One aspect of Digital Government, we touched briefly on but I wanted to dive in deeper in this post is the question “What’s a Digital City?” and “How Do I Become One?”
This I decided to write a list – 30 Steps to Become a Digital City
1) Website (that actually helps citizens find what need right away, is in plain english, and gets traffic)
2) Email updates to citizens on a bunch of topics (road closures to school hours) – ideally 3 % of your population signed up to alerts at least (1M citizens in Cincinnati, at least 30,000 subscribers)
3) Facebook page for the city that is regularly updated (ideally 1% of your population following you)
4) Twitter profile for the city that is regularly updated (ideally 1% of your population following you)
5) Live-stream meetings online
6) Great infrastructure – fast Internet, good wireless
7) 311 capability
8) Mobile 311 reporting app (like SeeClickFix or CitySourced or PublicStuff)
9) Open data site and a commitment to open data approach (from publishing, hackathons, participation in local tech community)
10) Transparency – all contract data and performance metrics are up on city website
11) Have an active blog sharing the story of your city
12) Have an ideation site to get input from citizens (and your employees) on key projects
13) Website is optimized for search
14) Can pay all bills/transactions online (bonus points if can pay certain transactions through mobile device/SMS)
15) Have a YouTube channel that has been updated in the last month
16) Paperless statements instead of print (don’t send me a paper tax statement)
17) Social media policy for employees and city agencies
18) Elected officials have regular online engagement with citizens (live chats, FB town halls, etc)
19) Transit data that is easily usable (for example w/ Google Transit & for developers to build upon)
20) Special recruitment program to hire best/brightest out of college/grad school (like City of San Francisco Innovation Fellows and programs like FUSE Corp & City Hall Fellows)
21) Live chat customer service on city website
22) Website is in multiple languages
23) Modern web-based permitting processes
24) Video archiving w/ meta-data
25) Calendar/event data available publicly
26) Support modern transit tools – Mobile parking apps, bike sharing programs, support new companies and approaches like Uber
27) Your councilmen have iPads and manage city agenda and meeting minutes through them
28) Use QR codes on city materials (from tourism to buildings)
29) You are a Code for America city
30) Your employees are on GovLoop 🙂
What’s missing? Leave your comment below
Want More?
Read our Digital Government Report
Check out our Digital Government page on GovLoop