The Center for Digital Government’s* (CDG) annual Digital Cities Survey acknowledges municipalities for using technology to address everything from cybersecurity to services and social issues. Presented in November in Government Technology* magazine, it honors cities in five population groups: 500,000 or more; 250,000 to 499,999; 125,000 to 249,999; 75,000 to 124,999; and fewer than 75,000. Techwire is showcasing the year’s California winners, culled from the complete national survey. Here are winners in the 125,000 to 249,999 population category.
Tie for 5th: City of Pasadena — Officials in Pasadena worked to improve citizen engagement, which, with key planning and progress on other tech projects, helped move the city from a tie for sixth place last year to a tie for fifth. Pasadena has made investments to enhance communication, debuting a ZenCity presence that brings together social and traditional media with data sets to better understand community talking points. The city is continuing work from 2018 with Meltwater to better manage marketing and branding through its social media monitoring solution.
Staffers created and launched the first phase of new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and performance metrics across the enterprise. Plans are to develop an interactive dashboard to display those metrics this fiscal year.
The city showcased its innovation in July at the 2019 Esri User Conference. Initiatives included the city fire department’s Operations Dashboard launch, using Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform to integrate calls for service, equipment location, hydrant data and other indicators; and an app that creates a digital twin of the city, to assist the Planning Department in modeling development and growth.
The city transportation department is working with the California Department of Transportation, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and other cities in connecting on- and off-ramps to the 210 freeway via fiber optics, to improve traffic flow.
Pasadena will revisit cybersecurity strategy during the next year to 18 months, including its cybersecurity response; identity and access management; and cloud security plans. The city issued an RFP this year, to do an Information Risk Assessment and help the IT security officer’s team improve security practices. The city and the California Institute of Technology received a National Science Foundation Grant. In a collaboration that expanded last year, the partners are working on using fiber optics to measure earthquakes.
Tie for 6th: City of Corona — Becoming a data-driven city — ensuring access to key data analytics in real time — has helped Corona, Calif., better understand projects and policies and what needs changing because of inefficiencies. Measuring outcomes and using AI and predictive analysis has helped the city streamline efforts.
An example is the city’s efforts to curb homelessness. The IT department helped coordinate a transparent performance analytics dashboard to understand how the city’s efforts are working and to help the citizens understand what the city is doing in this regard. The dashboard gleans disparate data from multiple sources, providing information in one location.
Corona has also undertaken a robust cybersecurity defense. The city chose the Microsoft Azure GCC platform and deploys next-generation firewalls, intelligent endpoints (remediation), hardened cloud infrastructure, a self-healing network and access identity systems. An AI system evaluates logins and will automatically block one if a problem arises and notify an administrator.
The city does a monthly scan of the dark web to search for any issues that could be a security risk. Corona also uses a service to monitor and test employees. The city uses Microsoft Intune and Microsoft identity to protect its software network and will deploy Cisco Identity Services Engine to protect from hardware intrusion.
7th: City of Rancho Cucamonga — This city moved up from ninth place in 2018 to seventh place in 2019. For its size (roughly 177,000 people), this city engages in a wide array of IT-driven projects. The most obvious example is its use of a new small robot assistant in City Hall that, among other features, can help visitors navigate the building with its “follow-me” capability.
The city’s IT team finished an automated workflow system in 2019 that connects street workers, traffic engineers and citizen-reported issues through an integrated application. Not only does the system allow road crews to geotag assets and modifications in a comprehensive reporting feature, but it has also dramatically increased the efficiency of roadway management. A problem that might have taken days or weeks to go through the communication chain can now make the rounds in minutes or hours.
Through a new Office of Communications, the city has transformed online, phone and in-person citizen engagement components into understandable and approachable experiences. As part of this effort, the city introduced in 2019 a variety of cloud-based services, including ones for meeting management, public information requests, access to city records and direct engagement on initiatives.
During the summer, the city kicked off its citywide fiber broadband project, which was made possible by a public-private partnership with Inyo Networks. In addition to helping with the goal of giving residents and businesses high-speed Internet, this initiative has assisted the city with technological strategies, such as boosting connectivity between most city buildings and two data centers and increasing capacity for smart transportation.
10th: City of Roseville — In 2000, the city of Roseville had a population of just under 80,000. Today, 20 years later, the city has grown into a metropolis of close to 140,000. The explosive growth has led to challenges around fiscal management and balanced resources. To deal with the situation and to ensure technology is part of the solution, Roseville has created a Vision 2020 Strategic Technology Roadmap. It calls for hiring and retaining competent and skilled IT personnel, increasing collaboration both internally and externally and making sure good data is driving the right decisions. To that end, the city has begun to focus on the kinds of tools it needs for analytics, and it has migrated more than 50 percent of its systems and applications to the cloud.
The city also has a growing homelessness problem and has turned to GIS to help conduct point-in-time population counts and to help steer the vulnerable to the services they need. Roseville has launched a new self-service portal for workers that has reduced service calls by 10 percent. On the innovation front, the city has invested in drone technology to support its public safety programs.
*The Center for Digital Government is part of e.Republic, parent company of Techwire. This story first appeared in Government Technology magazine, Techwire’s sister publication.
