The City of Saratoga Springs, New York has drawn up a Smart City Road Map 1.0 designed to advance technology to benefit infrastructure, the business community, visitors, and residents. Finance Commissioner Michele Madigan described the plan as a road map.
“The road map 1.0 is a culmination of the work undertaken by the Smart City Commission over the past 6 months. The road map marks the beginning of what we hope will be a continued effort by a city-wide group of partners both public and private and who encompass many city institutions and organizations who are committed to and excited about Smart City improvements that will benefit our city,” said Madigan.
Working with NYSTEC, a local not-for-profit technology advisor, the plan features a Smart City framework composed of five key domains:
- Better Public Services
- Connected Community
- Education & Training
- Environmental Innovation
- Intelligent Infrastructure
Tom Myers, CEO of NYSTEC, has an innovative idea: an apps competition. Bringing together students, developers, the City of Saratoga, and the community, the competition would serve to fulfill the needs for connectivity and raise awareness of the smart city plan.
“An apps competition would span over several months. It would start with some form of promotion of course, but then a kickoff where we’d like to try to bring together mentors from within the community with contestants. The contestants would be able to work with folks who understand, for example, the sorts of data sets that are out there they could be accessing to solve some of these problems,” said Myers.
