firm announced Wednesday.

The practice will “focus primarily on helping public entities reduce service costs, improve service quality and use ‘big data’ technologies and methodologies to develop and implement cost-effective programs and policies,’ BKD said in a written statement.

Goldsmith, 68, is expected to “provide overall project guidance, client relationship management and engagement oversight,” the statement said.

BKD is based in Springfield, Missouri, but has major operations in Indiana, with about 360 employees and 46 partners in four offices. The Indianapolis office has 230 employees and 30 partners.

Nationally, the firm has about 2,250 employees in 34 offices in 15 states. The company had $475 million in revenue in fiscal 2014.

BKD did not say when Goldsmith would start the job or at which office he would be based. Company officials were not available Wednesday morning for comment.

After two terms as Indianapolis mayor from 1992 to 2000, Goldsmith has remained busy in the public and private sector. He’s been a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government since 2001 and was deputy mayor of operations for New York City (2010-11) under Michael Bloomberg.

Last July, Goldsmith was named a managing director at Chicago-based Huron Consulting Group to work on public sector and higher education issues.

He also has a dozen consulting contracts, including one with software giant SAP, according to a disclosure he filed with Harvard.

At Harvard, Goldsmith is project director of the Kennedy School’s Data-Smart City Solutions initiative, a national repository of government case studies. He’s been an outspoken advocate of using data analysis to tackle civic problems.

Goldsmith has written several books, including “The Responsive City:  Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance,” which was released last year.

“The addition of the public sector practice is a great example of BKD’s continued efforts to better serve the not-for-profit, government and higher education sectors,” Jim Snyder, managing partner of BKD’s Risk Advisory Services division, said in a written statement.