Is Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) a Government entity?

Yes, MAPC is a public agency.

Established in 1963, MAPC is a public agency created under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40B Section 24. As a regional planning agency serving the people who live and work in the 101 cities and towns of Metropolitan Boston.

Department Teams

Data Services Department is composed of four working groups / teams (Research, Analytical, Digital and IT). You can find information about each of them at data.mapc.org

Org Chart

Check out and bookmark this staff page as it's a go to source of who's who. The finance and timesheet system (Deltek) also houses an organizationsl chart.

Data Services teams each have their own meeting cadence, with most adopting some form of a daily standup. Data Services also leverages asynchronous tools like Standuply, Slack, and GitHub projects to report on and manage tasks.    While "Retrospective” meetings to review work and reflect openly on work, each project takes on its own meeting cadence in collaboration with partners. 

Data Services has bi-weekly departmental Check-Ins for 45 minutes at 12pm over lunch, every other week. We open with general updates, team updates, and then a deep dive presentation. To review or add a topic to the agenda share your ideas is the #dataservices-general slack channel or here. Prior meeting notes here (staff login required)

Every month, there are agency-wide staff meetings (2 hours; 4th Tuesday of the month) and agency-wide Manager’s Meetings 1 hour, Managers only meet monthly.

Team mangers will also look to schedule ~monthly 1v1 check-ins

Departmental Check-In

Staff Meetings

Staff 1 on 1 Conversations

Annual Reviews

Project and Team Meetings

MAPC conducts annual reviews agency-wide toward the end of the fiscal year (spring). In addition, inital staff reviews are conducted after 3 months with MAPC.

Regular Meetings

When starting if you need something office-related (a new chair, a piece of furniture), work with your manager who can coordinate with IT and Admin to find or procure certain items. Annually MAPC conducts "open enrollment". A staff-wide exercise to identify and order new furniture, equipment, or office-related items. For all office matters, please contact Heidi Anderson, MAPC’s Office Manager.

Office Address: 60 Temple Pl, Boston, MA 02111

MAPC is on three floors 3, 4, 6. Main reception desk in on 6th floor just off the elevators.

Office Location

Office Equipment

Office Supplies

• You can find supplies in several places on the third floor. For stapler, paper and general copying needs, visit the area nearest the printer in the Municipal Collaboration wing.

• For pens and notebooks, and other odds and ends, please visit the 6th floor supply closet, nearest the mailboxes.

• Laptops, projectors, and other equipment must be reserved as “Resources” in Microsoft Outlook. IT can provide a code to unlock the equipment closet.

• Community engagement and public engagement supplies and equipment are predominantly in the equipment closet, though also interspersed in other closets on the 4th and 6th floor.

There are two kitchens on the third floor. The main 3rd-floor kitchen is closest to the outer hallway. There, you’ll find complimentary tea, coffee, sugar, and milk in the refrigerator, utensils, plates (paper), and the water cooler. You may keep your lunch in the refrigerator (please remember to throw away any old food!) The smaller kitchen is located behind the large 3rd Floor Conference room. You may use any kitchen on any floor of the agency.

Kitchen Information

Kitchen Information

Changing Room & Lockers

The privacy room opposite the 3rd floor large kitchen door contains lockers available to MAPC staff. If you would like a locker, please contact the admin team. Even if you don’t get a locker, you can use the room for changing.  

Nursing Room

MAPC has one private lactation room available to staff and visitors on the 3rd floor. The room is equipped with a medical grade pump (employees must provide their own pump parts, but not the pump itself), a refrigerator, storage, a rocking chair with footstool, desk, and mirror. The room is not equipped with a sink, though any restroom or kitchen sink at MAPC may be used. All staff members are eligible to use the room for nursing or pumping at any time. Staff who make use of the room are asked to coordinate with one another to arrange times that allow sharing of the space. If the room reaches capacity, alternate arrangements will be made to provide private space for pumping or nursing. The room may not be reserved for any other use and is not a bookable resource in Outlook.

Rest Rooms

All staff and visitors are welcome to use whichever restroom they are most comfortable with using. MAPC 3rd-floor restrooms are gender-neutral. All MAPC restrooms are equipped with diaper changing tables. The restrooms on the 3rd floor and 6th floor do not have locks; the 4th-floor restroom requires a key. 4th-floor staff are provided with their own keys and visitors can use a key from the bowl at the entrance of the 4th floor suite.

