Chief data officers in Sacramento and Riverside counties, San Francisco and San Diego updated Techwire on digital projects in the works — including some opportunities for vendors — and what they see on the horizon.
Riverside County
Tom Mullen is the chief data officer (CDO) of Riverside County. Under Mullen, Riverside has taken on some big initiatives, including an increase in the county’s data transparency and expansion of its broadband network.
RivCoConnect is a project that will result in the installation of gigabit fiber to the entirety of Riverside County. It’s a county initiative that includes 28 cities, one tribal nation and the county.
The county has issued a request for participants; responses are due by Aug. 15. It is looking for any large providers of residential and business class Internet to participate, such as Charter, AT&T, Verizon, Frontier and Century Link.
“We’re looking to facilitate. We’re not looking to buy it or build it or own it,” Mullen told Techwire. The county will focus on streamlining permit processes and work with the vendors to make their broadband expansion in Riverside County easier.
With Riverside County’s 2.4 million residents, it has affluent and economically challenged areas, both suburban and rural. The goal of RivCoConnect is to provide broadband Internet service at affordable rates for all businesses, residents and institutions countywide.
Riverside County also has a computer donation program, which repurposes and donates equipment to nonprofit organizations that support students, veterans, seniors and people who are looking to move from welfare to work.
In addition to providing a computer, the program also gives these people basic computer training.
“By giving them a computer and free or cheap Internet access, we enable them to participate in the digital society,” Mullen said.
Another current program is its open data/open government program. The government has begun publishing large amounts of open data to increase its transparency. For example, at the beginning of this year, Riverside County published more than 27 million financial transactions with the exception of confidential data.
San Diego
Maksim Pecherskiy has been San Diego's CDO since November 2014. He has started and completed many projects, including the world’s largest smart city movement, set to begin deploying this month.
San Diego created a Python-based automation system, which connects to city data and automatically publishes it, and a Jekyll-based website that serves as a portal and allows anyone to download data. The intention was to increase transparency and improve public access to data.
San Diego recently competed in the Best Practices category of Amazon Web Services’ "City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge" with open data projects. The city was among the finalists with 16 others.
With the implementation of 3,200 intelligent sensor nodes and a $30 million investment, San Diego is deploying the world’s largest smart city IoT platform. According to an announcement from Current by GE, the company San Diego is partnering with, this project will optimize parking and traffic conditions and enhance public safety, environmental awareness and overall livability in San Diego.
As part of this, the city will be updating its outdoor lighting with 14,000 new LED light fixtures. San Diego expects to save $2.4 million in annual energy costs from this project. Installation of the sensor platforms and new LED fixtures is expected to begin this month.
In addition to Current, San Diego is working in conjunction with Intel, AT&T, ShotSpotter and others to establish the citywide network.
San Francisco
Joy Bonaguro has been San Francisco's CDO since February 2014. She and her team are focused on multiple open-data projects. Among them is an open-source tool called Open Data Explorer, designed to make it easier to discover, explore and share insights from open data. The intention of this project is to increase the accessibility of open data and bring it to a wider audience.
This project also includes the launch of an interface that will facilitate exploration of data profiles of all data on the open data portals.
Following the recent launch of SF Building Explorer — which demonstrates the use of buildings to integrate open data on multiple topics from different departments — the city will be updating its open data showcase, Made with Open Data, to promote projects being done with open data.
Another new service is DataScienceSF, which brings together advanced analytics and applied statistics to implement algorithmic tools to improve city services. Twice a year, the data team helps departments identify and resolve problems.
Additionally, San Francisco is building new tools and resources to help city departments manage their data.
“We are working on a citywide data policy and standard to support data management throughout the life cycle,” Bonaguro told Techwire via email.
City employees also participate in Data Academy, resulting in the city saving an estimated $1.7 million per year.
Sacramento County
Rami Zakaria, Sacramento County’s CIO, was not available for comment on this story, but IT Division Chief Steve Baird told Techwire about the county’s priorities and what's on the horizon.
Fiscal 2017-18 will be a year for figuring out the logistics of large future projects, Baird said. The IT Department will be getting new hardware and preparing RFPs for larger systems like new property tax and budget systems.
The county is beginning the move into cloud technologies with a revamp of its 311 system onto the Oracle Cloud Service.
The county's IT team will continue focusing on enhancing customer services and finding innovative ways to improve customer experiences through Web, mobile and data portals.
