This year’s winners in the Digital Cities Survey from the Center for Digital Government* created new pathways to ensure digital equity for their residents while working to lock down systems and data. These endeavors moved ahead while tech leaders focused on enhancing the overall user experience.
Here’s a look at the first-place winners in each category.
MARIETTA, GA., FIRST PLACE, UP TO 75,000 POPULATION CATEGORY
Leaders in Marietta, Ga., made huge strides in 2024 to protect the city’s power, water and sewer systems from malicious attacks. They also established user-friendly interfaces for residents to more easily make customer service requests and track those requests as city workers respond to them. All of their efforts over the year were designed to keep city services humming at top-notch levels.
“I am most proud of our collaboration with Georgia Tech on working to secure our [supervisory control and data acquisition] SCADA network,” Marietta City Manager William Bruton Jr. told GT of the city’s top tech accomplishments.
Marietta owns and operates its own power, water and sewer systems. IT staff worked with Georgia Tech to secure the network that connects all of the city’s field assets such as electrical substations, pump stations for water, and the sewer system. The new SCADA network is more secure and less vulnerable to attacks.
“We are trying to ensure that the grid is resilient and protected from any kind of cybersecurity threat,” said Director of Information Technology Ronald Barrett. “We were the first power provider able to test this new technology and prove that it worked.”
Using a grant from the Department of Energy, Marietta leaders worked with Ph.D.s at Georgia Tech to design the security elements of the system.
“They [Ph.D.s at Georgia Tech] were the ones who came up with the overall design and they used us as the test site, then worked with our people to figure out how to work with the system in the best way,” Barrett added. “They could prove it in the lab, but there were modifications that needed to be made to implement it in the real world.”
In an effort to ensure that city services are always up and running, city leaders added a tertiary connection between its two data centers, building in additional redundancy so they could always operate in a storm.
To bolster the city’s responsiveness to citizen requests, they also developed an online citizen request system, available on any connected device. Residents can make a request for anything from repair of a pothole to reporting a streetlight that is out. Citizens can see who was assigned, then get updates on its status. Bruton says the city receives about 700 such requests a month.
“The citizens then get updates on the request,” said Bruton. “Sometimes they will write back and say ‘Thank you, that was quick.’ … It helps us interact with the community and make sure we are extremely responsive to their needs.”
Click here to read about all the winners in this population category.
SOUTH BEND, IND., FIRST PLACE, 75,000 TO 124,999 POPULATION CATEGORY
From digitizing city forms to building a citizen-focused traffic calming request tool and expanding its open Wi-Fi network, South Bend’s Department of Innovation and Technology put people first this year.
"South Bend's I&T Department puts people at the center of all of our innovation and technology projects," said Chief Innovation Officer Denise Linn Riedl via email. “Our mantra that we work by is 'Listen First, Build With' and it shapes everything we do, whether it's deploying cybersecurity training, digitizing city forms, or embarking on generative AI pilots. We always strive to collaborate and iterate authentically with our partners and residents."
In 2023, traffic calming and enforcement was a top priority for South Bend after a series of high-profile pedestrian accidents. The city wanted to prioritize its efforts using resident input. South Bend's I&T team worked with Public Works to build a Traffic Calming Project Request Tool to solicit problem areas for assessment. The resulting input combined with historical crash data informed over 50 funded projects. I&T then built a dashboard to track their status.
Digital equity also is a major priority for South Bend, leading the city to expand its open Wi-Fi network, tripling its footprint across parks, community centers, and other busy public spaces. A public campaign called for residents to nominate locations that would be most impactful for everyday access. Based on those nominations and federal broadband access and adoption data, I&T selected new locations for the network.
“As our city embraces technology, we cannot leave our most vulnerable residents behind,” Riedl added. “South Bend is committed to closing our access, adoption and training gaps so that everyone can thrive in the digital economy.”
The city also leaned heavily this year on South Bend User Experience (SB UX), a civic user testing program that the city layers on top of digital product development. Through the program, South Bend's I&T team recruits a working group of residents and stakeholders to provide feedback on new websites and applications. City leaders use the working group to gauge whether the tools are relevant and easy to use. In 2024, the city's highest profile use of SB UX was to test the new and improved Police Transparency Hub, a mobile-friendly website featuring crime stats.
Click here to read about all the winners in this population category.
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ., FIRST PLACE WINNER, 125,000 to 249,999 POPULATION CATEGORY
Over the past year, Scottsdale achieved a wide range of critical digital accomplishments from implementing a new AI platform to launching a comprehensive citywide data strategy to improving data collection, integration and analysis.
“Scottsdale's commitment to fostering innovation is at the heart of our success,” said Bianca Lochner, Scottsdale CIO, via email. “One of our top accomplishments this past year has been the expansion of our AI governance and low-code platforms. Implementing a cutting-edge AI governance platform has empowered our teams to innovate with AI while ensuring ethical, transparent and compliant usage across all city systems.”
Scottsdale implemented a comprehensive AI platform called Truyo that works to ensure ethical AI use and mitigate risks while seeking to foster public trust. The city also is working to align AI practices with internal AI policy and ethical AI usage training. AI initiatives in Scottsdale include the AWS Connect integration for its citizen service call center, which streamlines services, reduces response times, and enhances the citizen experience.
Scottsdale’s new citywide data strategy includes developing a centralized data platform to enable real-time insights for informed decision-making across departments and improved transparency for city leadership and the public. The city’s robust data governance framework also expanded from project-specific initiatives to an enterprise-wide model which empowers staff with data literacy and real-time analytics.