All MAPC restrooms are equipped with diaper changing tables. The restrooms on the 3rd floor and 6th floor do not have locks; the 4th-floor restroom requires a key. 4th-floor staff are provided with their own keys and visitors can use a key from the bowl at the entrance of the 4th-floor suite.

Parking

Zip Car

MAPC has a Zipcar account which all licensed staff are authorized to use after a brief training and registration coordinated by Human Resources.

MAPC employees are eligible for subsidies transportation passes (MBTA Commuter rail / T pass). More information about this benefit will be provided by HR during the onboarding process. Do save your receipts from your first weeks at MAPC to get reimbursed for travel costs. Best to buy the “week” pass at the T kiosk until you get your permanent monthly T pass from MAPC.

Tranist

Door Codes

You will receive door codes during your orientation, make sure to securely store these numbers in an accessible place, as they will allow access to the different floors and rooms at the office.  

Time Off / Out of Office Notification

K:\DataServices\Management\Policies and Procedures\How to report vacation days.docx

Lights

The lights will go off to let you know it is the end of the day. (They’re on an 8 hour timer). You can turn them back on with the button next to the closet door, near Ty’s office.

There are three garages near the office that can be leveraged if driving to the office: Lafayette Parking Garage, Boston Common Garage, City Place Garage

Buying Stuff and Expense Reports

More information can be found here mapc.gitbook.io/digital-workflows

All press calls must go through the Communications Office. Click here for a full memo outlining our policy and practice on press calls, including tips for talking to the media.

Press Protocol

Website

MAPC's communication team manages website updates. Your manager (or the appropriate project manager) will tell you if you are responsible for making updates to your department or project section of the website. Communications will train all new staff in making web updates. New staff should write a personal bio for the staff page of the website before meeting with Communications for training.

Agency Style Sheet

• MAPC has four approved fonts: Franklin Gothic Book, Goudy, Tw Cent MT, and Rockwell. Goudy is recommended for formal communications, such as letterhead, but otherwise they may be used interchangeably. All MAPC documents and electronic communications must use one of these four fonts. A guidelines memo can be found at Font Guidelines.pdf
• All MAPC staff are required to create an e-signature for their email correspondence in Outlook. A guideline memo can be found at Creating Your Email Signature.pdf
• MAPC has an agency-style guide. You should review this K Drive repository.
• You should also review our Social Media Policy, CRM (project database) instructions, and Phone System Guide, and speak with Communications or IT with any questions.

• MAPC maintains profiles on the following social media websites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Flickr. We also have an agency blog, Planning101.mapc.org, on WordPress. Maintenance of these sites falls within the Communications Department, and are updated in collaboration with many other staff at the agency.
• MAPC staff may participate privately in social media websites outside of work and during break times in the workday. MAPC staff will never be required to join, or create personal profiles on, social media sites in order to perform duties related to their job at MAPC. Employees’ use of such sites must be in compliance with MAPC’s relevant policies, including its harassment and discrimination policies, confidentiality policies, ethics rules, code of conduct, and other policies, as well as with state Ethics Law, Federal Copyright law, and other applicable laws and regulations. Excessive use of social media during work hours may result in discipline or termination. Refer to Employee Handbook for more information.

Social Media Guidelines

Guidelines for Posting to Social Media Sites

Be mindful of copyright limitations

Employees of MAPC who are posting or reviewing social media content must respect the rights of copyright owners. Employees should not post or reprint whole articles or publications in social media posts without receiving written permission. No copyrighted music, images or other media may be used in agency products without proper permission.

Be mindful of First Amendment rights.

MAPC may control content on social media sites, including blogs and micro-blogs, if the content is obscene, threatening, discriminatory, harassing or otherwise offensive or abusive. MAPC will not use moderation functions to limit or restrict free speech by any other social media user, including but not limited to editing content posted to MAPC profiles by others.

Consider privacy and confidentiality concerns.

MAPC staff shall refrain from posting any information that is not public record under the Massachusetts Public Records Law (MGL Ch. 66 Sec. 10). Social media sites contain communications sent to or received by public employees, and therefore are considered public records subject to the Records Retention Law.

