Cathilea Robinett, executive director for the Center for Digital Government presents a Digital Cities award to Terry Lowe, systems coordinator of information systems, City of Lincoln.
For the last seven years, American cities that excel in the digital arena have been recognized by the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies, now associated with Government Technology's Digital Communities initiative. The seventh annual 2007 Digital Cities Survey examines how cities are using technology to create a seamless environment between local government and constituents.
"This year's winners have really raised the bar for cities," said Cathilea Robinett, executive director for the Center for Digital Government. "Digital technology connects citizens with their government on a level never before achieved."
The survey is open to all U.S. cities with a population of 30,000 or more and respondent cities are classified into four size-based categories based on population.
1st Place 250,000 or More Population: City of Aurora, Colorado
Aurora completed many projects in 2007. Starting in January, online indexed video for City Council meetings became available. This spring, Aurora IT architected a mobile work platform for building inspectors that resulted in a 30 percent improvement in productivity, increased accountability and responsiveness. This also reduced drive time, improved employee retention, and improved efficiencies for both citizens and businesses. Aurora provides online payments that are fully integrated with back-office systems for parking tickets, taxes, utility bills, and recreation classes.
As well, Aurora is a leader in the metropolitan Denver area for the use of technology to support public safety. Officers on the street can access police information systems from their car over the Web including federal data bases, mug shots, and DMV for car registrations and driver's licenses. Officers also utilize pin mapping which allows officers to select a geographic area and a time frame and then map all the crimes that have occurred in that area during the specified time frame. Citizens can also file accident reports on-line, and citizens may recognize individual police officers and police department personnel for outstanding actions using an online commendation form.
1st Place125,000-249,999 Population: City of Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln, NE was 2nd last year -- in the top ten six of the past seven years. Lincoln added a number of new services in the past two years including 12 RSS Feeds, 2 live and on-demand video channels, an online survey system, updated keyword engine, 36 online traffic cam's, 100% online job applications, and ePay water bills that are now coupled with an eBilling option for paperless bills. Lincoln also added new locations for public access via Wi-Fi including a downtown urban park. The in-house developed online citizen ACTION center had a very successful implementation with participation from every department in the city and great reviews from citizens on the self-service model and the ability to monitor the progress of the request.
1st Place 75,000-124,999 Population: City of Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica has many accomplishments: a fully-integrated enterprise infrastructure, architecture standards that are required for funding of projects and broadband wireless deployed in more than two-thirds of their public facilities including government offices, schools, airports and libraries. The Interactive Voice Response system and online application are on a common database
for Utility Bills, Parks and Recreation Services and Building Permits.
Tied for 1st Place 30,000-74,999 Population:
City of Lynchburg, Virginia
One of the most beneficial technology advances Lynchburg implemented was the City's enterprise-wide document management system platform. This system provides the capability to manage the location, work flow, and life span of documents and is expected to pay huge dividends including customer service, version control and standardization. Although the initial scope is limited to internal operations, it is expected that certain documents from this system will be made available to citizens via the Web.
Town of Jupiter, Florida
This year Jupiter implemented an Incident Management System which is completely Web-based and acts as a virtual emergency operations center. The town now has the ability in the case of a category 5 hurricane where all network connectivity and power, is lost to deploy a stand alone satellite unit that will allow emergency Internet connectivity. This system employs state-of-the-art GPS as well as automatic tracking and alignment of the dish to the satellite, plus they can move the current Web site to an external host that is located in the Midwest.
General Survey Observations
Given the large number of submissions to the survey, some general observations can be made about the changing landscape:
Growth in availability of Online Self Service
- Utility bill online pay up from 32% in 2003 to
- Parks and recreation services pay up from 23% in 2003 to - parking tickets/traffic citations online pay up from 32% in 2003 to
-The majority of services are delivered online by more than half the responding cities; three-quarters of respondents also use IVR systems, kiosks and call centers.
