Civic Innovation
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The cities of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse collectively received funding via a “tech hub” competition run by the U.S. Economic Development Administration. They’ll use it to develop an area semiconductor industry.
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AskCOS, the city of Colorado Springs’ new artificial intelligence-enabled chatbot, was trained using Colorado city government information alone. The virtual assistant can answer constituent questions in 71 languages.
The city will work with technology company Populus and an urban design firm to digitize its streetscape. It’s part of a project known as The Curb Reimagined, which will create a real-time, digital city map.
State data released one year after the launch of California vs. Hate, the hotline and online portal for reporting hate crimes and incidents, shows its impact. People statewide reported more than 1,000 acts of hate.
The city of San Jose has adopted an AI-powered translation tool to improve accessibility at City Council meetings for people who primarily speak a language other than English. It may see wider use, depending upon its performance thus far.
Technology work underway in Luzerne County includes a new infrastructure management platform, and migrating election-related information off paper. The goal is to make services more efficient and effective.
Bill Zielinski, who has led the Information and Technology Services department since 2020, will step down April 30. In recent years, he led the city’s response to a ransomware attack, and to the deletion of millions of police records.
Officials have leveraged digital and mobile tools to make services more widely accessible to Coloradans regardless of location. Simultaneously, they are upgrading their IT infrastructure to more modern tools.
City Councilmembers in the Silicon Valley city recently voted to seek state and federal funding to cover a portion of the service’s annual cost. Other operational details remain to be resolved, including how far users would be able to travel.
Huntington Beach, Calif.’s new city website, which launched Monday, eliminates nearly half the pages on its old site. A curated visitor search drives sought-after pages to the top, and the process for back-end changes has been refined.
A new all-in-one platform will head to development, the Hawaii capital’s planning and permitting director told a City Council committee Thursday. Officials upgraded a related system in July and will pilot AI-based software for plan and code reviews.
After two years as the Tennessee city’s tech leader, Tyson Morris will pursue other opportunities. He said Friday he is committed to continuing his work using technology to help people.
18F, a digital consulting office within the General Services Administration, is at work on three projects with federal agencies, it said this week in announcing its 10th anniversary. The office has completed 455 initiatives in 10 years.
The Avon Lake, Ohio, Public Library’s app is back online after problems with its service provider were addressed. The issue impacted multiple library district applications nationwide, a communications manager said.
With questions arising around election trust and security, some experts are proposing that U.S. voting machines shouldn’t use proprietary software, instead moving toward an open source model.
Two years in, officials are calling San Francisco’s Text Before Tow program — which lets residents sign up to get a text if their car is about to be towed — a success. Only 130 texts have gone out to participants, but more than half resulted in a vehicle being saved from an impending tow.
