In this year’s edition of its annual Digital Cities Survey, the Center for Digital Government* recognized four of California’s six most populous cities as winners in their category of more than 500,000 in population. (Industry Insider — California will spotlight other California survey honorees from different categories in coming days.)
These four municipalities made great strides this year on everything from digital equity to health care, and from online services to data usage and hybrid work. Here’s a snapshot of each winner:
FIRST PLACE: SAN DIEGO
San Diego, a regular performer in the Digital Cities Survey — covered in its entirety by Government Technology magazine* — delivered several large technology projects this year. Among the largest was the culmination of three years’ work to improve the downtown city campus’ broadband network, boosting throughput from 2 GBPS to 10, setting up soft phone use by the city’s workforce of about 12,000 strong, and further enabling hybrid and remote work. The municipality’s IT department continues standardizing processes and procedures, yielding shorter turnarounds, financial savings and the use of best practices. A new policy this year mandated departments maintain their own apps, report legacy apps, score them on risk and plan for their upgrade or replacement — which has generated funding and staff time around each legacy app. Departments also have designated data coordinators to make the best use of data enterprise-wide; and city websites now have a pattern library and design standards to standardize on web presence. Within six months, the department moved from a data center to private and public cloud, an endeavor eased by the introduction of a new disk-based backup solution that hastened the move of production systems. A new cloud-based call center solution made employee work more flexible and more than 200 PDFs were transitioned to web forms, expanding digital services options to include e-signatures.
SECOND PLACE: LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles again claimed second place, working hard on cybersecurity to preserve data for its population of more than 4 million. Officials created a zero-trust security infrastructure for workers, whether they’re at home or in the office. The city also fully integrated the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework into daily cybersecurity operations in the Mayor’s Office, IT and its tier one departments. Leaders forged several strategic plans; the inaugural Digital Strategy identifies goals for digitizing the workforce and technologies to improve digital services. Enterprise IT leadership’s SmartLA 2028 strategic plan documents near- and long-term smart city goals with the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in mind; and the IT department maintains an ITA Strategic Plan for 2022-2023 on the year’s organizational challenges and goals. The Regional Alliance Marketplace for Procurement (RAMP) offers a one-stop shop for local businesses to see procurement opportunities; enables the pairing of prime contractors and sub contractors; and lets minority- and women-owned and historically disadvantaged businesses show certifications.
THIRD PLACE: SAN JOSE
San Jose made digital equity a top priority this year and City Council approval enabled the improvement of equity and accountability for underserved communities. A new Equity Through Data and Privacy Program features new data collection processes to spotlight gaps and opportunities in key areas like broadband and transit. The program, announced at the end of June, is a joint endeavor by the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation (MOTI), the Office of Racial Equity and the Information Technology Department. San Jose prioritizes customer-centric services like San Jose 311 (SJ311), which lets residents report safety and quality of life concerns online or via mobile devices. This year, the IT department enhanced SJ311 to enable the reporting of bad connectivity on the city’s free Wi-Fi networks and the finding of information on affordable housing in a variety of languages. San Jose participates in the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative, which is implementing a Regional Virtual Security Operations Center. Internally, the city IT department has implemented multifactor authentication for all remote access users.
FOURTH PLACE: SAN FRANCISCO
A consistent contender in this survey, the consolidated city and county of San Francisco remains committed to user-driven services, accessibility, equity, data sharing and cybersecurity. A directive this year from Mayor London Breed made cybersecurity a top city priority, strengthening the municipality’s cybersecurity program overall, increasing training and endpoint detection and establishing the Office of Cybersecurity. The war on Ukraine saw cyber incidents rise 53 percent via remote workers’ computers. The city took action immediately, requiring all users to change their passwords right away; standing up a geo-shield to safeguard the city from activity outside the U.S.; and, to keep up with vulnerabilities in the more than 600 new SaaS products acquired during the last fiscal year, setting up a Third-Party Risk Management Program to evaluate products prior to procurement. The ongoing Fiber to Housing project this year delivered connectivity to 1,600 more housing units, and the city created a city Internet service provider to drive affordable service. The city is also building on its mature data program, via projects like One Person, One Record, which aggregates data across city services to improve resident care.
*The Center for Digital Government and Government Technology are part of e.Republic, parent company of Industry Insider — California.
Find full coverage of this year’s Digital Cities Survey at Government Technology magazine.
