The City of Lima, Ohio hopes to establish a new department – the Department of Technology and Innovation – that would provide enterprise level solutions to improve the city’s services. If the Lima City Council approves the creation of the new department it would be led by a Chief Technology Officer who would have an estimated annual salary of $80,000 to $90,000.
“This person would be responsible for overseeing all the tech aspects of the city’s organization,” chief of staff Sharetta Smith said. “Our essential model is service, and so we’ve been stepping through that process, looking at each of our departments, our processes, our workflows and even to some degree, our staffing, in order to get better at what we do.”
The new CTO would focus on Lima’s current Smart City Initiative projects – such as the implementation of a new fuel management system, equipping police officers with body cameras, digital metering, upgrading the city’s service request portal, and redesigning the city website.
Smith said creation of such a position would push Lima ahead of the curve when dealing with the implementation of digital technologies to improve government services for cities of a similar size.
“This is very forward thinking, very innovative,” Smith said. “We’re right there in line with what other cities are doing all across the country. If we want to provide opportunities for economic development, we have to make moves like this. If we want to make our city attractive to millennials, we have to make moves like this. We’re using technologies to show how cities govern, and we’re walking down the road to figure out the growth of digital technology and how we provide services.”