Be cautious of defamatory claims.

Employees of MAPC are cautioned to avoid statements that may be interpreted as defamatory on social media sites.

Personal Use of Social Media Outside of Work

Employees’ personal use should not be attributable to the agency or employee’s job function at agency.  

An employee’s use and comments made at social media sites are subject to First Amendment protections.  However, any personal use made of social media sites outside of work must be conducted in such a manner that a reader would not think that the employee is speaking for or on behalf of his or her agency employer.

Use must be in conformance with relevant portions of workplace policies.

Employees’ use of such sites must be in compliance with the applicable portions of MAPC’s relevant policies, including its harassment and discrimination policies, confidentiality policies, ethics rules, code of conduct, workplace violence, and other policies.  Some of these policies, for example the Agency’s sexual harassment policy and the ethics rules, could apply to employee actions performed outside of normal working hours at third-party sites.  

Email Signiture

The communications team manages the creation of your e-mail signature upon hire. Your email signature should include your name, title, our full agency name and address, and our phone number with your extension. You must also include the MAPC website and our logo in thumbnail size. You may also add your own e-mail address, a second MAPC website such as www.metrofuture.org or www.metrobostondatacommon.org, any professional certifications you hold (AICP, LEED, etc.) and an approved tagline (for example, “Become a friend of MetroFuture” or “Find data and bring it alive with the MetroBostonDataCommon” or “Follow the MAPC blog at http://Planning101.mapc.org.”  You may not include other organization logos, quotations, or personal websites. It is optional but encouraged that you include MAPC’s social media icons: If you wish, you may link these icons to your personal profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. To link to MAPC’s social media pages, copy and paste the icons from this document into your signature: Social media icons for email.docx. All of the icons in this document are already set up with a link to the corresponding MAPC social media page, except for LinkedIn. You will need to hyperlink this icon to your personal LinkedIn page, if you’d like to include that as part of your signature.  

MAPC follows the state and Governor’s direction in determining whether to close during snow storms or other inclement weather. If MAPC will be closed due to weather, either the Deputy or Executive Director will e-mail all staff in notification. In some cases, such as when public transit is severely impacted by weather but MAPC is open, staff may work with their manager to determine whether working from home during bad weather is appropriate. Weather updates and alerts can also be found online at www.mass.gov.

Snow Cancellations

MAPC agency-wide leverages Microsoft Office 365. In preparation for your start at MAPC, IT will create your account/email. Our default naming convention is the first letter of the first name, full last name. This account will serve as your main login at MAPC. It will give you access to Outlook email and calendar as well as Microsoft tools like SharePoint. MAPC also leverages this account for other 3rd party applications such as our Citirx tools and Slack.

Communication Tools

While MAPC leverages email for official agency communications. Slack is another platform for communication that has gained wide adoption across the agency. Note: Slack communications in addition to email are subject to public record and retention rules. Browse and join project channels to learn more about the history of projects through prior conversations.

Suggested Slack Rooms to Join: #equityatmapc, #howdoi, #github-help, #cool-tools, #cool-data, #mapcdogruffers 

For remote work, we have a few Citrix tools available. More information & instructions can be on Remote Access SharePoint. This includes Citrix Files to get direct access to the K and H drive folders through a home PC. Citrix Workspace which allows access to a remote machine with applications such as Adobe and ESRI. As well as more information about Zoom and Teams which MAPC leverages for remote meetings.

Office 365 Account

Slack

Citrix and Remote Tools

Since moving to remote work, MAPC has relied on Zoom for many external meetings. MAPC has 1 Webinar (500 seats), 10 Standard Biz. 11 Total. Zoom lines are bookable assets in our shared Outlook for a staff of 100. Each line can be booked by any staff if available in outlook at the chosen time.

There are two main locations for saving MAPC work (documents, files, etc.) SharePoint and K Drive. The K Drive is the name of the shared network drive/file directory that has been around for many years at MAPC. SharePoint is a newer tool to the organization but is growing in its use given its ability to allow for live document collaboration and external sharing of individual documents. We encourage staff to save files either SharePoint or K drive for storing documents rather than personal network spaces like local desktops, H Drive or One Drive.

