Four Florida Cities Recognized as Digital Cities Winners

This week, the Center for Digital Government* shared its annual list of Digital Cities winners, which included four Florida cities. Today’s story will be the first of four, highlighting each city’s achievements. Stay tuned to Industry Insider — Florida for the other three cities coming next week.

Kicking off this year’s list is Punta Gorda.

Coming in third place in the up to 75,000 population category is Punta Gorda, about 100 miles south of Tampa. The city’s technology vision primarily focuses on improving systems, constituent services and processes; procuring mainstream hardware and software; and increasing physical security and cybersecurity.

The city started moving more constituent services online after Hurricane Ian impacted the city more than two years ago. Before that, residents, who are primarily retirees, preferred in-person services. The following resources are now offered online: utility bill payments, tax receipt payments, permit requests, city documents and more.

Other areas that saw significant developments were emerging technologies and data governance. The city has re-evaluated its analytics strategy to prepare for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and the increased demand for quick and extensive data access. Based on this re-evaluation, the city plans to add AI and enterprise architecture tools to its budget in the next fiscal year and is currently in the process of writing an AI policy to set guardrails for the technology. The first draft of the policy is expected to be completed before the end of the fiscal year.

Lastly, the city has focused on increasing resilience after facing the pandemic and two hurricanes. Punta Gorda has developed remote work policies, relocated staff to temporary workspaces, addressed security concerns and reinforced its network. The city is also developing a direct connection from its data center to its Azure Government Cloud to enable rapid data transfers. Doing so will significantly decrease the time it takes to relocate virtualized servers and storage to the cloud in the event of a major disaster.

*The Center for Digital Government and Industry Insider — Florida are both part of the parent company e.Republic.