This year’s winners of the Digital Cities awards from the Center for Digital Government* stepped up their municipalities’ prioritization of security and citizen services.
One of the three Texas winners was Grand Prairie, taking sixth in the 125,000 to 250,000 population category. Cybersecurity upgrades and disaster recovery planning are two reasons it ranked high.
The IT department has been working on a disaster recovery plan for close to two years, testing and integrating a pilot VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery environment. Continuity of operations is top of mind, with the city prioritizing restoration should it be needed, with public-facing and payment systems listed as mission critical.
It also implemented Barracuda Email Protection Premium Plus, thus decreasing time spent addressing email vulnerabilities while also increasing account security and providing statutory cyber awareness training. The software has blocked as many as 104,825 emails a month, so the team can address deep work. The city also updated firewalls that include threat intelligence feeds, blocking more than 2 million malicious URLs and IP connections in a week.
As the federal deadline for inventorying lead pipes is at hand, Grand Prairie is using GIS maps to make that work more seamless and transparent. Internally, the city government upgraded phones from analog to fiber, started supporting education reimbursement for IT employees and established a new IT project management system.
As part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the city is no stranger to traffic challenges. At 81 square miles, the city uses cloud-based traffic technology featuring AI enhancement, smart lighting and IoT devices throughout.
Top priorities for the coming year include cybersecurity and AI implementation while at the same time maintaining infrastructure to support a digitally connected public.
Allen and Frisco also garnered recognition.
*Government Technology, the Center for Digital Government and Industry Insider — Texas are all part of the e.Republic family.
Grand Prairie Takes Digital Cities Award for Proactive Stance
The Center for Digital Government recognized the city for its cybersecurity and disaster recovery priorities, among others.
