The Center for Digital Government has announced the winners of the 2019 Digital Cities Survey. Winner of first place in the category of 75,000-124,999 in population is Lynchburg, Virginia. The city is being recognized for the way IT staff have collaborated with utility providers and public works to efficiently pool downtown construction efforts.
“We are being recognized for being a leader in using technology, both internally in operations and externally,” said Lynchburg’s city manager, Bonnie Svrcek. “I think that this award helps communicate to citizens, and validates for us, that we are doing the right things and we are on the leading edge.”
The city’s Downtown 2040 Master Plan calls for the restoration and upgrade of the city’s downtown infrastructure and the IT department has already started collaborating with utility providers and public works to efficiently pool construction efforts – such as the installation of new water pipes in conjunction with conduits and fiber-optic cables to facilitate public WiFi and future smart city plans. The IT department also created an in-house system tracking key information about planned public infrastructure projects that includes public-facing departments, such as Economic Development
“Until this system came into place it was a piecemeal kind of data sharing approach, and if you didn’t know the right people you might not know what was going on,” director of information technology Mike Goetz said. “This is not something a citizen or a business would see, but it is extremely helpful internally to share information among these various functional departments.”
To see the full list of cities ranked nationally by The Center for Digital Government, click here.