“Our focus on cybersecurity and data governance has strengthened our resilience, reducing risk while ensuring that data is available and protected as we modernize our operations,” Lochner added.
Scottsdale also streamlined internal workflows and accelerated business process automation. The city’s Enterprise Workflow and Forms platform automates hundreds of business processes, eliminating manual tasks and expediting service delivery. A prime example is the development of the Temporary Water Meter Application, which automated the entire approval and payment process for commercial water services, significantly reducing processing times.
The city also invested in public safety with its real-time crime center that integrates advanced AI-powered drones and video cameras for improved situational awareness. The technology enhances crime prevention and response, enabling law enforcement to stay ahead of potential threats and enhance safety using predictive analytics.
Click here to read about all the winners in this population category.
LONG BEACH, CALIF., FIRST PLACE, 250,000 TO 499,999 POPULATION CATEGORY
The city of Long Beach made huge strides in enhancing its digital rights platform to apprise residents of the city’s data collection and usage practices for over 20 smart city technologies such as public Wi-Fi, security cameras and public computers. But this is just one of the many IT initiatives undertaken by the city.
"I am incredibly proud of our team and the diverse, innovative technology projects and initiatives we undertake each year,” said Chief Information Officer and Technology and Innovation Department Director Lea Eriksen, in comments provided via email. “These accomplishments reflect our commitment to advancing digital equity, strengthening community trust and ensuring that our city is prepared for the future with responsible, cutting-edge solutions."
City leaders over the past year developed citywide Generative AI Guidance for city staff. Issued in January 2024, the guidance addresses, promotes and enhances the safe and responsible use of generative AI by balancing the benefits to efficiency with mitigating risks like AI bias, privacy and cybersecurity.
In another initiative, the city leveraged community voices to select four technology pilot projects sourced through the Long Beach Collaboratory (LB Co-Lab), a first-of-its-kind immersive technology program for Long Beach residents to design and deploy technologies in their neighborhood and gain career skills to find tech jobs. Twenty-seven community members representing four neighborhoods participated in the program and received nearly 40 hours of technology learning.
On the public safety front, tech leaders helped the city prosecutor create a police prosecutor data-sharing mobile application that allows police officers to connect and reconnect persons suffering from mental illness, substance abuse or homelessness to the services they need.
And in an effort to combat climate change, tech leaders partnered with Public Works and the Long Beach Office of Climate Action and Sustainability to develop a prototype web-based application to streamline the process for residents applying for free street trees. The system eliminates the difficult task of traversing through PDF documents to identify the appropriate tree and tree care regulations in favor of an e-commerce-style application which allows end users to select their preferred tree.
And to help ensure that all systems keep running, the technology department transitioned the city’s legacy mainframe computing environment to a cloud-hosted mainframe, eliminating hardware failure risks and positioning Long Beach for better backup and disaster recovery capabilities.
Click here to read about all the winners in this population category.
SAN DIEGO, CALIF., FIRST PLACE, OVER 500,000 POPULATION CATEGORY
Like many local governments across the nation, the city of San Diego bolstered its AI maturity and strengthened cybersecurity through a variety of endeavors, even pushing its cybersecurity efforts out regionwide.
“The city’s groundwork in AI policy and pilots provided a foundation for an external-facing use case to bolster regional cybersecurity,” explained CIO Jonathan Behnke in an email to Government Technology. “Cybersecurity will continue to remain one of our top priorities, and in the past year, San Diego focused on continuous improvement of internal and regional cybersecurity.”
Over the past year, San Diego completed an AI policy in an effort to enable broader adoption of emerging AI solutions across the city. Two generative AI pilots were completed on the city’s intranet using software from Google, Microsoft and Amazon to evaluate effectiveness and other elements. The generative AI solutions focused on top intranet searches and the city’s Administrative Regulations and Municipal Code. The Department of IT also held AI Business Discovery Workshops with city directors to align departmental priorities and pain points with AI solutions. San Diego also launched a no-cost artificial intelligence chatbot called My eCISO to help small businesses and agencies develop or improve their cybersecurity programs.
SD Access 4 All, the city’s digital equity program launched in 2020, expanded public Wi-Fi access and in the past year reached almost 400 locations across the city. The program began with 255 street-level Wi-Fi hot spots. Behnke reports that its hot spots have been accessed by more than 210,000 unique users over time, with 3.5 million Wi-Fi sessions.
Over the past year, the city also expanded access to 4,000 mobile Wi-Fi hot spots that can be checked out by library patrons to connect a household. Other core digital equity needs, such as digital literacy training, were addressed though a partnership with the San Diego Futures Foundation. Digital Navigators help San Diego residents navigate and access critical services like telehealth, education, job searches, financial services and housing resources.
In other efforts, the city focused on technology modernization, resiliency and digital transformation projects that significantly improved city services, reduced risk, drove internal efficiencies, and standardized platforms and support.
“We wanted to provide as many incentives as possible for our departments to modernize aging applications and built in 19,000 modernization hours annually with our managed service providers into base services,” Behnke explained. “Over the past couple of years, this has allowed us to fast-track a number of modernization projects and eliminated many barriers for departments in replacing remaining legacy applications.”
Click here to read about all the winners in this population category.
*The Center for Digital Government is part of e.Republic, Government Technology’s parent company.