- Utility bill online pay up from 32% in 2003 68% (nine percent increase last year)
- Parks and recreation services pay up from 23% in 2003 to 57% (12 percent increase last year)
- Parking tickets/traffic citations online pay up from 32% in 2003 to 60% (11 percent increase last year)
Citizen Participation and Government Transparency Online
- 76% have city governing body meeting minutes available online, archived and searchable.
- 80% of responding cities telecast their governing body meetings, 66% Web cast (14 percent increase last year) and 14% podcast (10 percent increase in 2007)
- 21% conduct online polls/surveys between meetings to gauge public opinion on matters of public concern; 47% conduct online polls/surveys annually to measure citizen satisfaction with services
- 11% of cities are hosting moderated online discussion boards
- 28/% cities or their libraries have created online repositories through listservs and their archives, and
- 10% host Web logs (blogs) that allow comments or responses to entries by the mayor or other city officials
Wireless Civic Top Priority for One-Fifth Respondents
- For more than half of responding cities (52 percent), increasing Internet access is an issue under consideration, and for 21 percent it is a top priority for the city.
- 94 percent of cities are pursuing wireless infrastructure - strategic directions reported mirror last year's: 78% public safety, 77% Wi-Fi, 63% broadband cellular, 54% mesh, 42% Wi-Max, WiWAN
About the Survey
Survey criteria is updated each year to reflect technological developments and good governance. There were 26 questions and 179 data points in all. The survey instrument probed:
1) Implementation and adoption of online service delivery;
2) The planning and governance that makes the transformation to digital government possible;
3) The infrastructure and architecture that also makes the transformation possible; and
4) An open-ended section that allowed cities to discuss their initiatives in their own words
The premiere sponsor for the 2007 Digital Cities Survey was Hyland Software, developers of OnBase. Sponsors also included Fujitsu and GTSI.
Complete Top Ten Results:
250,000 or more population category:
1st City of Aurora, Colorado
2
nd City of Virginia Beach, Virginia
3rd City of Tampa, Florida (tie)
3rd City of Tucson, Arizona (tie)
4th Metropolitan Gov't of Nashville & Davidson Co., Tennessee (tie)
4th City of Riverside, California (tie)
5th City of Kansas City, Missouri (tie)
5th City of San Diego, California (tie)
6th City of Miami, Florida (tie)
6th City of Phoenix, Arizona (tie)
7th City of Colorado Springs, Colorado
8th City of Honolulu, Hawaii
9th Washington, District of Columbia
10th City of Mesa, Arizona
125,000 - 249,999 population category:
1st City of Lincoln, Nebraska
2nd City of Richmond, Virginia
3rd City of Alexandria, Virginia (tie)
3rd City of Madison, Wisconsin (tie)
3rd Salt Lake City, Utah (tie)
4th City of Hampton, Virginia (tie)
4th City of Irving, Texas (tie)
5th City of Winston-Salem, North Carolina (tie)
5th City of St. Petersburg, Florida (tie)
6th City of Hollywood, Florida
7th City of Norfolk, Virginia
8th City of Lakewood, Colorado
9th City of Ontario, California
10th City of Chesapeake, Virginia (tie)
10th City of Fort Collins, Colorado (tie)
75,000 - 124,999 population category:
1st City of Santa Monica, California
2nd City of Roanoke, Virginia
3rd City of Orem, Utah (tie)
3rd City of Independence, Missouri (tie)
4th City of Arvada, Colorado (tie)
4th City of Westminster, Colorado (tie)
5th City of Olathe, Kansas
6th City of Pueblo, Colorado
7th City of West Palm Beach, Florida
8th Village of Schaumburg, Illinois (tie)
8th City of Lawrence, Kansas (tie)
9th City of Carlsbad, California
10th City of Boulder, Colorado
30,000 - 74,999 population category:
1st Town of Jupiter, Florida (tie)
1st City of Lynchburg, Virginia (tie)
2nd City of Medford, Oregon
3rd City of Delray Beach, Florida
4th Town of Enfield, Connecticut
5th City of Boynton Beach, Florida
6th City of Charlottesville, Virginia
7th Town of Blacksburg, Virginia
8th Town of Manchester, Connecticut
9th Town of Flower Mound, Texas
10th City of Titusville, Florida
