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City of Vancouver Moving Forward with Digital Strategy
Thursday, April 4, 2013Company Profile | Follow Company
Vancouver, BC, April 4, 2013--(T-Net)--The Mayor and City Council will vote next week on the first-ever digital strategy for the City of Vancouver, continuing City Hall's work to support the local digital economy and improve service delivery for citizens.
The strategy focuses on improving the way the City provides services online for citizens and small businesses, supporting our dynamic local digital media industry, and putting Vancouver at the forefront of support for digital innovation.
“Making Vancouver a leader in digital innovation has been a key priority of my work as Mayor,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “The City's first-ever digital strategy represents another significant step forward in our efforts to improve how City Hall does business and engages with citizens, how we support leading-edge job creation in our local technology and creative sectors, and how we foster digital innovation to make life better for all Vancouver residents.”
PriceWaterhouseCoopers compared the City of Vancouver's digital assets to global cities including New York, Chicago, and London. They found that Vancouver has made important progress, but currently fits in the middle of the pack in some areas and significant potential for growth and new leadership.
The strategy establishes a four-year roadmap and nine leading priorities, including expanded open data access, more communication and engagement through digital tools, and expanding digital access throughout the city.
Action items include:
Focus Areas for the Digital Strategy
Engagement + Access
Infrastructure & Assets
Economy
Organizational
Guiding Principles
As the City assesses initiatives for the Digital Strategy, guiding principles will further refine those that are selected and how they are executed.
Based on Leading Practices
Rather than re-creating the wheel, a follow-the-leader approach will leverage leading practices and case studies from digitally enabled cities. Learn from others and execute on initiatives backed by fact-based evidence.
Leverages Strategic Alliances
Leverage the City's connections and create strategic alliances with government, education, not-for-profit and private sectors in order to reduce risk, overhead, share costs, and develop world leading programs.
Citizen Adoption & Impact
Not all initiatives can be replicated in every city; ensuring initiatives and citizen adoption life cycles match is critical to any initiative put forward.
Financial Feasibility
Financial responsibility and accountability are vital to the success of any project. Although final benefits may be difficult to quantify, initiatives with low capital requirements and immediate results should be encouraged.
Nurtures Organizational Agility
Be agile and flexible in your approach to deliver solutions efficiently. That is, encourage continuous improvement to city processes through iterative testing and design, incorporating feedback loops and piloting innovative ideas.
Government as a Platform
Harness the creativity of citizens, employees and business in groups, using collaborative and open technologies (open data, open APIs, open standards) to solve problems and build solutions for the city. Allow government to become an enabler, to facilitate the co-creation of service and support mechanisms within the city.
Advances Social Inclusion
Generally referred to as the technology ‘haves' and ‘have-nots', addressing the inequities prevalent within the digital space is crucial. To combat e-exclusion, the city must support those without access, as well as those without digital literacy skills, to get connected.
Aligns with City priorities
City priorities change and evolve as the business climate and citizen expectations change. Digital initiatives must consider how they align with current and potential future priorities - beyond the City goals.
To view the full draft of Vancouver's first-ever digital strategy, click here.
Photo credit: Kim Stallknecht
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