Your manager can be of guide on navigating the file structure and practices used by departments.

Communication Tools

MAPC also leverages Microsoft Teams to conduct remote work. Any staff can create a Teams meeting from the Teams app or directly from Outlook when creating and calendar event. Along with Slack Teams is leveraged for internal meetings to avoid overbooking the limited zoom lines. If a phone call-in number is needed reach out to IT, as only certain accounts can create meetings with a phone line included.

Saving Documents

Zoom

Microsoft Teams

MAPC leverages Dashlane for password management. This allows for more secure management and sharing of appropriate credentials to the applications and web subscriptions at MAPC. Included on the next slide is a list of some of the applications to which MAPC subscribes or owns. Work with your manager and IT to obtain an account and appropatie team access.

Dashlane

MAPC has consolidated many of its contact lists into HubSpot. It's a great spot to look up partner contacts and existing relationships MAPC has established. Should also note that HubSpot is used to track incoming data requests for Data Services. When datarequest (at) mapc is included or added to an email, a ticket for data requests is automatically created in HubSpot and managed by the Analytical Services team. This allows us to better track and respond to partner needs.

Hubspot

Productivity Tools

Throughout the agency, teams deploy a variety of project management tools (from Trello to Excel). MAPC Data Services has been expanding the use of GitHub for both version control and project management. Examples of version-controlled files/code along with project issue boards can be found at github.com/MAPC. Data Services has funding set aside to help answer GitHub-related questions. There is a Slack channel #github-help don't hesitate to reach out with questions or ideas.

GitHub

MAPC Subscriptions

List of most MAPC Subscription Services

Digital's Applications & Services

Below you’ll find a list of places and things to do in the immediate MAPC area. Enjoy!

1. George Howell

2. Boston Brewin Coffee Co.

3. Tip: If you use a Capital One debit/ credit card, coffee at Peet’s (near Park Street Station) is ½ price

4. Boston Common Coffee Co.

5. Thinking Cup

6. ​Ogawa (also coffee, but nice tea selection with a full pot if you drink it there)

7. In-House: The best coffee in the Tassimo coffee robot is the French Vanilla flavor and the rest of them are inferior. [editors note: this must be satire] However if you want to not have as much caffeine go for the Signature Blend Mild. Three types of dairy and one non-dairy creamer is supplied in the kitchen fridge. Admin staff are responsible for ordering creamers.  

Coffee & Tea

1. Bagelsaurus < this is in Cambridge
2. Exodus Bagels < JP/ roslindale

Bagels

1. http://www.scooperbowl.org
2. http://www.jplicks.com
3. Toscanini’s (Cambridge)

Ice Cream

1. Marliave sandwich storefront: The classic french restaurant has a secret sandwich storefront only available in the daytime. Very good sandwiches!

2. Florina: a newly opened spot for pizza slices and good italian fare, plus a walk up Beacon Hill!

3. Falafel King: There are three versions of this amazing local chain within .5 mile. Hands-down the best falafel/shawarma in Boston.  

4. Herreras: Sometimes you end up at Herreras. The soups are good.

5. Avana Sushi: Lunch special of better-than-average sushi. 3 rolls and soup for $7

6. While The Common is a nice place to sit in and eat your lunch, it can be packed with tourists and school groups. Post Office Square is a quick walk away and is full of plants, benches, and fountains

7. Cheapest lunch option (yes, you can eat for less than $5!): Banh Mi from Chinatown. Personal favorite is Mei Sum Bakery but there’s no menu so can be intimidating. Second favorite would be New Saigon where there is a menu and many more options.

8. Roche Brothers is always convenient if you want to pick up a grocery store snack, package of seltzer, or need a grocery item to bring home for dinner. The top floor has prepared foods and a salad/hot food bar while the downstairs is a real grocery store. Tip: DO NOT plan on going to Roche Brothers at 5:00 to pick up groceries for dinner. The lines are long, people are grumpy, and it’s an all-around bad experience.Get the door codes during your orientation and put them in a note in your smartphone. You’ll never remember them otherwise.

Lunch Spots

Free Food

Dentist

1. Fun after Work

   1. See: Ice Cream

   2. jm Curley: One of the best burgers downtown. Good cocktails and interesting and ever-changing draft beers

2. Dentists

   1.