Two municipal IT leaders — Jonathan Behnke, San Diego’s chief information officer, and Lea D. Eriksen, Long Beach’s CIO and its director of technology and innovation — discussed what comes next, at the recent Los Angeles Virtual Digital Government Summit. Both cities were winners earlier this month at the annual Digital Cities survey presented by the Center for Digital Government (CDG)*; Long Beach placed second in its population category, and San Diego placed third. In a conversation with e.Republic Deputy Chief Content Officer Steve Towns, the two CIOs discussed how the pandemic has impacted their service delivery, how they’re working to ensure digital equity, and what may lie ahead. Among the takeaways:
- The pandemic has done more to local government than simply requiring a quick pivot to remote, Behnke said. The traditional government model has taken a step down, he said, and “everybody really has taken a step up in the digital world,” he said. “We’re really in a new operating model now, and I think those changes are benefiting our residents and businesses with more convenience and 24-7 services.”
- San Diego had already begun moving most permitting online before the pandemic, Behnke said, but when the virus struck it speeded up that process and now all permitting is available online as well as building inspections, which are done via Google Meet. Long Beach staffed up additional call centers as the pandemic took hold, and has also changed procedures and workflows to enable better access to online services. The city has also initiated appointments for certain procedures, as its permitting and licensing are not yet entirely online.
- Governments’ work to modernize and migrate services online isn’t done yet — so stay tuned for future purchases. The process has always been continual, but as Eriksen indicated, officials will likely need to adjust their pandemic plans again next year. Currently, Ericksen said, the city workforce is about 30 percent remote overall, with about 40-50 IT staffers onsite and 80-90 remote on any given day. The city has plans to not return to on-site work before Jan. 4, but it will continue to re-evaluate and adjust that going forward, Erickson said, noting that “since that early March scramble,” the city has done “several rounds of assessments in telework equipment rollout” to ensure employees are supported.
- The pandemic has impacted Long Beach’s ability to hire employees from outside the state, Ericksen said, indicating that in one example, a prospective candidate was unable to fly into the city to undergo a mandatory health check. “We still have policies and procedures in place that are very much rooted in being proximate to Long Beach. I think it will be very interesting to see how that plays out as we do more permanent telework,” she said.
- Digital equity and inclusion are a priority for both cities. Long Beach has been building a digital inclusion roadmap with input from Internet service providers, universities, the school district, libraries, nonprofit organizations and business associations, Erickson said. Officials are ensuring services are designed equitably with respect to the appropriate language, jargon and language access — but that residents also have access to devices, Internet connections and digital literacy. The San Diego City Council added $500,000 to the Fiscal Year 2021 budget to expand Internet access to low-income communities. It has stood up Internet patios at some libraries, where residents can check out a device or bring their own; and the city partnered with the San Diego Futures Foundation to donate end-of-life city computers for refurbishment and distribution.
- Both cities have worked to meet residents where they are via online services. Long Beach, which has four official languages — English, Spanish, Tagalog and Khmer — created a solution for translation on request of City Council meetings using Zoom technologies; and it recently began offering “all the time” Spanish translation, no longer just by request. The city also recently did a soft launch of its new Go Long Beach app — in all four languages — to enable the reporting of issues like potholes and graffiti. San Diego also presents City Council meetings via Zoom and offers Spanish translation.
- As for lessons learned by the shift to remote, Ericksen said officials at her city learned the value of communication and “how important it was to roll things out quickly even if they weren’t perfect.” Behnke advised that “If you’re not ahead of the curve, you’re going to be behind it,” emphasizing that from a government perspective, it can be “do or die” to make online solutions available to citizens — a process the pandemic has unquestionably accelerated.
